We’ve just come out of the season of bitter winds racing across the frozen countryside kicking up swirling snow devils. Perhaps Canadians can be forgiven for welcoming rather than fearing “global warming.” But for the 10,000 residents of Tuvalu, this phenomenon has dire consequences.

Scientists predict the inhabitants of the nine atolls that make up Tuvalu may become the world’s first climate change refugees. Their South Pacific islands, on average only two metres above sea level, are highly vulnerable to a climate change-induced rise in ocean levels. It could wipe their country off the world’s map within 50 years.

When the Kyoto Protocol became international law, it may have signaled a way to prevent, or delay, catastrophes such as climate change-related flooding of low island states like Tuvalu. The Clean Development Mechanism, a tool included in the Kyoto Protocol, allows the 37 industrialized countries that have ratified it to offset their climate change emissions by investing in sustainable development in the 95 developing countries that have also signed on.

The Kyoto Protocol commits industrialized nations to reduce their emissions of the gases that cause climate change (greenhouse gases or GHGs) by a level that varies by country. Canada, for instance, agreed to reduce its emissions of GHGs by six per cent below 1990 levels by the Kyoto reporting period (2008 — 2012). Members of the European Union must reduce theirs by seven per cent while the U.S., of course, has opted out of the initiative.

Because GHGs are largely caused by industrial activities (e.g. burning fossil fuels to produce electricity and steel or to drive cars) developing countries have historically emitted far fewer of the emissions that cause climate change. As a result, they are not required by the Kyoto Protocol to meet reduction targets during this reporting period. Furthermore, under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the actions they do take to reduce their GHG emissions can be turned into “carbon credits” and sold to industrialized nations that can use them to meet their unmet targets.

The CDM may sound like snake oil. Critics argue it is a way for the industrialized world to buy its way out of an environmental quandary — and international commitments. But the people who’ve been exploring this tool explain that while there are problems with the concept, it holds substantial potential because the CDM has the dual purpose of reducing detrimental gas emissions while promoting sustainable development.

Roger Samson is the Executive Director of Resource Efficient Agricultural Production (REAP), a Quebec-based, not-for-profit organization that works with farmers to promote sustainable agriculture. Samson describes the potential of the CDM to reduce GHG emissions cost effectively while simultaneously providing social and environmental benefits.

In Canada, explains Samson, one way to reduce GHG emissions is to drive a car that burns less gasoline and therefore produces fewer GHGs. He compares the Toyoto Prius, a hybrid-electric car, with the same manufacturer’s Camry. A Prius costs about $3,000 more than a Camry and produces about two fewer tonnes of GHGs per year. This means that someone buying a Prius would pay $300 per tonne of GHG reductions over a five-year span for the car.

Compare this, he says, to the simple Mayon Turbo Hi-Efficiency Stoves that REAP promotes in the Philippines. They cost $10 each and reduce GHG emissions because they are more efficient than traditional stoves, and because they burn surplus rice husks rather than charcoal. Each $10 investment reduces, on average, a Filipino family’s GHG emissions by almost half a tonne per year. The cost over five years works out to $4 per tonne.

So the Federal Government can encourage Canadians to buy a Prius, Samson explains, or they can distribute Mayon Turbo Stoves at one-seventy-fifth the cost per tonne of GHG emissions reduced. It doesn’t mean Canadians shouldn’t buy that hybrid car, but there is a world of solutions out there, some cheaper than others.

While many people agree that emission reductions can be obtained less expensively in developing countries, the CDM isn’t as straightforward to use as this example suggests. Figuring out how it works, getting developing countries ready to use it and putting together suitable projects has not been easy. Currently, the CDM’s bureaucratic nature frustrates those who recognize its potential.

Whether it’s the nature of large industrial projects or unfortunate coincidence, bigger projects that have the best potential under the CDM tend to have fewer sustainable development or poverty alleviation benefits. While it’s easy to see how more efficient stoves or small-scale solar installations can have immediate and direct benefits at the community level, it’s harder to envision the same for a project that reduces GHG emissions from an electrolysis process in an aluminum plant. Yet this is a project under consideration in Argentina.

The CDM rules require a project contribute to sustainable development; however, some of the projects best able to help communities have not yet been approved by the CDM Executive Board. “If investments go towards renewable forestry projects for example,” says Carmen Virasoro, who works on climate change issues in Argentina, “they certainly will promote sustainable development since most of them will take place in rural areas of the country and bring both socioeconomic and environmental advantages.” Cleaner air, community-based jobs: it’s the win-win scenario that many development workers hope for.

Fortunately, the rules governing the CDM are not cast in stone. Or aluminum, for that matter. This allows groups to petition the CDM Executive Board to make changes.

Critics of the CDM suggest that it allows industrialized nations to buy their way out of having to make what can be difficult changes at home. And although no cap has been set to ensure that industrialized countries can’t acquire most of their emission reductions by using this mechanism and doing exactly what critics fear, there is a provision that domestic activities shall form a significant part of a nation’s effort.

The CDM isn’t perfect. Though it will likely be too little too late for future generations in Tuvalu, the CDM has the potential to evolve into a tool that addresses climate change and promotes sustainable development. It is hoped that this core component of the Kyoto Protocol will show results, and not just contribute to more political hot air.