Projects to mitigate climate change in developing countries questioned by scientists

ICTA-UAB researcher Dr Esteve Corbera and Dr Adrian Martin from the University of East Anglia have published a special issue of the journal Environment and Planning A (October 2015) in which they discuss in depth the implications of carbon offset mitigation projects in the Global South. Thousands of these projects have been developed worldwide during the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol and it is timely to reflect on the effects of these projects a few weeks before the opening, in December 2015 in Paris, of the COP21 Conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Global South comprises all the countries that are not in Annex I of the UNFCCC, namely the emerging economies of Asia, Africa, Latin America and other developing countries.

The articles in the issue are led by researchers from the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom and co-developed with their respective counterparts in the studied countries. Positive impacts on revenues and local labour markets are highlighted but it is also shown that many of the participants in these projects lack the necessary knowledge to understand how emissions trading works, or how to operationalize the project. The articles also call into question the real contribution of the projects to global emission reductions.

Overall, the articles raise some important questions for UNFCCC negotiators: should they continue to support the policy frameworks that have given rise to these projects, such as the Clean Development Mechanism, once we know that they cause both positive and negative effects on the ground but they dubiously support the Convention’s ultimate aim of stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions? Is it socially and environmentally fair to mitigate emissions outside the countries that pollute the most? And, who has the ultimate legitimacy to answer these two questions and either keep promoting or cancel these supporting policies and projects?

Read the special issue here