Local stakeholder participation in CDM and new climate mitigation mechanisms – case study of a small scale hydropower project in China

Public participation is recognized as a key principle for effective climate governance in Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In Warsaw 2013 the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) decided that the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Executive Board should collect information on practices for local stakeholder consultation in collaboration with the Designated National Authorities (DNA) Forum and provide technical assistance for the development of guidelines for local stakeholder participation, if a country requests assistance. Learning from a case study of how local stakeholder participation is practiced in CDM in a small scale hydropower project in China, this paper identifies the strengths and weaknesses of how the concept is applied in practice. To understand the execution of both CDM policies and China’s stakeholder participation policies in environment impact assessment at project level, the PDD of this project and similar projects were analyzed providing an overall impression of the stakeholder participations process and results in such projects. Afterwards, we focused on a single case, where 11 interviews and a trip to the project site was conducted. Results of the case study point to weak CDM procedures for local stakeholder consultations (LSC) and non-transparent national practices. The weaknesses of existing CDM LSC practices and procedures are not unique to the China case and highlight the need for good practice guidelines that can inspire countries to strengthen public participation in CDM and other mitigation mechanisms.