Judged by the sheer number of clean development mechanism (CDM) projects registered and in the pipeline, India undoubtedly can be seen as a success story as far as the functioning of the local carbon market is concerned. However, questions are repeatedly raised about the efficient working of the CDM, its distributional quality, its effectiveness in meeting broader societal goals, its impacts on sustainable development, to name but a few.This calls for a careful scrutiny and understanding of how exactly carbon governance works in the specific case of India. As demonstrated in the article, India presents a case of market-dominated carbon governance taking place under a weak shadow of hierarchy and with little civil society involvement. This article derives at the overall conclusion that the specific trajectories characterizing the local Indian carbon market point toward globally diverging carbon governance.
SUMMARYDeveloping countries as well as international development assistance have for a long time aspired to combat energy poverty in rural areas of developing countries. However, until now a major part of national and international public and private attempts to provide affordable and stable energy supply have failed due to various economic, political, social and institutional obstacles. This situation is reflected in case of India where in comparison with other South Asian states the status of rural electrification and of energy supply are in a dismal state despite the promotion of renewable energy and rural electrification as early as from the 1960s. Embedded in the global context of the international climate change regime, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol has now emerged as a new option to facilitate investment in climate change mitigating projects. In this respect, promoting the deployment of renewable energy through this project-based mechanism opens new avenues for rural electrification.The main objective of this paper is, hence, to examine the context conditions and factors determining the effective application of renewable energy options for rural electrification in a developing country context, namely India. Understanding contextual requirements for renewable energy investment has proved imminently important in order to appreciate the potentials provided by new market-based mechanisms such as the CDM for rural poverty alleviation. Comparative political science case study research methods are applied to the analysis of CDM biomass projects in the context of the four Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh. This allows for the conclusion that socio-political and historic framework conditions matter for the implementation of new renewable energy options.
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