Indigenous people who would be directly affected by the impact of a hydroelectric project in Panama were not consulted despite national and international human rights obligations to obtain their free, prior and informed consent, according to a just-released report.

Acting on behalf of communities in Panama’s Ngöbe-Buglé indigenous territory, the Movimiento 10 de Abril (M-10) had filed a complaint with the Independent Complaints Mechanism (ICM) of the Dutch FMO and German DEG development banks alleging that the Barro Blanco dam project which the banks were financing would lead to the flooding of the communities’ homes, schools, and religious, archaeological and cultural sites.

The two banks were accused of failing to adequately assess the risks to indigenous rights and the environment before approving a 50 million dollar loan to GENISA, the project’s developer.

The independent panel’s report, released May 29, found that the “lenders should have sought greater clarity on whether there was consent to the project from the appropriate indigenous authorities prior to project approval,” adding that “the lenders have not taken the resistance of the affected communities seriously enough.”

“We did not give our consent to this project before it was approved, and it does not have our consent today,” said Manolo Miranda, a representative of the M-10.  “We demand that the government, GENISA and the banks respect our rights and stop this project.”

According to the ICM’s report, “significant issues related to social and environmental impact and, in particular, issues related to the rights of indigenous peoples were not completely assessed.”

The environmental and social action plan (ESAP) accompanying the project “contains no provision on land acquisition and resettlement and nothing on biodiversity and natural resources management. Neither does it contain any reference to issues related to cultural heritage.”

Ana María Mondragón, a lawyer at the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA), said: “This failure constitutes a violation of international standards regarding the obligation to elaborate adequate and comprehensive environmental and social impact assessments before implementing any development project, in order to guarantee the right to free, prior and informed consent, information and effective participation of the potentially affected community.”

In February this year, the Panamanian government provisionally suspended construction of the Barro Blanco dam and subsequently convened a dialogue table with the Ngöbe-Buglé, with the facilitation of the United Nations, to discuss the future of the project.

The Barro Blanco project was registered under the Clean Development Mechanism, a system under the Kyoto Protocol that allows the crediting of emission reductions from greenhouse gas abatement projects in developing countries.

“As climate finance flows are expected to flow through various channels in the future, the lessons of Barro Blanco must be taken very seriously,” said Pierre-Jean Brasier, network coordinator at Carbon Market Watch. “To prevent that future climate mitigation projects have negative impacts, a strong institutional safeguard system that respects all human rights is required.”

The ICM will monitor the banks’ implementation of corrective actions and recommendations, while M-10 said that it expects FMO and DEG to withdrawal their investment from the project and ask that the Dutch and German governments show a public commitment to ensuring the rights of the affected Ngöbe-Buglé.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Judith Muma, a smallholder farmer from Cameroon’s Northwest Region, says if climate change adaptation funds could reach farmers like her, her farming costs would reduce. Credit: Monde Kingsley Nfor/IPS

By Monde Kingsley Nfor
YAOUNDE, Aug 14 2014 (IPS)

In Cameroon’s Northwest Region, Judith Muma walks 9km from her home to her 300-square-metre farm. The vegetables she grows here are flourishing thanks to the money she has borrowed from her njangi (thrift group) and a local credit union to finance a small artisanal irrigation scheme.

“I spend more money today buying farm implements such as water tanks, watering pumps, fertilisers, insecticides and improved seeds. I think we must spend in farming today if we want to adapt to climate change,” Muma tells IPS.

Cameroon’s economy is primarily agrarian and about 70 percent of this Central African nation’s 21.7 million people are involved in farming. Changes in temperature and precipitation pose a serious threat to the nation’s economy where agriculture contributes about 45 percent to the annual GDP.

In the northern parts of Cameroon, the semi-arid lowlands and hills are mostly dependent on rainfall and groundwater. The impact of forest clearance on hydrological processes has also aggravated climate change impact in these areas.“If most of the projects on climate change adaptation ... could reach us, the farmers, directly, important farm implements the cost of farming could reduce.” Judith Muma, smallholder farmer, Cameroon

Muma explains that even small-scale subsistence farmers like her now need to invest money in their livelihoods to ensure a minimal output. She says as a result of her investment, most of her harvest — 60 percent — is sold at a local vegetable market.

According to the World Bank, agriculture in Africa declined in absolute terms from eight billion dollars in 1984 to 3.5 billion dollars in 2005. There was also a decline in development cooperation policies and in national budget allocations for agriculture.

“This drop in concern for agriculture had a considerable influence on Africa’s capacity to develop climate adaptation policies and early warnings [systems]. But after two decades of decline, investments in agriculture are now on the rise,” Collotte Eboko, an agriculture inspector in Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, tells IPS.

“Sub-regional initiatives have generated a multiplicity of commitments to addressing climate change, poverty and hunger with a new focus on climate friendly agriculture,” Eboko says.

According to a United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, Africa faces “very high” risks to crop production as a result of global warming.

Last year’s Adaptation Gap study published by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) warned that Africa could face an annual adaptation bill of 35 to 50 billion dollars by 2050.

But Africa lags behind as far as adaptation projects to support vulnerable groups are concerned.

“African governments have not done enough for the developed world to see adaption as priority for the continent. They still think climate change is a white people’s [western] problem…

“The position of Africa is grounded on these assumptions. But if we started by showing more commitments, our claims shall be more rational,” Samuel Nguiffo, of the Centre for Environmental Development, a research organisation in Cameroon, tells IPS.

