In February 2014, I went to India to collect research on Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects in India and their sustainable development benefits. During my 3 month stay, I had the pleasure to work together with Indian organizations and activists and found that a well-organized network, strong collaborations and awareness raising are the most important indicators for successful civil society work.
Revisiting villages where JK Paper mill is supposedly implementing its Afforestation and Reforestation CDM project has reinforced my belief that such projects are utter failures, at least for the people who are supposed to be beneficiaries; and for the cause of ‘climate mitigation’ for which these are designed. In October 2010, when we visited the …
Read more “Have carbon credits benefited small and marginal farmers? (WT)”
Climate Smart Agriculture, a concept promoted as part of a solution to climate change, has been at the heart of international and national debates on agricultural development in recent years. While many stakeholders push to link it to carbon markets, the arguments of inappropriateness of such system are gaining ground.
Adani Group – the world’s first supercritical technology based thermal power project to have received CDM project certification from UNFCCC – fails to guarantee environmental and social integrity to the Mundra community. Promises of sustainable development and trivial environmental effects remain only on paper.
The Sasan coal power plant in Singrauli, India is approved under the Clean Development Mechanisms because of its ‘more efficient super critical boiler based coal power technology’ that is supposed to improve livelihoods of local communities. A visit to the local communities shows that Sasan is anything but promising to thousands of people now struggling with eviction, intimidation, violence and mistreatment from authorities.
AnnaIn 1996 peace was signed in Guatemala after 36 years of civil war (around 200,000 deaths, mostly Mayan people) and a new electricity law was ratified as a strategy of privatization and liberalization to attract foreign investment based on the exploitation of natural resources, laying basis of what is turning out to be nowadays an ecological and economical genocide.
With the results now revealed on who is India’s new Prime Minister, every one focuses their attention on the economic development Narendra Modi promises. But how about his environmental manifesto? All the parties, BJP included, preached a ‘sustainable development’ that would make environmental protection coexists with industrial and economic development but it does not mean that their propositions will actually be efficient? Moreover, most parties pledged a sustainable environment for every Indian citizens and future generations but in practice nothing is done to make sure laws are properly implemented.
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