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Editorial

Dear friends,

We are happy to present this edition of the Watch This! NGO Newsletter which includes an assessment from our Indian colleagues on how India’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address sustainable environment. It also includes a special focus on the struggles of friends currently fighting against projects that do not belong in the CDM. The Santa Rita Hydroelectric plant in Guatemala stands in the spotlight as the CDM Executive Board is about to decide upon the registration of this project despite the violation of community consultation rules as well as alleged murders and intimidations of the affected community. It is the first project to be formally reviewed by the CDM Board on the grounds that the local stakeholder consultation was not carried out in the proper way. Our friends from India explain the local impacts of the two devastating coal power plants Reliance Power’s Sasan project and Adani Power’s Mundra project and show how these projects remain registered, even receiving carbon credits, despite non-compliance with a number of national and international rules. These experiences show that the current CDM rules are not strong enough to ensure a robust public participation process and to offer an efficient remedy in case harm occurs. These are basic elements needed to ensure sustainable development and to protect human rights, something that needs to be addressed as part of the ongoing CDM reform process.

Following our previous Watch This! Special Workshop Edition, which focused on land rights and carbon markets, we continue to assess how the concept of climate smart agriculture is developing and find that the arguments against linking such a concept to carbon markets are gaining ground. Finally, the experience from a colleague who had the pleasure to work with activists in India are shared and we look at developments of the Green Climate Fund which has finally started operation and is now looking to be filled with climate finance.

Contents

Happy Reading!

Carbon Market Watch