Projects that cut greenhouse gas emissions and channel funds to poor nations from rich ones under the Kyoto pact may be backlogged in 2007 due to mistaken applications and an overworked evaluation team, an official said. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) scheme allows polluters in industrialised nations to meet their emissions quotas by funding cuts in developing nations.

But Lex de Jonge, member of the Kyoto judging panel that manages the CDM, said that problems with some of the local companies responsible for verifying projects might delay the approval process next year. Some of the smaller firms were slipping up repeatedly in their evaluation of whether or not projects met CDM rules, increasing the need for time-consuming reviews of decisions by an already overworked board, he added.

"If the quality of the (verification companies) -- not most but some -- does not improve, then we will have a very serious problem," he said on the sidelines of the first Carbon Expo Asia. The CDM scheme in its current form is due to expire in 2012, so project developers are racing to get schemes up and running in time to turn a profit by then.

This means around 1,000 projects are expected to come before the board next year, more than twice this year s level. Board members do not work full-time evaluating projects and de Jonge was worried about delays. "I am concerned about that ... We want this to improve as fast as it can because I cannot see how we can continue working like this with double the amount of projects next year," he said.

The firms themselves say the board is being paranoid and bureaucratic, employing "checkers to check the checkers". "The review team is legitimate, but we would feel a lot more confident if we had the original plan where the board chooses an accrediting body they can trust," said Robert Dornau, Climate Change Programme Director at verification firm SGS, which he says has around 30 percent of the verification market.

Dornau added that there was a lack of transparency in the Kyoto judging panel s decision making, with only brief explanations for rejections of projects making it harder for them to ensure subsequent applications met the guidelines. De Jonge said extensive correspondence about project flaws before any were rejected meant developers knew where weaknesses lay. The board needs to insist on reviews because the credibility of projects was vital to confidence in the market, he added.
(Planet Ark, 30/10/2006)
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