Uncertainty about the fate of the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol for slowing global warming has sapped investment in the Clean Development Mechanism but there are no plans to kill the CDM, the United Nations said on Friday.
Last month, the World Bank said investment in the CDM, which allows developed nations to invest in carbon-cutting projects in poor nations, fell in 2010 to just a fifth of its record high in 2007 of $7.4 billion.
Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told a news conference on the final day of U.N. talks from June 6-17 that a “lull in the market” was understandable due to the uncertainty about Kyoto.
“There is no discussion about killing the market,” she added.
The Bonn talks made little progress on unlocking a dispute about the future of the Kyoto Protocol, which binds 40 industrialized nations to cut emissions in a first period to 2012. The CDM is a mechanism under Kyoto.
“What we hear from countries is their interest in expanding, further improving and enhancing the market mechanisms available to them under the next chapter of the regime, whatever that is going to be,” she said.
“What the discussion is around the CDM is whether they will keep it as is — and then create some other market mechanisms that work in tandem with the CDM — or whether the improvements that they are looking for will be internalized into the CDM,” she said.