Investment in climate change adaptation can help ensure that the impacts of climate change — including a projected 20 to 50 percent decline in water availability — do not reverse decades of development progress in Africa, according to the UNEP.

As the international community prepares for the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris 2015, Africa still has much at stake in this global discuss. But the issues are many and complex due to the continent’s high level of vulnerability to climate change and its low level of resources.

But Nguiffo says that Africa should not wait for a developed nation to finance a policy formulation project.

“The will and commitments should rather come from our own parliaments and decision makers first. Africa needs an effective climate change adaptation policy that considers climate change as survival issue.

“Integrating a gender approach is vital to promoting a quick response to climate action both at international and national level,” Nguiffo says.

Many African countries are lagging behind as far as adaptation projects are concerned. The Climate Funds Update (CFU) website highlights a large gap between funding approved and funding spent on projects in Africa.

For this reason, Africans have missed out on important funding opportunity for their projects. For example, under the U.N.’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), only two percent of the over 7,000 projects are based on the continent.

•  In 2011, 72 CDM  projects  were  registered across Africa, accounting  for  only  two percent of global CDM projects.
• South Africa and Egypt host a majority of the projects in Africa, with the rest in the remaining African countries.
•  The remainder of the CDM projects are in the Asia–Pacific: 73.1 percent; and in Latin America and the Caribbean: 23.5 percent.

The failure of the CDM of the Kyoto Protocol to support projects in Africa has been a major concern for African climate experts.

This lag has been blamed on Africa’s low capacity to develop and invest in mitigation as well as climate-resilient agriculture.

“Africa is in dire need of capacity building of national institutions responsible for mitigation and adaptation to facilitate and increase Africa participation in CDMs and REDD,” Timothee Kagonbe, one of Cameroon’s envoys to the climate change negotiations, tells IPS.

There are serious bottlenecks in programme implementation in Africa. In Cameroon, for example, there were over 30 CDM projects registered by Cameroon’s Ministry of Environment, but only one has been implemented and is qualified as a CDM project.

In 2010, the Japanese government supported 20 African countries with 92.1 million dollars over three years to implement integrated and comprehensive adaptation actions and resilience plans.

According to Daniel Seba of the Ministry of Environment, “the Japanese Africa Adaptation Programme helped Cameroon develop climate-resilient policies and development processes to incorporate climate change risks/opportunities in priority sectors but we need funding for its implementation.”

But Kagonbe explains that weak governance and limited capacity has resulted in failures in climate change adaptation and mitigation projects. The various international procedures for the formulation and implementation of mitigation and adaptation projects are very complicated for African countries, which have very little capacity and funding.

The African Development Bank has recently opened the Africa Climate Change Fund. This is aimed at ensuring countries on the continent get more help adapting to the effects of global warming. The fund received six million dollars from Germany in April.

“Climate change is a great opportunity for economic growth given increasing climate funding pledges and if more investment is made in agriculture it will becomes more sustainable, increasing its productivity and becomes more resilient against the impact of climate change,”  Eboko says.

Africa needs to rethink many of its basic economic assumptions and investment strategies and start spreading investment in rural and deserted regions to reduce climate induce security risk and migration, she adds.

“If most of the projects on climate change adaptation we hear about on the radio and read in publications could reach us, the farmers, directly, important farm implements the cost of farming could reduce,” Muma says.

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

The writer can be contacted at nformonde@gmail.com

Carbon Emissions Soon to Become Taxing for Big South African Polluters from IPS News on Vimeo.

South Africa, the world’s 12th highest emitter of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, is attempting to transition to a low-carbon economy. Credit: Brendon Bosworth/IPS

By Brendon Bosworth
CAPE TOWN, May 28 2014 (IPS)

To curb greenhouse gas emissions, South Africa wants to put a tax on carbon emissions from big polluters.

The aim of making polluters pay for the carbon they pump into the atmosphere is to help South Africa, the world’s 12^th highest emitter of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, transition to a low-carbon economy.

“We have one of the most carbon intensive economies in the world,” Anton Cartwright, a researcher on the green economy at the University of Cape Town’s African Centre for Cities, told IPS.

Coal-burning power plants provide close to ninety percent of South Africa’s electricity, making the economy highly carbon intensive.

“We don’t get a great bang for buck on our coal,” said Cartwright. “We use a low-grade coal with a very high CO2 content.”

The tax was slated to take effect in 2015 but in February this year National Treasury announced it would be pushed back to January 2016, citing the need for “further consultation.”

Offsets to cushion blow to industry

Initially, the carbon tax would see big polluters, including companies in the mining, fossil fuel and steel sectors, paying 11.50 dollars per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent on between 20 and 40 percent of their total carbon emissions.

To cushion the effect on industry, the National Treasury has proposed allowing polluters to lower their tax liability by investing in carbon offsets.

“The combination of a tax and offsets is very sensible,” said Cartwright. “You’re priming the market and then providing flexibility.”

A carbon offset is a measure that reduces, avoids or sequesters emissions. Polluters buy credits, each equivalent to one tonne of carbon, from verified projects — including, for example, reforestation programmes and initiatives that increase energy efficiency in the housing sector — at prices cheaper than the tax.

South Africa’s large-scale carbon offset market is currently stagnant.

“There is no trading happening at the moment,” Robbie Louw, director of Promethium Carbon, a South African carbon and climate change advisory firm, told IPS. “The international price for offsetting credits is very low at the moment.”

In Europe, carbon credits are selling for less than 50 cents, Louw said.

