Kevin Vrames at Climate feedback has a nice post on a perverse-incentive problem with one part of the CDM. Which is one small part of the reason I don't buy any offsetting at the moment.
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Good to know. But what about the CDM gold standard ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDM_Gold_Standard )? Doesn't that rule out such a thing?
http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/21211/Wara_CDM.pdf
If you don't have a subsription to nature, you'll find Wara's arguments laid out very nicely in the above link.
Even more information (and yes the Gold Standard is addressed as well):
http://www.sinkswatch.org/pubs/Market%20failure.pdf
http://www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=4870
http://www.dhf.uu.se/pdffiler/DD2006_48_carbon_trading/carbon_trading_w…
http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_science&Number…
http://www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/ConsumersGuidetoCarbonOffsets.pdf
http://heikoheiko.blogspot.com/2007/03/emissions-offsets-continued.html
http://heikoheiko.blogspot.com/2007/03/carbon-offsets.html
In case Nils doesn't want to spend the 10 hours or so I have reading a fair fraction of what's in these links, the most detailed information on the CDM Gold Standard is in
http://www.dhf.uu.se/pdffiler/DD2006_48_carbon_trading/carbon_trading_w…
Just search for Gold Standard (you'll find 20 mentions), alternatively read pages 182 and following, and 296 and following.
Hey Heiko, thanks for all the information. As far as I can tell now, the CDM Gold Standard does not have the CFC-problem, but has to be seen as a niche which will likely not be capable to take a bigger share, which was the only way to give at least some sense to the whole CDM. Furthermore, there are Gold Standard projects which are being carried out without consent of the local community.