Does the CDM offer sustainable development benefits or not?

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol has the explicit objective to both reduce greenhouse gases emissions and support sustainable development (SD) in developing countries. An important aspect that remains an open issue is how the CDM contributes to the three main dimensions of SD, namely environmental, social and economic. Although an extensive literature has emerged focusing on the different aspects of the CDM, the necessity for the sustainability assessment of the CDM projects still remains. Moreover, existing CDM analysis is dominated by studies of CDM projects in Brazil, Mexico, India and China. Within the thousands of CDM projects globally, Africa only has 251 projects in the CDM pipeline and accordingly limited research has been conducted. To cover this knowledge gap regarding sustainability performance in African countries, this paper presents a methodological approach for the SD benefits’ assessment of the CDM projects in developing countries. To this end, appropriate SD criteria and indicators were selected to measure the performance of the CDM projects according to SD dimensions. The proposed approach lays emphasis on the SD benefits of CDM projects in Kenya, which was selected as a priority country, in terms of its potential for CDM projects. The results from the SD benefits’ assessment of the CDM projects in Africa would be important, especially in policy-making and in countries where high CDM potential has been indicated.

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