CDM does not reduce emissions. Leaving fossil fuels in the ground does
Published in WRM Bulletin No. 172, November 2011
Last month, I was in Bangkok for a meeting about carbon markets in southeast Asia. It was ironic to be discussing a false solution to climate change when large areas of Thailand were underwater and floods were threatening the capital. (While we cannot say that this particular flood was caused by climate change, we can say that this type of flood will become more common as the planet continues to warm.)
The Bangkok meeting was organised by CDM-Watch and Focus on the Global South with participants from Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Burma and Cambodia. The meeting highlighted two distinct problems with CDM projects:
- Because CDM is a carbon trading mechanism, it does not reduce emissions; and
- Several CDM projects are in themselves destructive and create serious impacts for local communities and their environments.
“The CDM has never been designed to reduce emissions,” said Jacques-Chai Chomthongdi of Focus on the Global South. “Even worse is that there are no measures in place that address negative environmental and social impacts.”
For several years, International Rivers has been monitoring how CDM hydropower projects are not additional, because they would have gone ahead anyway, without assistance from the CDM. At the Bangkok meeting, Carl Middleton, of Chulalongkorn University, spoke about the Kamchay Dam in Cambodia, which is currently under validation as a CDM project. Financing for the project was secured in 2006 from the China Exim Bank and construction of the dam is expected to be finished this year. “It is impossible to assume that this project is additional,” Middleton commented. The dam will flood 2,000 hectares of lands including part of the Bokor National Park. “No intention has been communicated to address the severe environmental impacts it will cause,” Middleton added.
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