Without the carbon tax big South African emitters have no obligation to reduce their emissions or engage with carbon offsetting programmes, Carl Wesselink, director of SouthSouthNorth, a Cape Town based non-profit organisation that focuses on climate change and development, told IPS.

The carbon tax should change that.

The proposed carbon tax and offset legislation will increase demand and price for carbon credits, Roland Hunter, a consultant at C4 EcoSolutions, told IPS.  C4 EcoSolutions is a firm that consults on a government offset project which involves reforesting degraded parts of the Eastern Cape province with Spekboom, a succulent tree with a high potential for capturing carbon.

Flagship offset project faces challenges

South Africa’s flagship carbon offsetting initiative, the Kuyasa CDM Pilot Project, which is registered with internationally recognised credit scheme the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) — established under the Kyoto Protocol — has been slow to issue carbon credits.

The initiative involved retrofitting 2,300 low-cost homes in Khayelitsha, a semi-informal township outside Cape Town, with solar water heaters, ceiling insulation, and energy efficient light bulbs.

These energy efficient measures save 7,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. But despite being registered with the CDM in 2005, and being completed in 2010, the award-winning project has not yet issued any carbon credits.

A combination of bureaucratic red tape, from local and national government, combined with the CDM’s protracted verification process, is to blame for the lack of credit trading at Kuyasa, said Wesselink, whose organisation developed the project and, as a partner to the City of Cape Town, is responsible for trading the carbon credits.

An estimated 10,000 CER (Certified Emissions Reduction) credits should be issued this year, he said.

The money from the credit sales will go into maintenance costs, which are currently being shouldered by SouthSouthNorth with donor funds.

The funds are needed since the solar water heaters made by a Chinese company, and numbering 1,500, are prone to rusting and leaks, and have a short-life span, Zuko Ndamane, project manger for the Kuyasa CDM project, told IPS.

“A day, maybe about 10 people will come and report their geyser is leaking,” he said. “If I’m [not in the office] they’ll go to my house.”

When the credits are sold, the project will invest in replacing the rusting geysers with units from a South African company, which have a 20-year lifespan, he said.

Kuyasa was not established to make a financial profit. With the project costing about 3.5 million dollars it would take decades to recoup the costs through selling carbon credits alone.

“Putting solar water heaters and insulation in houses is something government, or someone, should be funding — it’s a good thing,” said Wesselink. “A project like Kuyasa will happen because it’s a social good but it won’t happen because carbon is a kicker.”

The return on investment from a public health and social development perspective is worth the financial outlay. But such projects need to be done at a larger scale to make financial sense, he explained.

Tax still to be finalised

The carbon tax and associated offset options should see an uptick in trade for carbon offsetting projects in South Africa. But industry remains concerned about the looming tax, especially state-owned power supplier Eskom.

Eskom would not be able to absorb increased production costs from the carbon tax, Gina Downes, Eskom’s corporate consultant for environmental economics, told IPS.

“It’s unfortunately not like we can switch off any of our production, particularly now with the low reserve margin,” said Downes. “We probably can’t, in the short-term, even try to optimise based on emissions.”

The utility has been in talks with National Treasury about ways to account for the costs associated with the implementation of the Department of Energy’s 2010 Integrated Resource Plan, which lays the path for the share of coal-fired electricity generation in South Africa to drop from around 90 percent in 2010 to 65 percent in 2030, Downes added.

Analysts expect to see some changes in the final tax related to its impact on the national utility.

“I think there may be substantial changes in [the tax’s design], especially relating to the Eskom emissions,” said Louw, of Promethium Carbon. “That’s the thing that has got the biggest impact on the economy.”

Petrotrin pumping jacks at its oilfields in Trinidad. Courtesy of Petrotrin.

By Jewel Fraser
PORT OF SPAIN, May 5 2014 (IPS)

Trinidad and Tobago holds the dubious distinction of being among the top 10 emitters of carbon dioxide per capita in the world, much of it due to the petrochemical industry that is the main driver of its economy.

According to the University of Trinidad and Tobago, the country’s petrochemical sector is responsible for 60 percent of those emissions."There are also positive social impacts through job creation and utilisation of services and materials from the local energy sector." -- Melissa Mohammed-Rajkumar

Melissa Mohammed-Rajkumar, a business analyst at the state-owned oil company, Petrotrin, told IPS that six percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are from its own operations.

But now Petrotrin is eager to reduce its carbon footprint.

It has succeeded in registering a Programme of Activities (PoA) project that would bundle together projects by several petrochemical companies in Trinidad and Tobago and require only one validation process for all of them – the first such project in Trinidad to be registered under the U.N.’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

It seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by recovering and utilising methane-rich natural gas currently vented in the fields.
This PoA project was registered with the CDM in August 2013.

According to the CDM Programme Design Document Form issued in 2012, “Venting and flaring of associated gases from oil wells is commonplace, in Trinidad and internationally. This PoA will improve the economics of collecting associated gases from both onshore and off-shore oil fields in Trinidad.”

Venting involves controlled release into the atmosphere of unburned gases that are a byproduct of oil production. The venting ensures that associated natural gas can be safely disposed of in an emergency.

Oil companies resort to venting when they cannot store or use gas commercially, to reduce the risk of fire and explosion.

Mohammed-Rajkumar, a member of Petrotrin’s CDM team, told IPS, “Sustainable development of the country will be enhanced by the project as valuable resources that would have been wasted through venting will contribute to economic development when captured and utilised for productive end-uses.

