生物能源与清洁发展机制在新兴市场的碳信用额【外文翻译】.docVIP

BIOENERGY AND THE CDM IN THE EMERGING MARKET FOR CARBON CREDITS 1. Introduction Bioenergy is one of the most important potential sources of sustainable rural development for developing countries. Its potential to mitigate global climate change opens up a number of funding opportunities, e.g., through mechanisms of the emerging carbon market. The international carbon markets today emerged from the Kyoto Protocol (KP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In the KP, agreed upon at the third Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP-3) in the city ofKyoto (Japan) in 1997, the Parties to the Convention agreed on emission limitations for greenhouse gases (GHG, a/o CO2, CH4 and N2O).1 These emission limitations were only set for countries listed in the Annex I to the KP, comprising all OECD (at the time of the Kyoto Protocol; e.g., Mexico is now an OECD member but not an Annex I country) and a number of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries.With regard to differences in their 1990 (per capita) emissions, different emission goals were defined for different countries, with some countries facing nominal emission reductions compared to 1990 levels and others able to increase their emissions by a certain percentage. However, for most countries the targets mean a reduction compared to their “business as usual” emissions in 2010. To help achieve these goals, a set of so-called flexible mechanisms was introduced to bring down overall costs, namely, Emissions Trading (ET), Joint Implementation (JI) and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The Carbon market is characterized by a number of major actors. On the regulatory side, the UNFCCC is in charge of setting the rules related to transactions for compliance with obligations under the KP. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is the mechanism under the KP directly relevant for the developing world. It provides for industrialized countries to invest in emission-reducing projects in develo