19 April 2011

Brussels, 18 April 2011. The United Nation’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Executive Board has so far failed to respond to human rights abuses linked to a carbon offsetting project in Honduras. Environmental and Human Rights Groups are now demanding that the project be rejected from receiving funding under the offsetting scheme. They are also calling for an overhaul of the scheme to strip projects that violate human rights from the list of registered projects.

The project under question intends to reduce emissions by collecting biogas from methane emissions and replacing fossil fuels utilized for heat generation in a mill of a palm oil plantation of Grupo Dinant’s subsidiary Exportadora del Atlantico.

According to a report by a Fact-Finding Mission of several international human rights groups led by FIAN, 23 peasants have been killed between January 2010 and February 2011 in the project’s area and investigations of at least five of the killings are exclusively directed at private security forces contracted by a firm owned by Grupo Dinant’s owner.

As response to the report’s findings, last week the German public development bank DEG declared that it will not pay out an already approved $20 million USD loan to Grupo Dinant.

The CDM Executive Board, the body that approves individual CDM projects, has stated that they have no mandate to investigate human rights abuses and that any matters related to the sustainable development of the project – one of the two official key requirements of the CDM – is determined by the government that hosts the project, in this case the de-facto government of Honduras.

“This places a crucial decision into the hands of a government that has obvious interests for the project to go ahead. It is therefore not surprising that so far no project has ever been rejected for non-compliance with the sustainable development criteria”, said Eva Filzmoser, Programme Director of CDM Watch.

“Reported human rights abuses related to CDM project activities have caused widespread dismay that human rights are not being taken seriously under the CDM” said Eva Filzmoser “The CDM Executive Board must take this issue seriously. If there are no rules in place that allow for the rejection of projects based on human rights abuses, it is time to change this now.”

Environmental and Human Rights Groups are now calling on the CDM Executive Board to re-assess its mandate and find ways of preventing projects that are linked to violations of international laws from acquiring eligibility under the CDM. A stringent requirement for CDM auditors to check conformity with international human rights laws when validating projects would be an option. Moreover, the detection of non-conformities during the monitoring period, e.g. incidents that involve human rights violations, should lead to suspension of issuance and the project being stripped of CDM eligibility.

“Excluding carbon offset projects that fund human rights abuses from the CDM would only be a logical move given that responsible investors should not be interested in buying carbon credits from projects that violate UN conventions” Filzmoser added.

CDM Watch is an initiative of international NGOs providing an independent perspective on CDM projects, methodologies and the work of the CDM Executive Board. CDM Watch is CAN Europe’s member and is hosted by the German NGO Forum Environment & Development.