Outsourcing Emissions: Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as Ecological Modernisation

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Abstract:

Set in the backdrops of the emergent trends in environmental governance, this article is an overview of the current discussions about Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in the light of the Ecological Modernisation (EM) perspective. Preliminarily, the article analyses how CDM as an instrument for greenhouse gas abatement conceptually emanates from the discursive boundaries of EM framework on the basis of its roots in liberal capitalism and technological optimism, besides the identical methods of problem conceptualization and the orientation towards politics and regulatory issues. It identifies the process of outsourcing pollution by externalising emissions from its location of generation as one the fundamental features of greenhouse gas abatement efforts of the climate change regime. Further, the complexities involved in the politics of market and science make the process of outsourcing pollution a locus of multiple negotiations and appropriations of diverse interests. In this process, EM and its operational manifestations like CDM are inherently predisposed to certain specific ways of dealing environmental problems, which may ingrain sociopolitical values that are antithetical to equity and justice on different geographical and political scales.