Equitable mitigation and adaptation

Funding: ESRC/CCCEP

Start Date: 2011

End Date: 2013

Involved staff: Jouni Paavola, Vivek Mathur

To date, most research on climate justice has focused on burden sharing in mitigation or the incidence of climate change impacts, with some efforts to understand justice in the adaptation to climate change. This research project investigates how and to what extent global, national and local interests are realised in mitigation and adaptation projects. This multi-level analysis is one of the novel aspects of the research.

Our empirical research will focus on renewable energy projects implemented under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in India, which hosts the second largest number of CDM projects globally. It is thus a timely attempt to critically evaluate the experiences of communities in a developing country of their participation in new global carbon markets. We will also consider including emerging REDD projects into our study if that proves possible.

We aim to understand to what extent CDM projects have delivered global mitigation benefits and contributed to sustainable development nationally and locally, as well as to assess the procedural justice implications of project development processes. Our results will feed into future debates on the architecture of climate change governance.