A Critical Conversation on Climate Change ... - Green Choices

170 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingWe reject the use of the Kyoto Protocol’s so-called Clean DevelopmentMechanism in projects affecting the communities, suchas hydroelectric dams, monoculture tree plantations and others.We reject the signing of further contracts in our communities forthe sale of environmental services with national or internationalNGOs, municipalities or individuals. We exhort CONAIE andCONFENIAE [confederations of indigenous peoples in Ecuador]to submit the corresponding complaints to the courts [and] to havepunitive measures taken against the notaries, contract promotersand NGOs that participate in these activities.We’ve been talking about who owns the land and water used by carbon projects.But who owns the carbon credits produced by these projects?It’s not always clear. As late as 2004, Baker and McKenzie, an internationallaw firm specialising in carbon trading, was still asking, ‘Whois entitled to legal ownership of emissions reductions?’Could legal title to emission reductions [sic] which are being tradedbe challenged by another party to the project (i.e., the lessor of theland, the government, another shareholder in the project) or limitedby concession arrangements?... What if foreign involvement ina project is limited to the purchase of credits – would this constitutea transfer of ‘property rights’ to the foreign investor? 385Only in 2005 did the Chinese government, to take one example, clarifywhat percentage of the benefits from the sale of carbon credits it wouldtake and how much it would leave to implementing enterprises.Not surprisingly, businesses interested in buying carbon credits areobsessed with property rights. While EU emissions allowances are‘real property’, noted one Dutch banker recently, CDM credits ‘don’thave such a solid status yet’. As international commercial lawyers gearup for disputes over title, one European carbon fund manager washeard to remark in October 2005 that ‘there are just not enough guarantees. . . I’m not going to spend my life in the court of Belo Horizonteto get my credits. We’re placing bets here. CDM credits willalways be discounted.’What’s the problem? People who invest in carbon projects should own the carbonsavings. And everybody else should just accept this.People who have arguably ‘invested’ for generations in land and othergoods used for carbon projects yet do not own, and cannot sell,the credits they produce, are likely to take a different view. Indigenouspeoples, for instance, may have preserved forests and soils for