JI/CDM crediting under the Kyoto Protocol: does `interim period banking' help or hinder GHG emissions reduction?

摘要

The concept of Joint Implementation (JI) has been incorporated into the Kyoto protocol, under both Articles 6 and 12 (the Clean Development Mechanism or CDM). Hiowever, a number of outstanding issues remain to be settled: one such issue being the `banking' of credits earned from JI proejcts. Currently, the Protocol specifies that `donor' countries funding JI projects under the CDM may receive credits form 2000 and `bank' them for use in contributing to their emissions target. Since the emission targets hawve only been agreed for the period 2008-2012 inclusive, we argue that credited CDM action between 2000 and 2008 could be offset by uncontrolled increases elsewhere in the donor conntry during this time, and hence such crediting could lead to `relaxation' of the donor country targets. We detail an analysis which attempts to estimate the level of such a relaxation and concude that it is not negligible