Opportunities and Challenges of Carbon Trade Projects in Promoting Sustainable Development: The Case of Humbo Assisted Natural Regeneration Project
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Date
2011-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The Kyoto Protocol has been in effect since 2005 providing flexible mechanisms
to combat climate change and its negative effects. The CDM, one of the flexible
mechanisms in the Kyoto Protocol, has the objectives of GHG emissions
reduction and promoting sustainable development in Non Annex I countries
that host the projects. While the former is relatively easy to monitor and
achieve; the later objective is facing difficulties because of the CDM's own
market based arrangement. The primary purpose of this work is to explore the
contribution of CDM projects to sustainable development using the Humbo
Assisted Natural Regeneration carbon sequestration project as a case study. To
achieve this objective selected sustainable development indicators are used
that fall in to three broad environmental, economic and social categories
allowing a multi dimensional assessment of the project's contribution to
sustainable development in the area. A four-point Likert scale questionnaire is
used to collect data about sustainable development contribution of the project
with a 0.85 level of Cronbach's alpha coefficient. The sampling unit was drawn
from 100 households participating in the project in addition to data collected
from other stakeholders through key informant interviews. The Mann Whitney
U test is also used to compare the two sample groups with the 0.05 p level as a
dividing mark to decide significance. The overall result of the study indicates
that the Humbo carbon sequestration project, unlike most similar projects in
other developing countries around the world, is promoting sustainable
development with socio-economic and environmental benefits to the local
community even though there are issues that still need to be attended to. This
work also highlights Ethiopia's potentials and challenges in exploiting the
opportunity the climate change regime has to offer. Hence, clarifying and
main streaming the issues surrounding CDM and sustainable development in
the Ethiopian context are found to be of great importance. Finally, the study
recommends what has to be done in the future to scale-up carbon trade
projects to maximize their benefit.
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Keywords
Carbon Trade