Abstract
Exosomatic energy, although not an unconditional human requirement per se, is present in many aspects of Human Development. The introductory section of this study presents an analysis of the link between Energy and Development, highlighting common points of and contradictions between Climate and Development measures. It presents also a discussion about Sustainable Development and the potential role that the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) could play in this regard.
The goal of the CDM, as defined under the Kyoto Protocol framework, is twofold. It must offset greenhouse gases emissions and it should contribute to local Sustainable Development. However, the effective contribution of the CDM projects currently in the pipeline to the latter objective can be questioned. The shortcomings of the CDM in terms of Sustainable Development may be summarised as follows. Firstly, the quantity of CDM seems insufficient in order to have a significant impact both in terms of Climate and Development policies. Secondly, the quality of the projects, including some already approved, is unsatisfactory from a local Sustainable Development point of view. Thirdly, the distribution of the CDM activities across potential host-countries is extremely unequal. This paper critically examines the CDM projects currently in the pipeline based on those three drawbacks.
Some institutions suggest alternative approaches with the aim of fostering broader local Sustainable Development dividends from CDM projects. Two alternatives are the Gold Standard and the Community Development Carbon Fund. The former rewards best-practice CDM projects in terms of Sustainable Development while the latter focuses on promoting CDM projects located in underprivileged communities.
In the present work, a multi-criteria assessment method is applied to analyse the influence of those additional incentives from a local Sustainable Development point of view. Projects benefiting from such additional incentives are compared with others that do not embody such incentives. The evaluation reveals that the CDM projects benefiting from those additional incentives perform relatively well in terms of local Sustainable Development. Interestingly, other CDM projects behave similarly well, or even better, both in terms of overall performance and in terms of balanced repartition amongst the different Sustainable Development criteria.
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