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

182 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingSimilarly, just five months after the PCF was launched in 2000, the Bankapproved over usd 551 million 427 in financing for the Chad-Cameroonoil pipeline. The financing package for the pipeline came to about threetimes the capitalisation of the PCF, and the expected lifetime emissionsof approximately 446 million tonnes of carbon dioxide 428 generated bythe pipeline’s oil amount to roughly three times the 142 million tonnesthat will allegedly be ‘saved’ by PCF projects in total. 429Significantly, PCF investors get carbon credits from PCF projects, butno debits for their Bank-supported projects involving fossil fuel extractionor use.Finally, technology ‘transfer’, CDM-style, has been implicated intechnology displacement – in particular, displacement of superior lowcarbontechnologies (see Chapter 4, ‘India – A taste of the future’). Itis not as if, through the CDM, the North is somehow bringing technologyto technology-free places. Promotional brochures may showshiny, seemingly benign technologies being peacefully ‘transferred’,but the technologies being disrupted in the process are typically lessvisible. ‘Technology transfer’ often also centralises political control.‘Technology transfer’ is a highly ideological phrase denoting a highlypolitical process. When used with the CDM, it tends to stand for apattern of fossil fuel-oriented corporate incursion that can excludetypes of informal technology exchange between communities thatare often more climate-friendly.In general, the CDM is impeding constructive action not only in theNorth (where it allows government and industry to avoid investmentin long-term change), but also in the South (where, by and large, itchannels resources into non-renewable projects that sustain the fossilfuel economy).‘If the CDM continues tooperate within the currentpolicy perversity in whichthe Kyoto Protocol andCDM exist alongsidemassive North-Southfi nancial fl ows to fossilfuels, then it will fail.’ 426Ben Pearson,CDM WatchBut if we can’t fi x the damage the CDM has on the North’s transition to apost-fossil era, maybe we can still fi x the CDM in a way that helps the Southtoward more renewable sources of energy. What we need are standards that willtell buyers which CDM carbon credits come from responsible, renewable energyand energy effi ciency projects that really do something for the climate and forpeople. Buyers could well stampede to buy these premium credits. Finally themarket would start working for a liveable climate instead of against it.Somebody’s already thought of that idea. It’s called the Gold Standard,and was developed by World Wide Fund for Nature and otherNGOs in collaboration with governments, corporations and expertsaround the world.The Gold Standard attempts to ensure that carbon credits are ‘genuine,’‘credible,’ and provide ‘real emissions reductions’ and ‘real