| Abstract: | The flexible mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol, the clean development mechanism (CDM), should fulfil a twin objective: cost-effective greenhouse gas mitigation and enhancement of sustainable development in developing countries. As most host CDM countries have not established the proper institutional capacity to approve CDM projects and, at the same time, are prerogative to define sustainable development criteria for CDM projects, there is a clear need for a single set of guidelines or one evaluation system that accounts both climate and sustainable development considerations in the approval process of CDM projects. This paper proposes a set of sustainability criteria and indicators for CDM projects screening, reflecting the environmental, social, economic and technological dimension of sustainable development. Sufficient attention has been paid to determine globally relevant criteria and indicators. Priority has been given to energy sector CDM projects. |
