Sri Lankan Perspective on Clean Development Mechanism: Approach Towards Climate Change Mitigation

By Chatura Rodrigo

 IPS Researcher 

Background: Introducing the CDM

As defined by Article 12 in the Kyoto Protocol under the United Nation Frameworks Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Clean Development Mechanisms (CDMs) are one of three flexible mechanisms established with the purpose of assisting Annex I countries of the UNFCC to archive their committed amount of emission reduction in cost effective ways.  It also allows contributions for the sustainable development of Non Annex I countries such as Sri Lanka.

The CDM is one of the Protocol's "project-based" mechanisms; in that the CDM is designed to promote projects that reduce emissions. The CDM is based on the idea of emission reduction "production". These reductions are "produced" and then subtracted against a hypothetical "baseline" of emissions. The emissions baselines are the emissions that are predicted to occur in the absence of a particular CDM project. CDM projects are "credited" against this baseline, in the sense that developing countries gain credit for producing these emission cuts.

Since 2001, the CDM projects have issued 1 billion Certified Emission Reduction (CER) units. Approximately, 63% of all CERs had been issued for projects based on destroying either Hydrofluorocarbons (42%) or Nitrous Oxide (21%), which is a conventional way of creating CERs.  However, at the moment, the European Commission is proposing a full ban on CER’s from industrial gas projects. More than 1,000 CDM projects have qualified for carbon credits.  Most of these are large-scale activities in the energy sector; in the waste sector, subsidized technologies include landfill gas, incineration, and cement kilns.  India and China are the biggest takers, with a combined share of more than 50% of the projects.  With some 3000 more projects awaiting registration, the CDM expects to generate nearly 3 billion CERs by 2012. Trade in CERs currently runs to an estimated US$ 10 bn a year.  This has fueled a gigantic, global carbon trading market that is raking in huge profits for financing companies, consulting firms, brokers, and other market players. Currently there are five exchanges trading in carbon allowances: the European Climate Exchange, NASDAQ OMX Commodities Europe, PowerNext, Commodity Exchange Bratislava, and the European Energy Exchange.

Rural Migration in India: How Important is Weather Variability?

By Brinda Viswanathan and K.S. Kavi Kumar

Introduction

Response strategies to global climate change crucially depend on potential impacts due to climate change on several climate sensitive sectors. From developing country perspective, in order to design adaptation strategies, it is important to not only know the overall impacts; but also the factors that could, in principle, play a crucial role in minimizing the impacts of climate change. 

Several studies have shown that climate change could have significantly adverse impacts on Indian agriculture. The available evidence shows significant drops in yields of important cereal crops like rice and wheat under various climate change scenarios. While several planned adaptation strategies could work towards ameliorating the adverse impacts of climate change, there is a considerable likelihood of migration associated with agriculture sector. Thus, for a large majority, migration could be an effective adaptation strategy1 . 

While some studies have analyzed the linkages between weather variability (and climate change) and migration per se in the past (see, McLeman and Smit, 2006; Perch-Nielsen et al., 2008, Bardsley and Hugo, 2010), the linkages through the agriculture channel and rural-urban wage differentials have recently been analyzed by researchers such as, Feng et al. (2010, 2012); Barbieri et al. (2010); Dillon et al. (2011); and Marchiori et al. (2012).

Following the methodology used by Feng et al. (2010), a recent study in India, explored the linkages between weather variability, agricultural performance, and migration, using state level Census data over the period 1981 to 2001 and district level Census data covering the period 1992-2001. The weather data is sourced from grid level meteorological data released recently by the India Meteorological Department. The analysis is carried out separately for the two main cereal crops: wheat and rice. 

Impacts of Global Climate Change on Inclusive Growth in Sri Lanka

By Kanchana Wickramasinghe

Research Officer, IPS  

The scientific evidence proves that climate change is a reality.  Despite the negligible contributions towards global greenhouse gas emissions, and consequently to global climate change, Sri Lanka is a victim of the impacts of global climate change.  These impacts are numerous in Sri Lanka and a number of economic sectors will be drastically affected.  As the “National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy for Sri Lanka - 2011 to 2016” highlights; the major impacts would come in the form of increased frequency and intensity of disasters such as droughts, floods and landslides, variability and unpredictability of rainfall patterns, increase in temperature and sea level rise.  These impacts will have numerous impacts on agriculture, coastal zone, forests and natural ecosystems, human settlements and infrastructure, human health, energy, and industry1.

The increased intensity and frequency of natural disasters and its cost in terms of human, physical, financial and environmental losses have a significant impact on growth. The vulnerability to and impacts of natural disasters also differ across segments of society, which then becomes an additional dimension to existing economic disparities. Natural disasters affect inclusive growth by constraining the participation of vulnerable segments in the development process. They also lead to the diversion of resources, which otherwise could be allocated for pro-poor development activities.