DEVELOPING COUNTRY DIVIDES COME OUT IN THE OPEN AGAIN -- IN THE CDM PLENARY MEETING ON 9TH DEC

By Soumya Dutta

In the CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) meeting in the Plenary held in Tycho Brahe hall at the Bella centre in Copenhagen, the sharp differences between the developing countries - particularly g77+china, was very much visible.

After the EDN exec board presented its report, painting a rosy picture for CDM, the floor was opened for country representatives to intervene. Here, the three diffreent categories of countries took very different stands, and often criticised the contrary positions -- sometimes not even stopping to take names.

China, India & Brasil, the largest beneficiaries of the CDM financing (Pl note, CDM is the major response mechanism, and major part of financing till date in terms of responding to the climate crisis by the European / Annex 1 countries, except USA), took the stand that CDM is working well (obviously, as the corporates in these 3 countries are reaping windfall profits, as pointed out by Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Zambia, Congo etc),
BUT China came out with scathing criticism of the CDM Exec Boards decision to disallow some of its 'renewable energy - particularly wind - projects' , on the grounds of feed-in-tariff and the additionality clause. India's position was largely similar, supported by Brazil.

The 2nd category of countries - rich, fossil fuel exporters like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait etc were pressing for allowing the inclusion of 9still unproven, possibly unstable) CCS projects (Carbon capture & storage) in to the CDM fold, which the CDM EB has rejected. This caused lots of protests by these rich fossil fuel producers. This rejection of CCS proposals from CDM fold was supported by India, causing another dividing line between these 2 classes of developing countries.

the 3rd category of countries were those poor ones, with little fossil carbon resources, and those whose elite & corporates have not seen much money from the CDM projects. Country representatives from Grenada, Rwanda, Bangladesh, Senegal, Kyrgyzstan, republic of Congo, Zambia, Algeria, Niger etc strongly criticized the cornering of all CDM projects & money by 3-4 large developing countries, and also argued for limiting these. They also demanded some regional balance, asked for more capacity building so that they can formulate supportable projects, demanded the grounds for rejection of many of their proposals etc.

One unfortunate result of these are the increasing splintering of the developing country blocks, which some developed country groups are taking advantage of. there is strong rumor that UK is drawing in Bangladesh and similar Island countries highly threatened by sea level, and helping their increasingly critical demands from large developing countries -- for legally binding cuts by these large developing countries too.