Failed Mechanism: How the CDM is subsidizing hydro developers and harming the Kyoto Protocol

FIVE YEARS AGO International Rivers started monitoring the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, concerned that funds marked for climate change mitigation would be used to encourage construction of otherwise uneconomic large hydropower projects, taking limited funds away from renewable energy projects in real need of support, and subsidizing the social and environmental impacts that large hydropower often produces. What has actually happened is worse than we expected. The CDM is blindly subsidizing the destruction of rivers, while the dams it supports are helping destroy the environmental integrity of the CDM.