“There are also positive social impacts through job creation and utilisation of services and materials from the local energy sector,” she said.

Trinidad and Tobago’s PoA is one of the few CDM projects in the English-speaking Caribbean to achieve registration.

Though some countries have expressed an interest in launching CDM projects that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and thus make them viable players on the Carbon Emissions Reduction (CER) market, only four projects in the English-speaking Caribbean have achieved registration under the CDM – two in Jamaica, one in the Bahamas, and one in Guyana.

Of the 18 CDM-registered projects in the Caribbean, 12 are in the Dominican Republic and two are in Cuba.

There are two CDM-registered PoA projects in the Caribbean, the one in Trinidad and Tobago and one in Haiti.

Whereas the Wigton windfarm project in Jamaica has achieved a measure of success, the CDM project in Guyana has failed to achieve its targets under the CDM, according to Sharma Dwarka, the factory operations manager of Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc., otherwise known as GuySuCo.

Though the Caribbean is not a major source of GHG emissions, GuySuCo chose to get involved in the CDM because of its commitment to reduce its carbon emissions.

GuySuCo. chose to launch a bagasse cogeneration project under the CDM, Dwarka said, “because it fits directly into GuySuCo.’s operations. The processing of sugar cane to produce sugar produces bagasse [a fuel] which is utilised for power generation for the operations.

“The quantity of power produced from bagasse is more than adequate for the operations. As such, excess power is available for sale to the national grid.”

The hoped-for effect was the reduction of Guyana’s dependence on fossil fuels for energy and, hence, of its carbon emissions.

Unfortunately, Dwarka told IPS that there have been no financial gains to Guyana or GuySuCo. to date from registration with the CDM.

This was mainly “due to non-achievement of design parameters of the sugar plant. The main issues at the sugar plant include non-achievement of cane throughput (tonnes of cane processed per hour) and frequent stoppages due to breakdowns, no cane periods due to poor weather conditions, etc.”

However, he said, “GuySuCo. remains committed to reducing its carbon emissions. Having identified the root cause of problems at the sugar factory, corrective action is currently being taken such that the factory can achieve the original design parameters.

“Once this is achieved, the cogeneration plant will be positioned to generate carbon emission reductions (CERs) and tap into the carbon credit market.”

Mohammed-Rajkumar told IPS that Petrotrin’s PoA project is now in the implementation stage. “Tenders have been issued and we are awaiting responses,” she said. The project is approaching its study and design phase.

Regarding funding, she said, “Commercial arrangements are in the process of being drafted and their form will depend on the outcome of the engineering estimates.”

The initial CDM project, in its first year of operation, is expected to remove approximately 90,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e).

“For the next nine years, the project is expected to remove an average of 78,000 tCO2e per annum, but this estimate is subject to further engineering studies to be conducted.”

Mohammed-Rajkumar said that the initial phase will focus on its wells in the Fyzabad, Grand Ravine, Parrylands, Palo Seco and Barrackpore fields.

She said the company has no qualms regarding the project’s financial feasibility, even though prices on the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme market, to which it has access, are very low. It “is also exploring options in other markets where prices range from five to 10 dollars.”

“We can hold and trade the carbon credits when prices are higher,” Mohammed-Rajkumar said. “In any event, Petrotrin remains committed to implementing the CDM project because of the net environmental and social benefits to be derived.”

The World Bank’s job is to fight poverty. Key to lifting people out of poverty is access to reliable modern energy. It makes sense.

Kids do better in school when they can study at night. Microbusiness owners earn more if they can keep their shops open after sundown. And when women and children don’t have to gather wood for cooking they’re healthier and have more time for other activities.The programme seems to be more about erecting scaffolding around the crumbling CDM than about getting renewable energy to impoverished families.

What doesn’t make sense is using a failed scheme — like carbon trading — to pay for it.

Carbon trading was developed as a way for industry to comply with laws limiting their greenhouse gas emissions more cheaply. Companies that can’t or won’t meet carbon caps can purchase surplus allowances from others that have kept pollution below legal limits.

The U.N. established an international system called the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to make it even cheaper for businesses in rich countries to meet carbon regulations by paying for clean energy projects in developing nations. Purchasing these offsets through the CDM was promoted as a new way to provide financing to poorer countries.

But the poorest countries most in need of climate and development money generally don’t benefit from the CDM.

First, they often don’t have large industrial or fossil fuel-based energy sectors that generate significant volumes of carbon pollution. Also, it takes enormous time and effort to verify project plans, register with the CDM, and validate that emissions have been cut, making it impractical for investors to finance small projects that only generate a low number of carbon credits.

That was the case even before the CDM “essentially collapsed,” in the words of a U.N.-commissioned report on its future. Weak emissions targets and the economic downturn in wealthy nations had resulted in a 99-percent decline in the price paid for offsets between 2008 and 2013.

There was also evidence that the scheme’s largest projects actually increased greenhouse gas emissions. Add on the tax scandals, fraud, Interpol investigations, and human rights violations, and the scheme had fallen into disarray.

Ci-Dev to the rescue?

Given this record of failure, it’s odd that the World Bank is spending scarce donor resources to convince the world’s poorest countries to buy into the CDM. But that’s exactly what the Bank’s Carbon Initiative for Development (Ci-Dev) proposes to do.

Ci-Dev was launched in 2013 to increase energy access in “least developed” (LDCs) and African countries by funding projects that use clean and efficient technologies through “emission reduction-based performance payments” — in other words, by purchasing carbon credits from them.

