Dear friends,
As the upcoming COP-17 in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal is nearly here, we are happy to share our latest newsletter with you. We focus on important policy changes that need to be addressed in Durban. These include the need to:
- Urgently clarify the UN’s obligation to safeguard human rights
- Strengthen rules to exclude non-additional projects, such as coal power projects from the CDM
- Address legal and safety concerns of carbon capture and storage projects in the CDM
- Create strong and effective solutions to reduce HFCs
Undertake a thorough CDM reform, including improving stakeholder consultation. Pre-Durban, our eyes are on the CDM Executive Board which will have its next meeting on 21 November where it is expected to decide on a number of important issues. Two recent studies have called on the CDM Executive Board to suspend the seriously flawed crediting rules for CDM coal projects that cause millions of artificial carbon credits. The Board will also discuss new crediting rules for HFC-23 projects and new approaches to improve additionality testing. Finally, we have asked the Board to include better rules for local and global stakeholder consultation and monitoring criteria in the revised version of the validation and verification standard. Making these key changes will help ensure that the stated sustainability benefits of CDM projects are actually implemented in practice.
Happy reading!
Table of Contents
1. CDM Watch at work
2. Coal Power Undermines CDM IntegrityCoal Power Undermines CDM Integrity
3. The Latest on HFC-23
4. The Mandate to Protect Human Rights in the CDM
5. Rewarding polluters: CCS in CDM?
6. Additionality: the trouble with large-scale CDM projects
7. Simplifying Additionality through Standardisation
8. Upcoming Revision of Standards must strengthen Stakeholder Consultation
9. Insights from South East Asian Civil Society Workshop held in Bangkok
10. CDM Watch Expectations for COP17 in Durban
