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A review of the CDM literature: from fine-tuning to critical scrutiny?

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Abstract

As negotiations on the post-2012 climate regime are now taking off, it is time to look back and assess the experiences of the clean development mechanism (CDM) to this date. The CDM has been subject to extensive discussion in academic literature during the last few years, and this article reviews that literature in order to sum up its main themes. A common assessment is that the current structure of the CDM leads to a focus on cheap emissions reductions at the expense of sustainable development benefits for the host countries. Recently, the questionable additionality of many CDM projects has become a central issue. The article further argues that whereas a substantial body of work exists on the CDM, this work is mainly preoccupied with a ‘fine-tuning’ of the mechanism. As the CDM now becomes increasingly institutionalized, scholars should also take a step back and study the CDM in a more theoretically oriented way.

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Notes

  1. The articles were collected starting in a search on “clean development mechanism” in the electronic article archive ELIN (Electronic Library Information Navigator, http://elin.lub.lu.se/elin), with links to journals from all major publishers. The references of these articles were then searched using a snowballing method until no further references of relevance were identified. The articles and reports referred to in the text were found to be representative of this broader selection of publications.

  2. However, to facilitate a prompt start of the CDM, a decision by COP 7 allowed retroactive crediting for projects registered before 31 December 2005. These projects may thus have a crediting period that starts prior to the date of registration, but not earlier than 1 January 2000 (UNFCCC 2001).

  3. In order to prevent conflicts of interest, the same DOE is not allowed to perform both the validation and the verification of one project.

Abbreviations

CDM:

Clean development mechanism

CERs:

Cerified emission reductions

COP/MOP:

Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol

DNA:

Designated National Authority

DOE:

Designated operational entity

EB:

Executive Board

GHG:

Greenhouse gas

LULUCF:

Land use, land use change and forestry

ODA:

Official Development Assistance

REDD:

Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation

UNFCCC:

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

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Acknowledgements

Valuable comments on previous draft versions were provided by Karin Bäckstrand and Johannes Stripple, as well as the editors and two anonymous reviewers. Funding from the Swedish Energy Agency is gratefully acknowledged.

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Paulsson, E. A review of the CDM literature: from fine-tuning to critical scrutiny?. Int Environ Agreements 9, 63–80 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-008-9088-0

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