But the programme seems to be more about erecting scaffolding around the crumbling CDM than about getting renewable energy to impoverished families.

The Bank lists the following as the initiative’s goals: extending the scope of the CDM in poor countries; demonstrating that carbon credit sales are part of a successful business model; developing “suppressed demand” accounting for LDCs to inflate their emissions baselines to earn more credits; and influencing future carbon market mechanisms so that LDCs get a greater share of the financing.

The Ci-Dev has one programme — the readiness fund — to build countries’ capacities to engage with the carbon market and to experiment with new methods for fast-tracking small-scale CDM projects. It channels millions of dollars into helping create offsets for which there are few buyers.

The initiative has a second programme — the carbon fund — to pay for carbon credits that are eventually produced but don’t sell on the market.

The Bank says it is prioritising support for community and household-level technologies like biogas, rooftop solar, and micro-hydro power. But it will also fund projects in “underrepresented” sectors such as waste management.

Because there’s no clear definition of what types of technologies it can and can’t fund, the Ci-Dev could end up financing electricity from natural gas and other controversial sources of “lower carbon” power.

A better approach

Regardless of technology, it’s irresponsible of the World Bank to spend development dollars on building carbon trading infrastructure in low-income countries for offset projects that have diminishing demand, and whose financial success is linked to a failing international market.

A better approach would be to directly build governance, operational, and financing capacity in the least developed countries for renewable energy infrastructure, alongside providing grant and concessional financing for distributed solar, wind, and small-scale hydropower projects.

The private sector can play a critical role, but the most important businesses to engage are small and medium-sized enterprises that provide mini- and off-grid services to the rural poor.

The paltry climate finance and development assistance being provided by wealthy countries should be spent on what people actually need. Women, children, and small business owners desperately need reliable energy that’s affordable and clean.

It’s a shame that the World Bank is wasting so much time, money, and energy on constructing a market that has little worth and attracts few investors.

Janet Redman is the director of the Climate Policy Program at the Institute for Policy Studies.

WindWatt Nevis Ltd uses eight wind turbines to produce a maximum capacity of about 2.2 megawatts, which works out to approximately 20 percent of the tiny island’s total energy needs.The increase in renewable energy projects means the Caribbean's energy generation mix is more diverse, making the region more resilient to the effects of natural disasters. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Jewel Fraser
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Apr 6 2014 (IPS)

Since they first emerged as a result of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, carbon offset markets have been a key part of international emissions reductions agreements, allowing rich countries in the North to invest in “emissions-saving projects” in the South while they continue to emit CO2.

The biggest is the U.N.’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) for verifying carbon emissions reduction projects in developing countries."At some point the developed countries will wake up and turn back to the one legal, internationally recognised, functioning market mechanism for reducing carbon emissions." -- Dr. Hugh Sealy

According to Dr. Hugh Sealy, chairman of the Executive Board of the CDM, it has generated 396 billion dollars in financial flows from developed to developing countries.

“We are fairly proud of that. Very few development banks can say they have had that kind of investment,” Dr. Sealy told IPS.

The CDM, which operates under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), validates and subsequently certifies the effectiveness of projects in reducing carbon emissions.

Such certification can then be used as a basis for obtaining Carbon Emission Reduction (CER) credits that are sold to developed countries seeking to meet emissions reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol.

The big problem for local entrepreneurs is that the market for CER credits has collapsed in recent years.

In the Caribbean, many of the emissions reductions projects tend to be in the area of windfarming, said Dr. Sealy, since wind technology is proven and banks understand the risks.

The Caribbean’s North-East trade winds make it a very viable one as well. Guyana also has a bagasse project for generating steam and electricity.

In the Caribbean, there are 18 CDM projects, but only one, the Wigton Windfarm project in Jamaica, has made an application for CER certification. Dr. Sealy said that Wigton, which was registered as a CDM project in 2006, reduced carbon emissions by more than 52,000 tonnes per year in its first phase, and then by 40,000 tonnes per year in its second phase.

The challenge facing the Wigton project, as with all CDM projects currently, is the steep decline in the value of CER credits over the past couple of years. Four years ago, Dr. Sealy said, the credits were worth about 104 each dollars. Now they are worth about 50 cents.

He said the actual value the Jamaican company obtains for its CERs “will depend on the contract between it and the buyer.”

Dr. Sealy said the UNFCCC’s Conference of the Parties agreed at a recent meeting to the sale of CERs to entities that do not have obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, in an effort to widen the market for CERs. Under this new arrangement, “anybody, whether private or government, if they are going to voluntarily cancel the CER credits” can buy them as their contribution to the fight against climate change, he said.

The Brazilian government bought 40,000 CER credits to “green” the Rio+ 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development and has done the same for the upcoming World Cup Football championship in that country.

Microsoft has done something similar under a different UNFCCC scheme for reducing emissions, known as REDD+, by buying an unspecified number of carbon credits from Madagascar generated by a rainforest conservation project in that country, according to a report by environmental news website Mongabay.com.

According to the report, attributed to the Wildlife Conservation Society, Microsoft bought the credits as part of its carbon neutrality programme.

Dr. Sealy attributes the steep decline in CER values to the downturn in the developed countries’ economies since 2008 that led to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and thus to a decline in the need for carbon offsets. At the same time, the target set by developed countries for carbon emissions reductions was too low in the first place, he said.

