According to the May 30, 2008 CRS Report for Congress regarding the Kyoto Protocol, the Protocol’s “flexible mechanisms” provision is one of the key areas of debate. In his book Kyoto2, author Oliver Tickell provides a strong case against the presence of flexible mechanisms in international climate policy, particularly focusing on the “most important flexible mechanism-The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).” Tickell’s work combined with the work of scholar Ian H. Rowlands makes it difficult to argue in favor of the CDM.
Tickell terms the CDM “ineffective, inefficient and abuse-prone,” detailing specific examples of the CDM failure. In particular he sites the lack of oversight in Chinese hydro projects and emissions-laden sponge iron operations in India. Tickell cites an academic study by Christoph Sutter and Juan Carlos Parreno which analyzed sixteen CDM projects. Their study concluded that eleven of the sixteen projects did not deliver emissions reduction and did not result in a “high rating” of sustainable development. After reading Kyoto2, the reader has little hope for a successful CDM program.
In an October 2001 article in Third World Quarterly, scholar Ian H. Rowlands provides a systematic analysis of the CDM through ecological, economic, and social lenses. He explains that the debate over CDM is usually categorized into two camps: those who are opposed to using the international market to reach emission limitation objectives, and those who believe using the international economic market principles is most effective. Rowlands organizes the conflicting opinions around three essential topics of CDM. The most important of which is the issue of “supplementarity”, also known as the question of “how much of emission reduction should be within a country’s own territory?”
Australia, the US and Canada are all in favor of the least restrictive policy on “supplementarity.” These three countries do not want a cap on how much effort should be at home and how much should be in the developing world, where emissions are “cheaper to mitigate.” Most European nations oppose this belief, chiefly based on economic concerns. To Europeans, if CDM use was restricted, new technological developments would be stimulated (as opposed to encouraging more widespread use of existing technologies). The importance placed on new technologies appeared frequently in Rowland’s work.
A combination of Tickell’s and Rowland’s work provides a broad understanding of the arguments opposed to the CDM. Combined, there is a fairly strong case, but not a very descriptive portrayal of the position favorable to CDMs. The Ministry of Climate and Energy of Denmark provides a somewhat-neutral piece on flexible mechanisms, but explains that “up until the summer of 2008…CDM projects represent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions of about 220 million tons of CO2 equivalents a year.” In the short term, this evidence in favor of CDM is convincing.
As we learned with the onset of man-made caused climate change, thinking in the “short-term” does not suffice. We must consider the long term and future generations more often in our policy decisions. The question then becomes, “to what extent do we consider the future?”
Tags: Clean Development Mechanism, Flexible Mechanisms, Oliver Tickell
