The future of the CDM

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Jun 112009
 

On 8 June 2009 at the UNFCCC negotiations in Bonn, my friend Heleen de Connick asked me to jump in for another colleague as respondent on an ECN panel  on “Confluence or convolution of mechanisms, technology and finance: how can streams meet in Copenhagen?”. In my response to Stefan Bakker’s presentation on “The Future CDM”, I pointed out, among other things, that:

– CDM projects in developing countries and Annex I action alone will not be enough to halve global emissions by 2050 and reach a global peak of emissions before 2020 – both important thresholds to keep a worldwide temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius, as science suggests
– sectoral approaches in rapidly developing countries are an innovative step forward fitting into the concept of low-carbon development strategies including three types of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs): unilateral action, conditional action and participation in the carbon market (crediting)
– CDMs should not be abandonned but continue to play a role in sectors not covered by sectoral approaches and in least developing countries
– the CDM can be improved; one particularly valuable suggestion is to go from project-based approval to a positive list of actions (or programmatic CDM) in order to speed up the process and make it more transparent

You can find an On-Demand webcast of the side event here