“The EU is saying it will aim for 20-30 percent reduction in emissions by 2030. Science is saying we must peak emissions by 2020” in order to reach the target of less than two degrees global warming, Dr. Sealy said.

“At some point the developed countries will wake up to that and turn back to the one legal, internationally recognised, functioning market mechanism for reducing carbon emissions,” he said.

In the meantime, however, he said, the carbon reduction projects in the region are still bringing the Caribbean many benefits. He pointed out that the increase in renewable energy projects means the energy generation mix is more diverse, making the region more resilient to the effects of natural disasters.

Landfill gas mitigation projects in the region are bringing health and environmental benefits, and projects such as one in Haiti for improved cooking stoves are resulting in less soot and less smoke that saves lives.

The UNFCCC’s Regional Collaborating Centre (RCC) in Grenada is working to create awareness in the region of current opportunities available to the region through CDM, said Karla Solis-Garcia, the RCC’s team leader.

So far, she told IPS, the RCC has provided support “to at least 60 CDM stakeholders with renewable energy (wind, solar and biomass), energy efficiency (improved cooking stoves, and efficient buildings) and landfill gas technology projects.

The RCC in Grenada is active in 16 Caribbean countries.

Solis-Garcia said the solid waste management sector and electricity sector were particular focuses of the RCC.

The solid waste sector was of particular interest since “Caribbean states share common challenges on how to deal with waste, considering especially the geographical limitations,” she said. “The waste challenge also represents an opportunity for investors, as emission reductions from landfill gas – methane gas – are significant.”

Regarding electricity, she said, the key issues are “the significant dependency on fossil fuels to generate electricity, the increase of electricity demand, and the potential for renewable sources of energy such as solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and wave/tidal.”

Dr. Sealy said that the region was in a good place with regard to deriving benefit from CDM projects, since it is accepted that failure to deal with climate change means that many islands will cease to exist.

For that reason, he said, countries with obligations under the Kyoto protocol “are quite willing to assist the small islands in any reasonable way they can.” Caribbean islands can, therefore, negotiate for a good price on CER credits, he said, especially if these are from renewable energy projects.

A woman in Uganda’s Katwe slum uses an improved, energy-saving stove to reduce charcoal use. Energy-saving stoves are being distributed in Uganda as part of emission-reduction projects. Credit Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
WARSAW, Nov 15 2013 (IPS)

Negotiators from Least Developed Countries are calling for the United Nations climate body to urgently establish a rescue fund to save Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism from collapse.

Delegates, mostly from Africa and developing countries, fear that the CDM will fail if a special fund is not established to help it overcome the effects of the European economic meltdown.

Fred Onduri Machulu, former chairperson of the LDC expert group with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change or UNFCCC, told IPS: “There are genuine reasons for a CDM rescue plan. We need to cushion the CDM from current and future shocks instead of letting it die at a time when it is beginning to function.”

He said the private sector was losing confidence in the CDM because of the low prices of Certified Emission Reductions (CERs).

The CDM allows emission-reduction projects in developing countries to earn CER credits, which are equivalent to one tonne of carbon dioxide. These CERs can be traded and sold, and used by industrialised countries to meet part of their emission-reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol.

The CDM has registered over 7,400 emission-reduction projects in developing countries since 2004 and generated over 1.2 billion emission credits. However, it has been jeopardised by the fall in CER prices. CER credits have come down from over 15 dollars in 2011 to about 40 cents currently.

Machulu admitted that the CDM was fairly complicated for some LDCs in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, with many African countries lacking the capacity to develop and process projects that could qualify for funding under the CDM.

But he insisted that these projects have had a positive impact on the livelihoods of people and communities.

Dr. Tom Okurut, executive director of Uganda’s National Environment Management Authority, told IPS that the future of the CDM remained uncertain unless a rescue plan was urgently put in place.

“In Uganda we have registered eight municipalities under the CDM for waste management. By the time we registered, the price for carbon was very good. But now the price has fallen to its lowest. And that is why the CDM needs to be rescued. More especially when we see more LDCs projects being registered,” he said.

In June, consultancy Vivid Economics stated in its report “The market impact of a CDM capacity fund” that about 2.5 to three billion euros may be needed to stabilise the CDM for the next several years.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, has previously said that a lack of political ambition to tackle climate change by some developed countries has led to the lack of demand for CERs.

And executive director of Tanzania’s Institute for Environment, Climate and Development Sustainability Joachim Khawa told IPS that some nations attending the current U.N. Climate Change Conference in Warsaw were determined to ensure that the CDM was weakened to pave the way for a so-called new international market mechanism (NMM) in carbon trade.

At the 2011 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, parties decided that the NMM should be established to complement the CDM. Details of how the new mechanism will work are part of the discussions at Warsaw.

However, some groups are opposed to the idea of a CDM rescue fund saying the LDC group should instead focus on pushing for the quick implementation of the Green Climate Fund.

Wael Hmaidan, the executive director of Climate Action Network International, told IPS: “One of the other ways of maintaining healthy level of investment in the CDM is if we work with the Green Climate Fund. And recognise that the CDM is a results-based financing tool that the Green Climate Fund could immediately go out and start to make direct investments in.”

The Green Climate Fund is supposed to channel 100 billion dollars a year in public and private financing to developing countries by 2020.

Shewangizaw Kifle Mulugeta, a project manager with the Ethiopian Railway’s climate financing project, told IPS that most LDCs feared that sectorial approaches being pushed by the European Union could create new trade and economic barriers for developing countries in the carbon market.

