CARBON CREDITS FOR SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA - lumes

Determining narratives employed by the actors and observing how agents in the fieldinterpret the term is highly relevant for the exploration of the meaning of definition.The fundamental dimensions of the sustainable development concept and the varyinginterpretations of the criteria and indicators of sustainable development can beidentified within the carbon markets on the projects level. It has to be emphasized,however, that regardless of what definition of sustainable development stakeholdersstated they apply or how they define co-benefits, this does not necessarily mean that ittranslates into the project activities or is being applied in the uniformed way, even bythe same project developer but in different projects.First, I will evaluate the meaning assigned to sustainable development conceptby taking a closer look at the findings related to respondents’ proclaimedorganizational values and interpretation of the concept.4.2.1 A STAKEHOLDER’S PERSPECTIVEWhile 27% of survey respondents perceive sustainable development benefitsas more important than GHG ERs delivered, 73% accordingly, consider both ERs andco-benefits provided by the project to be of the same importance. This means that cobenefitsare perceived as crucial to project development.In the survey of project developers, most respondents stated that they basetheir definition of sustainable development contribution on how it is defined by thestandard, host country requirements were also referred to as the guiding principles fordefining sustainable development framework for the project, while one respondentidentified the ‘core goal of the project’ as determining potential contribution tosustainable development. Since discourse analysis places a great emphasis onlanguage, it is interesting to see that, even though respondents refer to sustainabledevelopment as ‘essential part’ (PC, 2009c) of their project activities, however, whenasked they are unable to define what constitutes sustainable development in theiractivities. ‘We have no definition of sustainable development or sustainableapproach’, stated one of the interviewees, while still referring to the companyperformance, as ‘we are sustainable’ (PC, 2009b). They go on acknowledging, that atthe initial stage of the project activities criteria for co-benefits ‘were very broadlydefined and no explicit criteria is applied at the moment’ (PC, 2009b) and projectsare, accordingly, expected ‘to be sufficient, sustainable and bring social benefits’ (PC,2009b). The majority of project developers refer to ‘contribution to sustainabledevelopment’ in very general terms. Thus, for instance Swiss offset provider MyClimate claims that all their ‘carbon offset projects are required to make a positivecontribution to sustainable development in their respective regions’ (My Climate,2009). They declare that ‘all three dimensions of sustainability – environment,economy and society - need to be taken into account’ (My Climate, 2009). However,they leave criteria definition for the standard applied. One responded, whileemphasizing the social benefits and community focus of the project, mentioned thatthe company looks ‘for the projects that offer something more than triple-bottom line29