Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The Executive Board of the Clean Development Board (CDM) is considering altering the manner in which carbon credits are calculated in order to safeguard against potential fraud. The concern is that companies are producing more waste hydrofluorocarbon 23 (HFC-23), a greenhouse gas, than is justifiable as they are being paid, through Certified Emission Reductions, to then destroy the gas. HFC-23 is produced through the manufacture of the refrigerant and propellant hydrochlorofluorocarbon-22 (HCFC-22).

"If the United Nations CDM Executive Board wants to reinstall the integrity of the mechanism it has no other choice than to put current crediting methodology on hold with immediate effect and cease issuance of all credits for the destruction of HFC-23 until the panel has fully investigated the issue," said Eva Filzmoser of CDM Watch. Most HCFC-22 factories are in India and China. "The fact that you can get all this money means there's now a disincentive to do anything else in that regulatory space to try and control these emissions," said Bryony Worthington from Sandbag.

Meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, environment ministers from the BASIC countries of Brazil, South Africa, India and China, concluded that achieving a binding agreement at the next major climate negotiations in Cancún, Mexico, will be difficult. "The single most important reason why it is going to be difficult is the inability of the developed countries to bring clarity on the financial commitments which they have undertaken in the Copenhagen Accord," Jairam Ramesh, Indian environment minister, said.

Delays on the part of the United States and Australian governments in implementing climate legislation contributed to the pessimistic assessment. "If by the time we get to Cancún [US senators] still have not completed the legislation then clearly we will get less than a legally binding outcome," commented South African minister Buyelwa Sonjica. No specific proposal regarding emissions reductions emerged from the meeting. The BASIC group will meet again in Beijing in October to determine their position at the talks in Cancún. Though not reflected in the official statement, it is reported that the group may, in light of the difficulties in extending the Kyoto Protocol with regard to emissions from the industrialized nations, work towards a single, global agreement.

In a study of the past link between climate, crop production and Mexican census data, an American team of scientists has concluded that climate change could force between 1.4 and 6.7 million Mexicans to migrate across the border with the United States by the year 2080. "There is a significant response of emigration from Mexico to past climate variations," said team member Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University. "It looks like the climate change could be an important factor in future migration," he added.

The historic data suggest that for every 10 per cent reduction in crop yield as a result of climate change an additional two per cent of Mexicans would emigrate, leading Oppenheimer to conclude that "climate changes predicted by the global circulation models would cause several per cent of the Mexican population to move north [if] all other factors are held constant." The researchers took account of other factors, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and border control policy, in identifying the particular impact of climate variability. "For NAFTA, we took special pains to ensure the robustness of the result by comparing Mexican states that were greatly affected by NAFTA with those which were not," said Oppenheimer.