“Our position is that the CDM should not be disrupted because it will have adverse effects on some of the projects that have been approved or are in the pipeline,” said Mulugeta.

Figueres told journalists in Warsaw that her secretariat was committed to ensuring that the CDM’s integrity was maintained because of the gains made in lowering mitigation levels.

She said that the CDM has not only had an important impact on developing countries through technology transfer, but it had also encouraged industrialised nations to increase their emission reduction targets by making mitigation more affordable.

Climate defenders line the entrance to the National Stadium in Warsaw where the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP19 is being held. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
WARSAW, Nov 13 2013 (IPS)

For the small island developing states of the Caribbean, there is nothing more important than the United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place here at the national stadium of Poland from Nov. 11-22.

“We’re being impacted by climate change right now. We have to fight sea level rise, we are looking at increases in the frequency and severity of storm events, so it’s about survival,” Hugh Sealy, vice chair of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Executive Board, told IPS."What we do in the next seven years will affect generations to come.” -- Hugh Sealy

“In my humble opinion, and forgive me for being melodramatic, this is the most important decade facing mankind,” said Sealy, a national of Grenada. “What we do in the next seven years will affect generations to come.”

The CDM is the largest carbon market in the world. It has so far delivered more than 315 billion dollars in assistance to developing countries. It has launched more than 7,400 projects since 2004 and has saved the developed countries about three billion dollars in cost compliance. The CDM now has a regional collaboration centre at St. George’s University in Grenada with two more centres in Lome and Kampala.

A new report released here shows that Haiti led the list of the three countries most affected by weather-related catastrophes in 2012. The others were the Philippines and Pakistan.

Germanwatch presented the ninth annual Global Climate Risk Index at the onset of the Climate Summit in Warsaw.

“The landfall of Hurricane Sandy in the U.S. dominated international news in October 2012. Yet it was Haiti – the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere – that suffered the greatest losses from the same event,” said Sönke Kreft, team leader for international climate policy at Germanwatch and co-author of the index.

In the last two decades, the 10 most affected countries have without exception been developing nations, with Honduras, Myanmar and Haiti taking the brunt during the period 1993-2012, the report noted.

The Germanwatch Climate Risk Index ranks countries according to relative and absolute number of human victims, and relative and absolute economic damage. The core data stems from the Munich Re NatCatSERVICE. The most recent available data from 2012 as well as for the 20-year-period 1993-2012 were taken into account for the preparation of this index.

“Our results are really a wake-up call to ramp up international climate policy and to better manage weather-related disasters,” said Kreft. “The year 2015 represents a major milestone, which needs to deliver a new climate agreement, and the international disaster framework is also up for renewal.”

The climate summit in Warsaw is expected to chart a road-map for an ambitious 2015 agreement. But Sealy and a very vocal Caribbean delegation at the summit are determined to leave Warsaw with some tangible benefits.

“I live in Grenada right now,” Sealy told IPS. “The cost for electricity in Grenada is 40 U.S. cents per kilowatt hour, it’s one of the highest in the world. Ten percent of our GDP is spent on importing diesel. It’s a constraint for the entire economy. We have hotels that can’t pay their electricity bills.

“If we can get something out of this conference that says that monies will pour into developing countries to help them transform their energy sectors then that’s a sustainable development benefit that will affect the entire region.”

Sealy’s role here is as the lead negotiator for work stream two for the alliance. He explained that at the 2011 climate summit in Durban, it was agreed that developing countries and developed countries have to come together to take mitigation action to reduce CO2 emissions.

“Work stream one is trying to come up with a 2015 agreement that would come into effect in 2020. Work stream two, which is what the alliance pushed for, says we cannot wait until 2020 for an agreement,” Sealy said.

“We have to take action now so we insisted that we have a work stream two and my job here is to make sure that countries move forward in the next seven years enhancing mitigation,” he explained. “So what we hope to get out of work stream two is a technical process that identifies the mitigation potential that developing countries could take and also the means of implementation – the finance, the technology transfer, the capacity building that would allow small islands to move forward.”

The Warsaw conference also negotiates how to directly address climate-related loss and damage, a topic of special interest to small island states.

On Wednesday, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) reported that this year is on course to be among the top 10 warmest years since modern records began in 1850.

The first nine months, January to September, tied with 2003 as the seventh warmest such period on record, with a global land and ocean surface temperature of about 0.48°C (0.86°F) above the 1961–1990 average, according to the report.

WMO’s provisional annual statement on the Status of the Global Climate 2013 provides a snapshot of regional and national temperatures. It also includes details on precipitation, floods, droughts, tropical cyclones, ice cover and sea-level.

“Temperatures so far this year are about the same as the average during 2001-2010, which was the warmest decade on record,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud.

“All of the warmest years have been since 1998 and this year once again continues the underlying, long-term trend, the coldest years now are warmer than the hottest years before 1998,” he said.

“Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases reached new highs in 2012, and we expect them to reach unprecedented levels yet again in 2013. This means that we are committed to a warmer future,” added Jarraud.

Sealy told IPS that the key issues for the Caribbean at Warsaw include “recognising that climate change is affecting us now and we need support now to not only adapt but also to transform our economies.”

He pointed to Typhoon Haiyan that hit the Philippines with sustained winds of 300 kilometres an hour and peak winds of 380 kilometres per hour.

