This first EB meeting in 2010 should start off with a new set of 10 members and 10 alternates that were elected by Parties in Copenhagen. However, in practice there are only 4 new individuals on Board (marked with * in the table below/on the left), the remaining members and alternates either serve in their second term or where re-elected:

Member	Alternate
Pedro Barata, Portugal	Danijela Bozanic, Serbia and Montenegro*
Kamel Djemouai, Algeria	June Hughes, St Kitts*
Philip M.Gwage, Uganda	Asterio Takesy, Micronesia/Samoa*
Diana Harutyunyan, Armenia	Samuel Adeoye Adejuwo, Nigeria*
Martin Hession, Great Britain	Thomas Bernheim, Belgium
Shafqat Kakakhel, Pakistan	Lex de Jonge, The Netherlands
Clifford Mahlung, Jamaica	José Domingos Miguez, Brazil
Hugh Sealy, Barbados	Rajesh Kumar Sethi, India
Peer Stiansen, Norway	Akhiro Kuroki, Japan
???	Paulo Manso, Costa Ri

While there were 10 alternates elected, it is interesting to note that Parties in Copenhagen only elected 9 members. This comes as a surprise since for the first time since the establishment of the Executive Board, the list of members does not include a Chinese member. CDM Watch understands that the Asian Group neglected to nominate a person to be elected during the meeting of the Parties in Copenhagen. But the consequences remain unclear. This week´s EB meeting will reveal whether this was an unintended mistake or whether the Chinese government does not consider it to be essential to be represented at the CDM Executive Board. CDM Watch is wondering whether this move could signalise that priorities of the Chinese government are moving away from the CDM?

New Chair and Vice-Chair

As soon as the EB has solved this problem, they will elect a Chair and a Vice-Chair for 2010. Since the positions of Chair and Vice-Chair alternate annually between a member from a Party included in Annex I and a member from a Party not included in Annex I, this year´s Chair will represent a non-Annex I country. CDM Watch bets on Mr Clifford Mahlung to serve as this year´s Chair and Mr Martin Hession to serve as the Vice-Chair.

Information about professional activities of EB members to be published

The integrity of Board members was often questioned in the past. Even the New York Times (NYT, 7 April 2009) has reported that some Board members abuse their role and aggressively promote projects that benefit their home countries. Also the poor code of conduct which was adopted last year does not do more than to legitimise Board members not to consider their professional affiliations as potentially disturbing in their role of the CDM Executive Board. Current Board members still play multiple roles at the same time, including UNFCCC negotiators (such as Mr Pedro Barata and Mr Hugh Sealy), representing their countries’ DNA (such as Mr José Domingos Miguez and Mr Rajesh Kumar Sethi), managers of large government CDM purchasing programs or even CDM project developers (such as Mr Paulo Manso who is Director of the consultancy / project developer NORDTECO). While some EB members submit declarations of a conflict of interest prior to EB meetings, the majority fails to do so. Yet, a definition for a conflict of interest was deleted from the negotiation text in Copenhagen „in the spirit of compromise”. A minimum step in the direction of transparency and professional integrity was a CMP decision that Board Members must now publish their curricula vitae online. CDM Watch calls on all members to take this invitation seriously and to include all details of any past and current professional affiliations in this document to be published at the UNFCCC website. It is then up to civil society to cross check whether CVs are complete and whether they correspond to the declarations of conflict of interest.