in the effect of: you can't just sit and think, if you're going to sit on what you think, here are some recent thoughts on Carbon sequestration methods:
Political realization of local desires is what leads to sustainability: due to an alleviation of tension between global market forces and on the ground land use changes. Fundamental to this goal is understanding the socio-economic and cultural characteristics of the target population (CCB, 2008), however, understanding a people’s need for self-legitimization as well as the socio-economic concerns currently operating on the region are a key aspect of sustainable development that is often overlooked. The central question here is what exactly is development? Who decides who needs to be developed? If we look at Quality of life, rather than just economic metrics to define development: I really think we need to address this question qualitatively if we are to not devise the same set of “development” standards to which American and European societies have conformed. A rise in purchasing power, per capita income and technological sophistication are not defacto measurements of social and environmental development. To get a true measure of in which way people wish to develop I think the solution is relatively simple: we need to ask them. Fortunately, we have a basic framework that is somewhat adapted to local conditions, the World Health Organization Quality of Life evaluation (WHOQOL), which is accepted by the United Nations, and should be involved in any so called social development projects accepted by the CDM.
A more radical but also more practical and locally sensitive solution is to determine the current structure of landholding, identify capital and service flows into and out of the area, and make sure that they reach a truly equitable level: i.e. there is an equitable amount of capital flow in to service flow out: and there is an equitable amount of capital remaining in the area: i.e just compensation.
Presently, many problems still stem from a fundamental iniquity in the distribution of capital around the planet: We tend to have high amounts of financial and institutional capital in areas that have had depleted natural capital (i.e. one has been transferred to the other) and hence a subsequent cycle of the depletion of natural capital in other regions of the globe in order to continue an unsustainable method of development: unsustainable being the inability to balance energetic and material budgets within the zone of influence.
Extension of information networks will contribute to project success:
However, the real goal of disseminating information is to spread the necessary skills, tools and knowledge for individuals interested in developing such projects for themselves. This may be the role of an NGO or developmental entity/entrepreneur, but the end goal would be to disseminate a) knowledge of the possibility of true clean development projects, b) the necessary steps to implement such a project, and c) a realized connection to the global community which allows for further dissemination of methodology as well as registry (input from global capital flows) , and representation in the globa l decision making body.
Two conflicting problems: 1 is the constant involvement of the CDM executive board; which can not hope to thoroughly evaluate all possible projects: the second is a lack of trust or real independent verification process; as both validator, verifier and project developer have a vested interest in the voluntary market (TNI). The second becomes an issue when you cannot trust ‘lower level’ validation or verification procedures: if there were smaller more efficient teams that adhered to CDM standards (which themselves are evolving) they could validate and verify projects with the implicit trust that they adhered to the overall executive procedure: if they did not, there should be an efficient system for registering complaints (from any stakeholder) all the way to the executive board. In this sense, the executive board would serve more in an oversight capacity than in an actual executive capacity, greatly alleviating the bureaucratic burden and time lag of project approval. However, a large caveat comes with such a proposed process; it will simply not work unless there is a complete disambiguation of financial interest between the validation and verification entities, and the project implementers. Again though, this necessary elimination of shared financial interest does not mean there is no vested interest in for the project implementer, verification/validation entity, national government and the CDM Exec. Board; quite the contrary: it is in all parties best interest to generate projects that meet social, environmental and economic goals. The only reason to disambiguate financial interest is to prevent corruption from significantly altering the project process. In order to achieve the financial separation of operational entity and project implementer; there should be a set rate for validation and verification process which is funded by either a national carbon tax that goes into a pool specific to energy efficieny/environmental and social development projects: or a set percentage of profits from the sale of all carbon credits within the specified registry; this model may actually be a better idea because it cuts out funneling money through unstable and potentially corrupt institutions, and it makes the registry an entity with integrity (though this may be a naïve hope)…