“How can we adapt to that type of storm in the Caribbean?  It’s totally impossible. So what the world has to do is reduce their emissions and that’s what we’re trying to do here. We are trying to bring a sense of urgency to this conference that we have to do things now, not wait until 2020,” Sealy added.

A woman prepares corn tortillas on a fuel-efficient wood stove. Credit: Courtesy of Ecoders

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Apr 25 2013 (IPS)

Environmental organisations in Mexico are hoping to finance the promotion of fuel-efficient wood-fired cookstoves, which reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions, through the sale of carbon credits on the voluntary market.

Two non-governmental organisations are working in the municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, in the southern Mexican state of Quintana Roo, to develop and promote these improved cookstoves, which would also reduce wood consumption as well as the incidence of respiratory problems caused by the smoke from traditional stoves.

“The majority of rural families in the region cook with firewood. We began with a series of workshops to find out what kind of stoves there are in the country,” said Dulce Magaña, the ecotourism and ecotechnology coordinator at U’yo’olché (“tree shoot” in the local Mayan language), which is leading up the initiative in conjunction with the Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature (FMCN).

U’yo’olché, founded in 1999, works in the areas of community forest management, ecotourism and biodiversity monitoring in Quintana Roo and the neighbouring states of Yucatán and Campeche.

The cookstove initiative started off in 2006 with the distribution of Patsari stoves, one of the most commonly used models of efficient cookstoves in Mexico. They are made of clay and manufactured with federal and state subsidies.

But clay is scarce in the region, which led the organisation to adapt these stoves and develop a new model called Túumben K’óoben (“new stove”), made with local materials such as white earth, nopal (prickly pear) cactus juice, lime and corn husks.

In terms of design, the stove is basically a brick and cement structure with a combustion chamber where the firewood is placed, two or three metal burners, and a pipe through which the smoke is released.

More than 2,000 improved cookstoves have now been distributed, half of them based on this new model. A solar power cooker is included with each one.

Thirteen percent of Mexico’s 117 million inhabitants cook with firewood, which is used at an estimated rate of 2.5 kilograms daily per person.

And every year, over 4,000 deaths occur due to smoke exposure from traditional cookstoves or open fires, according to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, an association of governments, universities, the private sector and non-government organisations.

“The distribution of solar cookers and energy-saving cookstoves and training in their use has made it possible to reduce the consumption of firewood in the country’s rural communities,” Lorenzo de Rosenzweig, the general director of the FMCN, told Tierramérica*.

In addition to reduced wood consumption and the elimination of hazardous household smoke, the improved stoves decrease the risk of accidents, cut down on household expenses, and give women more free time for other activities, such as education or work outside the home, thus strengthening women’s rights while improving quality of life.

In addition, a traditional wood-burning stove releases 7.14 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, while the use of a solar cooker and improved stove can reduce those emissions by up to four tons, according to the FMCN.

“Cookstove projects can be successful. Some have achieved stable development. The crucial component is the model of the stove, which must be adapted to the needs of the users, the quality of the materials, and follow-up of the adoption of the technology,” said Iván Hernández, the regional manager for the Americas of The Gold Standard.

This Geneva-based organisation certifies renewable energy, energy efficiency, waste management and forest carbon offset projects. In Latin America it has certified 63 initiatives so far. Nine percent of these have issued credits equivalent to between 150,000 and 200,000 tons of CO2, Hernández told Tierramérica. Only four of those projects are in Mexico.

Carbon credits are issued for activities that demonstrate a concrete and measurable reduction in CO2 emissions, and are traded on carbon markets. The buyers, while financing the clean energy project that generated the credits, can use them to demonstrate that they have contributed to the global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Utsil Naj (“clean house for everyone”), a programme that helps clean technology initiatives in Latin America to enter the carbon market, accepts projects aimed at the promotion of energy-efficient stoves, solar cookers and water heaters, photovoltaic panels and greenhouses, and operates in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Peru, as well as Mexico.

For Mexican initiatives, the voluntary carbon markets in the United States, Brazil, Chile, Australia or Japan could be better alternatives than the mandatory carbon markets established under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol.

In force since 2005 and extended until 2020, the Kyoto Protocol allows industrialised nations that are obliged to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to invest in emission-reduction projects in developing countries, as a way of “offsetting” the emissions they have not managed to cut within their own borders.

As of this year, Mexico can only sell carbon credits in Europe from projects registered under the CDM up until 2012, which makes voluntary carbon reduction schemes an attractive option.

“Through the carbon credits we could earn income for maintenance or for activities with women, such as providing access to other technologies, as well as follow-up and monitoring of the cookstoves,” Magaña told Tierramérica.

U’yo’olché is preparing to conduct an assessment of the adoption of the improved cookstoves among their users. Each stove costs roughly 162 dollars. Through an interest-free microcredit loan, purchasers can pay for them in weekly instalments of eight dollars. They can also opt to pay part of the cost of the stove, with the remainder financed by an organisation, said Magaña.

The project would be the world’s second improved cookstove initiative certified by The Gold Standard to sell carbon credits on the international market. The first is the Peruvian initiative Qori Q’oncha, which also entered the market with the assistance of Utsil Naj and generates around 100,000 tons of carbon credits.

“The resources will be reinvested to expand the coverage of the project and to train community leaders. One it is underway and producing results, the initiative will be replicated with partners in other regions of Mexico,” said de Rosenzweig.

Hernández noted that “many regions and countries have undertaken individual or bilateral initiatives for the potential trade of emissions reductions. Their combination with voluntary markets will be key for the development of these new mechanisms.”

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

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