Outsourcing Emissions: Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as Ecological Modernisation - Implementing Environmental and Resource Management - page 274

jects, which amounts to 278 million tonnes of CO 2 -equivalent GHGs, is a small
fraction of the annual global CO 2 emissions, calculated as 26 billion tonnes in
2003 (Wara 2007). If the timescales for negotiations and implementation is also
taken into account, it is argued that at least thirty Kyoto Protocols are required to
address the climate change problem as it is understood today (Malakoff 1997).
However, beyond its limitations with regard to the inadequacy of scale, the points
raised about the mechanism and its operational parameters are varied and signifi-
cant. The creation of a market instrument to tackle climate change variations is
questioned on the basis of the capability of the market to enable sustainable envi-
ronmental relations, particularly from an environmental justice perspective where
the critics argue that issues of equity, access to resources, balanced distribution etc
are beyond the operational priorities of markets (Bachram 2004; Roberts and
Parks 2007; Byrne and Glover 2000). Even within the functional parameters of the
CDM procedures the market induced reformulation of projects concentrated on
specific GHGs, as in the case of HFC-23, has distorted the very market process
(Wara 2007; 2008). Furthermore, there is another set of contradictions that is
pointed out in the process of market formulation where there are no clear demar-
cations that distinguish consultants, verifiers and monitors, who in turn can be the
same set of actors (Bachram 2004; CSE 2005). The proliferation of private actors
in the central governance of CDM projects raises not only questions about ac-
countability, but the diffusion of political authority as well (Lövbrand et al. 2007).
Kulkarni (2003) argues similarly, that relying on the market mechanisms to
deal with mitigation in the form of carbon credits results in environmental stew-
ardship mostly around end-of-the-pipe solutions where sustainability and equity
could be compromised globally with investments made in the quickest and easiest
emissions reduction options. Moreover, it is argued that market is not a level play-
ing ground among the stakeholders, where the dominant players, mostly the pow-
erful buyers, can set the terms of trade (Nelson and Jong 2003). The criticisms
against the operational parameters of the clause of additionality 6 , particularly, for
instance in the case of carbon sinks where a generations old rainforest would not
qualify the emission credits while a monoculture plantation can qualify (Bachram
2004), run on the same lines where the market become instrumental in defining
the terms of inclusion and exclusion.

CDM as a Channel for Sustainable Development

The CDM as a vehicle for sustainable development is problematised mainly on
two grounds. Firstly, since the concept of sustainable development generally en-
compasses a variety of meanings and strategies in development discourses (Hop-
wood et al. 2005; Luke 2005; Redclift 2005), the conception and definition of sus-
tainable development in CDM projects are subjected to variety of mediations in
definitions, tools and analyses. Further, the different actors in different locations in
the same regime could define sustainability or regime requirements within their
6

Additionality is a clause wherein the emission reduction is calculated as the amount of
planned reduction from the baseline counterfactual rate in the absence of the project.