From the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, California, Mark Schapiro recounts his inside stories with validators, DOEs, a Brazilian Executive Board member, and NGOs about non-additionality of the CDM in a February 2010 edition of Harper’s Magazine. His findings epitomize regressive climate change policy where emissions tend to increase instead.
Trading on the carbon market seems to be the priority for auditors, carbon trading multinational corporations, validators, verifiers and project developers; they’ve all got their feet in two places in the process of racking up CERs. Plenty of claimed emissions reductions escape thorough scrutiny of the EB, but counterfeit emissions reductions that are later found to be unverified cannot be taken back, since after validation, these credits are secured to be passed off from trader to trader as a futures contract. As you can guess, the ultimate result of the conflicts of interest among these groups combined with investors’ perverse intentions for profit is an abuse the CDM’s authority and fake emission reductions.
