GAIA Intervention at the 59th CDM Exective Board Meeting 18.02.11

The CDM rules applying to WTE projects (Methodologies ACM001 and AM0025), were called to revision in November 2010 in Cancun by the CDM Methodological Panel, the expert group in charge of revising the technical appropriateness of CDM projects.

In its February meeting in Bonn, GAIA requested the EB to act on the Methodological Panel’s call. See webcast here.

My name is Mariel Vilella and I represent the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, a worldwide network of more than 600 organizations in 89 countries working for a just, toxics-free world without incineration. Some of our member groups are wastepicker organizations; you may remember meeting some of them in Copenhagen, and in Cancun, where they raised questions about the CDM’s waste sector projects.

Incinerators and landfill gas systems are mainly covered by ACM0001 and AM00025, which are two methodologies that have several structural flaws. To mention a couple of them, the baseline scenarios of these two methodologies do not take into account that the informal recycling sector plays a crucial role in the waste management, achieving recycling rates of up to 80%, and therefore representing a huge opportunity for the reduction of GHG emissions. Recycling and composting is by far the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions from municipal solid waste, but these methodologies are displacing wastepickers when burning and burying the waste that would otherwise be recycled. By ignoring impacts on existing recycling practices, these methodologies also fail to providing a credible account of the emissions reductions from landfill gas systems and incinerators, and consequently, the amount of CERs that are issued at the moment cannot be trusted.

In the last EB meeting in Cancun, GAIA was delighted to hear that the Meth Panel recommended the revision of these methodologies; the EB members also had the chance to listen to the wastepickers themselves in Cancun, and most of you said, at that time, that the revision would go ahead.

So, the questions are:

When is the EB going to respond to the Meth Panel recommendation? Could the EB initiate the revision of these methodologies? Is the Meth Panel working on a proposal to revise ACM001 and AM0025? If not, could you let us know when are you going to undertake that, if you have any sort of idea, after having adopted the your management and business plan? If you don’t know, will you make sure that the timing for these revisions is specified in the work plan that, as I understand, will be presented in the next CDM EB meeting in Bangkok?

Thank you very much.