ENVIRONMENT: India cashes in on carbon offsets

If you move around in the right crowds, as I do, you hear frequent talk of buying carbon offsets to mitigate naughty environmental habits, such as the use of a Lear jet or stretch Hummer. The more ambitious among us, like the Rolling Stones, aim for carbon neutrality - that zero point where one's carbon dioxide emissions are balanced out, or offset, by an equal use of renewable energy sources.

And now, apparently, many people and companies are stretching out their dollars and Euros by investing in clean carbon projects in India, which has grabbed a big chunk of the $5 billion carbon offsets market in the developing world.

From IANS:

According to statistics available with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), out of 844 projects registered under the CDM [clean development mechanism] scheme, as many as 289 are from India, accounting for 34.24 per cent of the total. China ranks next with 131 projects, or 15.52 per cent, followed by Brazil with 113, or 13.39 per cent, Mexico with 97, or 11.49 per cent and Chile with 21, or 2.49 per cent.

Indian companies like Reliance Industries, Tata Motors and Tamil Nadu Newsprint have emission reduction approvals (see a complete list of projects here). According to a World Bank expert quoted in the article, Charles Cornier, India is increasingly seen as a cost-effective way for Westerners to offset their carbon emissions.

[India] offers a much cheaper option for them to meet their carbon emission targets, the World Bank expert said. Firms from developed countries like the US and Australia, which have not signed the Kyoto Protocol, are also getting sensitive about their "green" image due to pressures from investors and scrambling to cut emissions on a voluntary basis. "Buying carbon credits from CDM projects in developing countries like India is a commercially attractive proposition for these enterprises," Cormier said.

In India's Economic Times, a columnist argues that carbon credits, aka Certified Emission Reductions (CERs), should not be taxed:

Countries like India and China are capitalising on huge market for CERs as they are not under any obligation to reduce the emission level and are in a rapid industrialisation phase. The value of CER trade in India is expected to be to the tune of $50-100 million every year and approximately 100 companies in India are in the fray.

Read more about India's trade in carbon credits in Business Line.

Earlier on SAJAforum:

• Bill Clinton on India's Environmental Problems
• India confronts, and deflects, its environmental obligations
• Leaders of Mumbai, Karachi, New Delhi go green at NYC's Climate Summit
• Climate Change and South Asia

Comments

[Srinivasa Raghavan]

This is a great idea. Finally a way to address global warming that bridges the First World - Third World divide. It's also an efficient allocation of resources as the carbon emission overseas that is the easiest to address would be subject to carbon trading before more complex forms of carbon emission here were reduced. The Industrialized countries of Europe get a little longer to live decadent carbon emitting lifestyles, while third-world industrial powers like India and China get needed capital to reduce their carbon footprint. This seems like it'll eventually lead to a point where the first world and third world can get serious about global warming and come up with a truly global solution.

[panditjugalkishoreshastri]

raghavan

even water is not truly global (look at sub-Saharan desert.) only truly global things are air, dust and women. a woman is welcome in any part of the world. it's the men who have screwed up the global affairs. get rid of men and you wouldn't need to promote the arcane footnotes on carbon offsets, caps and trades, in academic journals, to headline status across the globe.

In most of the busy coastlines around the world biomass is a mess. no one talks about acid rain, sulfur contamination anymore.

like they say nothing is as fashionable as being modern. solve the above problems first. chembur and mahim creek are still where they were in caesar's time. stop using math with carbon trades. life is simple keep it simple for it to be.

howd'ya

[Srinivasa Raghavan]

I don't think there's anything wrong with prioritizing things that there needs to be global action on. Global warming does affect us all. If we want to deal with Mahim creek, we'll have to avoid global warming.

[panditjugalkishoreshastri]

'prioritizing' is nothing more than a ruse to help politicians practice sequential counting better, at the cost of the taxpayer. remember, opposition politicians and journalists of gujarat had a difficult time counting deaths.

[seguros]

The Kyoto Protocol: The U.S. versus the World?

Using a variety of public opinion polls over a number of years and from a number of countries this paper revisits the questions of crossnational public concern for global warming first examined over a decade ago. Although the scientific community today speaks out on global climatic change in essentially a unified voice concerning its anthropogenic causes and potential devastating impacts at the global level, it remains the case that many citizens of a number of nations still seem to harbor considerable uncertainties about the problem itself. Although it could be argued that there has been a slight improvement over the last decade in the public’s understanding regarding the anthropogenic causes of global warming, the people of all the nations studied remain largely uniformed about the problem. In a recent international study on knowledge about global warming, the citizens of Mexico led all fifteen countries surveyed in 2001 with just twenty-six percent of the survey respondents correctly identifying burning fossil fuels as the primary cause of global warming. The citizens of the U.S., among the most educated in the world, where somewhere in the middle of the pack, tied with the citizens of Brazil at fifteen percent, but slightly lower than Cubans. In response to President Bush’s withdrawal of the Kyoto Protocol in 1991, the U.S. public appears to be far more supportive of the action than the citizens of a number of European countries where there was considerable outrage about the decision.

Carlos Menendez
http://www.segurosmagazine.es