Outsourcing Emissions: Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as Ecological Modernisation - Implementing Environmental and Resource Management - page 276

is still deeper on the basis of reference points on which the disparities are ac-
counted even within a region or in a production or exchange system.
Developed and Developing Countries Categories
The categorisation of developed and developing countries poses several inherent
problems with regard to the CDM's operational guidelines. The arrangement is
problematic because of the inherent spatial organization and standards of the re-
gime wherein the North-South dichotomy obfuscates the differential vulnerability,
accessibility and adoption capabilities among the different countries/regions in the
South (Kulkarni 2003), and Central and East European Countries (Muhovic-
Dorsner 2005) and overlooks the broader categories, classes or communities
within a category. There are studies that demonstrate how some categories of
population, particularly the affluent sections in developing countries emit on a par
with the highest emitters in the advanced world and hide behind the poor without
conceding to any restrictions (Ananthapadmanabhan et al. 2007). Again, with re-
gard to investment pattern, as cautioned by Agarwal and Narain (1999), the ongo-
ing trend of CDM indicates that the more advanced among the developing coun-
tries are drawing more resources and effectively exacerbating the disparities
among the developing nations. As an instrument stemmed from EM, the transterri-
toriality of the climate change regime may also foster the analytical complexity of
CDM further, since some regions may lack the cultural endowments of industri-
ally advanced western societies that Cohen (1998) attributed to EM.
Category of emission units
The general standard of emission units, as in the form of CER in CDM, is calcu-
lated as CO 2 equivalents and has the inherent predisposition to classify emissions
of all kinds in to a standard technical category without taking into account the
broader production, distribution and consumption practices, differential access to
resources and prevailing inequalities in production and distribution processes.
Thus, there can be a mismatch between luxury emissions by some with the sur-
vival emission of others, which is one of the long-standing contentions of the de-
veloping countries (Agarwal and Narain 1995).
Environment as against Development
The framing of the climate change varies among the different actors at different
levels of the regime and they integrate themselves to the regime through ascribing
contextual values to their specific acts (Kim 2004). As Olsen (2005) suggests,
there exists a well-explored line of conflict between north and south; in the north
the focus on climate change as a global environmental problem whereas in the
south it is more focused on as a development problem. Consistent to that are the
approaches devised to tackle the focal issues too. The priorities of the nation-states
with regard to CDM can inherently pose a conflict of interests where the twin ob-
jectives of the mechanism could be tilted accordingly.