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The Clean Development Mechanism and large dam development: contradictions associated with climate financing in Cambodia

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Abstract

Since 2000, the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has been facilitating climate change financing in support of large hydropower dam development. Although the CDM was designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote sustainable development, it has financed hydropower dams that have caused serious environmental and social impacts. We consider the case of the Lower Sesan 2 dam in northeastern Cambodia, the largest and most environmentally and socially damaging hydropower dam ever built in Cambodia. LS2 has not received climate change financing through the CDM, as four other large dams in Cambodia have, because the market price for carbon credits is too low to justify the expense required to apply for them. However, it could be registered to receive climate financing post-construction. We highlight the apparent lack of improvements in critical areas of the CDM despite years of criticisms and suggest that there are framing and structural issues that will make reforming the CDM difficult. This topic is particularly timely because the CDM is scheduled to end in 2020, after which time it will be replaced by a new but yet unspecified climate change financing mechanism.

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Notes

  1. https://www.hydropower.org/, accessed May 28, 2019.

  2. The UNFCCC does not appear to have any particular requirements regarding EIA processes. They appear to leave that up to the DNA.

  3. Mira Kakonen, pers. comm., February 26, 2019.

  4. While the UNFCCC has rejected CDM project applications, primarily for failing to prove additionality (Xie et al. 2014), in the Cambodian case, all CDM hydropower projects were approved despite their associated environmental and social problems described above.

  5. Leang Sophol, Head of Greenhouse Gases Office, Climate Change Department, Ministry of Environment, pers. comm., Phnom Penh, July 4, 2018.

  6. Leang Sophol, Head of Greenhouse Gases Office, Climate Change Department, Ministry of Environment, pers. comm., Phnom Penh, July 4, 2018.

  7. Leang Sophol, Head of Greenhouse Gases Office, Climate Change Department, Ministry of Environment, pers. comm., Phnom Penh, July 4, 2018.

  8. Leang Sophol, Head of Greenhouse Gases Office, Climate Change Department, Ministry of Environment, pers. comm., Phnom Penh, July 4, 2018.

  9. Leang Sophal, head of Greenhouse Gases Office, Climate Change Department, Ministry of Environment, Phnom Penh, July 4, 2018.

  10. Leang Sophal, head of Greenhouse Gases Office, Climate Change Department, Ministry of Environment, Phnom Penh, July 4, 2018.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Zhe Yu Lee and Mira Käkönen for the comments, and to Stepha Velednitsky for preparing the map. Thanks also to the three anonymous reviewers for refereeing this paper.

Funding

The Mellon Foundation–supported Humanities Without Walls (HWW) Initiative funded project, Political Ecology as Practice: A Regional Approach to the Anthropocene, supported the research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, USA

    Ian G. Baird & W. Nathan Green

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  1. Ian G. Baird
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  2. W. Nathan Green
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Correspondence to Ian G. Baird.

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This article is part of a Special Issue, “Climate Finance Justice: International Perspectives on Climate Policy, Social Justice, and Capital,” edited by Lauren Gifford and Chris Knudson

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Baird, I.G., Green, W.N. The Clean Development Mechanism and large dam development: contradictions associated with climate financing in Cambodia. Climatic Change 161, 365–383 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02621-4

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