Human Rights, the missing piece?

One of the most challenging topics at COP20 is figuring out how developing countries can be supported to take action to reduce their growing emissions. As always, these discussions are surrounded in ideas of justice, equity and relative capabilities of developing countries. However, one clear success we have seen through the Kyoto protocol has been the Clean Development Mechanism, or CDM.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, developing countries aren’t forced to reduce their emissions. But if they choose to, they can sell these to industrialized countries to help them fulfill their goals. This becomes an important opportunity to access carbon finance and make large-scale renewable energy projects feasible.

According to UNFCCC data, the CDM has been incredibly effective. Over US100 billion dollars has been invested in more than 7,500 projects around the world since 2004. Throughout this period private investment has been roughly 10 times higher than public funding, and has avoided 1.5 Gigatons of CO2 to been emitted in the atmosphere.

Over 200,000 megawatts of renewable energy have been installed thanks to CDM carbon finance. But the reach of CDM goes beyond energy. In Colombia, for instance, the most emblematic urban transport projects in the country, the Cable Cars in Medellín and the BRT in Bogotá were possible thanks to these carbon credits. In Medellín, the cable car project dramatically improved the urban life conditions of a community by providing efficient transportation and new public spaces. It also helped the community to repel the violence they were used to, transforming a former gang-controlled neighborhood into one of the main tourist attractions of the city.

However, without international safeguards for human rights, these projects can go disastrously wrong. Not only do these projects stain in the image of the CDM and the UN, but they also remain scarred in the minds of public opinion.

One of the key examples of this danger is the Santa Rita Hydropower Plant in Guatemala. Despite concerns of human rights violations, violent clashes between the government and indigenous communities and 3 deaths, this large hydropower project remains registered within the UNFCCC as an example of how to help developing countries.

Currently, a number of financial institutions are seeking to investigate these claims and there are chances that it may lose its CDM accreditation. However, safeguards for Human Rights remain visibly absent from the current discussions on CDM.

This week, Panama has championed calls for Human rights within CDM projects. They have called for matching the CDM with other international development finance mechanisms as a means of forcing it to monitor human rights abuses in line with international norms.

“A provision on ensuring that CDM projects meet the same criteria as other financial flows coming through the multilateral system. Would be useful for the Sec to examine what standards the WB, IADB, CAF, GCF, IFC, apply in financing projects” *

In practice, this would mean additional oversight on all CDM projects, including stricter human rights provisions.

However, Brazil, China, and the European Union quickly demanded that this proposal should be deleted. Instead, they argue that the responsibility for protecting Human Rights should be undertaken by the host countries. Any additional oversight apparently would overcomplicate an already complicated process.

When Panama faced this opposition, their negotiator was visibly and emotionally shocked.

“This was a very well intended proposal. But under such firepower from all sides, we decide to take it down,” said Panama Delegate Andrei Marcu while addressing the Parties during the negotiations.

When I talked to him afterwards, he did not hide his disappointment about the outcome and about the lack of backing up from other countries.

This lack of Human Rights protection, could also act as a precursor for later discussions here in Lima. While debating the global climate change agreement that will come into action in 2015, fights are currently ongoing around how deeply human rights safeguards should be integrated within market mechanisms, and whether or not it is even the UNFCCC’s role to enforce it.

*Paragraph 10 of the Draft Text on CMP10 agenda item 4. Version 1. Proposed by Panama