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

lessons unlearned 211275 CEE Bankwatch, ‘An Analysis of Additionality. ThePCF’s JI Project in the Czech Republic: SixteenSmall Hydropower Plants’, Prague, September 2005.276 Many private ‘offset’ schemes including thoseassociated with firms such as the Carbon NeutralCompany and the Chicago Climate Exchange, whichdo not have to pass such checks, are also likelyto have implausible counterfactual baselines, butinformation is difficult to obtain due to commercialconfidentiality. For information on the CarbonNeutral Company (formerly Future Forests), seewww.sinkswatch.org.277 ENDS Report 354, July 2004, p. 6.278 See http://www.emissions.de/index.htm.279 Mark C. Trexler, ‘A Statistically Driven Approach toOffset-Based GHG Additionality Determinations:What Can We Learn?’, Sustainable Developmentand Policy Journal, forthcoming.280 Grubb, op. cit. supra note 236, p. 229.281 Hermann Ott and Wolfgang Sachs, ‘Ethical Aspectsof Emissions Trading’, Wuppertal Papers No. 110,Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie,Wuppertal, May 2000.282 Financial Times, 16 February 2005.283 International Rivers Network, ‘Comments Submittedto the Japan Consulting Institute (JCI) CleanDevelopment Mechanism (CDM) Centre regardingXiaogushan Large Hydroelectric Project (XHP)’,August 21, 2005, http://www.irn.org/programs/greenhouse/index.php?id=050823xiaogushan.html.284 Steve Bernow et al., ‘Free-Riders and the CleanDevelopment Mechanism’, World Wildlife Fund,Gland, Switzerland, 2000, p. 17.285 Clean Development Mechanism, Project DesignDocument for Bumbuna Hydroelectric Project,n.d., http://cdm.unfccc.int/UserManagement/FileStorage/FS_756041443.286 Personal communication, confidential.287 Bruno vanderBorght, ‘Assessment of Present CDMMethodologies’, presentation at World BusinessCouncil on Sustainable Development side eventat the Tenth Conference of the Parties to theUNFCCC, Buenos Aires, 10 December 2004.288 ‘Executive Board Warns against Unlevel CDMPlaying Field’, Point Carbon, 16 May 2006.289 Paul J. Georgia, ‘Enron Sought Global WarmingRegulation, Not Free Markets’ Roanoke Times, 3February 2002.290 ENDS Report 352, May 2004, pp. 34–35.291 For example, European, South Asian and SoutheastAsian forest history is full of examples of destructivestate or commercial projects legitimised by the claimthat without them, the so-called ‘tragedy of thecommons’ would result in despoliation as growingswarms of individualistic farmers loot a landscapeunprotected by private property rights. Onceprojects legitimised in this way go into operation, theyoften undermine commons regimes which functionin ways which prevent such looting. As a result,the projects end up encouraging the destructive,no-holds-barred local behaviour they claim tohave opposed. The attempt of baseline-and-creditaccounting to determine ‘business as usual’ scenariosparadoxically transforms the scenarios into movingtargets, making honest carbon accounting impossible,with negative results for climate.292 Lazarus, op. cit. supra note 274.293 Van Vliet et al., op. cit. supra note 272, p. 154.294 Ben Pearson, The World Bank and the CarbonMarket: Rhetoric and Reality, Clean DevelopmentWatch, Sydney, 2005, p. 22, http://www.cdmwatch.org. See also Clean Development Watch and ThirdWorld Network, The CDM: Reducing GHG Emissionsor Business as Usual?, CDM Watch, Sydney, 2003,http://www.cdmwatch.org. See also Cameron, op.cit. supra note 83; Financial Times, 16 February 2005295 Haites and Yamin, op. cit. supra note 270; Trexler, op.cit. supra note 279.296 The voluntary market is subject to even lessregulatory scrutiny than the ‘official’ Kyoto Protocoland EU ETS markets. Credits from some projectsmay well be quietly sold more than once. A traderwho asked not to be named has noted that several‘offset’ projects have been advertised on carbonretailers’ websites for years and should have soldall their credits long ago, including a well-knownbiomass project in India. Sales of such credits arenot recorded in any registry and there is no way forcustomers to check whether the credits have beensold more than once. The trader also claimed thatsome projects financed by governments for otherreasons have subsequently sold carbon credits onthe voluntary market through private retailers.297 Editorial, ENDS Report 354, July 2004.298 George Akerlof, ‘The Market for “Lemons”:Qualitative Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism’,Quarterly Journal of Economics 84, 3, pp. 488–500;Michael Obersteiner et al., ‘Avoiding a LemonsMarket by Including Uncertainty in the KyotoProtocol: Same Mechanism – Improved Rules’, IIASAInterim Report IR-00-043, International Institute forApplied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria, 2000.299 Quoted in Keith Allott, ‘Testing the Waters forCarbon Neutrality’, ENDS Report 369, October2005, pp. 24–26.