Expert on carbon markets: "You couldn’t design a better instrument for corruption"

                                         Flashback 2010

The "rich" nations have promised to provide $30 billion by 2012 "to help poorer, vulnerable countries adapt to climate change" and they have pledged to raise that amount to $100 billion a year by 2020.

Fortunately, it is highly unlikely that the "rich" nations will ever raise those sums of money. Still, before the final unraveling of the case for human caused global warming, billions of dollars are likely to be wasted on corruption e.g. in connection with carbon markets (cap and trade), recently described in this way by an expert: “You couldn’t design a better instrument for corruption":

 "corruption risks are particularly high in carbon markets, programmes to preserve forests, and projects under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The CDM allows rich nations to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by supporting emissions-reducing projects in poor countries.
Protection work in remote forest areas is difficult to monitor, said Fiona Napier, associate director of Global Witness, an organisation that investigates resource extraction and human rights issues.
And carbon markets, with their multiple layers of trading in intangible assets, are a magnet for corruption, she added.
“You couldn’t design a better instrument for corruption as far as we can work out,” she said.
CDM regulations, meanwhile, are a “labyrinth”, said Peter Newell, a climate and corruption expert at the University of Sussex. In some countries, the people charged with signing off on the projects are the same ones developing and even auditing them, he noted."

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