The clean development mechanism: a field guide for transport projects
Strategy 2020 and Sustainable Transport Initiative of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) acknowledge prioritize the role of transport sector in climate change and vice-versa in transport. The Clean Development Mechanism of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) uses project formulation and implementation to combat climate change by providing additional finance to encourage the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. While the transport sector currently contributes more than 20% of emissions, a figure projected to increase rapidly in the next few decades, only 0.3% of the Clean Development Mechanism projects are in the transport sector. This is mainly due to methodological intricacies, costly data requirements, complex procedures, and weaker capacity in the sector. These are not readily available or easy to understand in the UNFCCC website. Therefore, this field guide has been developed to share the basic ideas and concepts of the application, development, and approval process of the Clean Development Mechanism for transport projects. Through this field guide, the hope is that it makes a contribution to expanding the limited knowledge and encourages more transport projects to take advantage of this mechanism, thus helping to create more sustainable transport projects.