Richard S Odingo’s The Clean Development Mechanism in Africa (Climate Network Africa, 2001) is a very serious report. It has to be. The issue it tackles — how can Africa make good use of the

Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)? — is central both to the development path the continent envisions for itself, and the manner in which African nations might factor themselves in the negotiation process in the future.

A majority of African countries have had a frustrating time in the climate change negotiation process. In 1992, most of them turned up to participate in UNFCCC deliberations. They accepted the framework. When the issue of North-South cooperation to deal with climate change was being hotly debated, negotiators agreed to go in for an experiment.

This experiment was first called Joint Implementation (JI) and later became Activities Implemented Jointly (AIJ). As AIJ began to cook, African nations got a taste of something quite unpalatable: the prospect of North-South cooperative ventures bypassing them entirely. No funds, no technology transfer, no buyer wanting to risk investing in countries with weak infrastructure. AIJ was a cooperation blueprint; to African nations, it looked merely blue. They didn’t miss the irony either: countries put to great risk by climate change effects, countries in need of adaptation measures, countries desperately looking to develop were precisely those getting short shrift. What would happen once the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’s financial mechanisms became operational?

It is this context that turns Odingo’s report into a well-researched piece of tactical information. The report is rightly suspicious of the mechanism — in terms of a broader developing-country perspective, as well as a narrow regional one — but refuses to take the position of eternally-injured victim. There is nothing to moan about. The AIJ experience is valuable insofar as it prepares Africa better for CDM; its purpose is to provide as complete knowledge of CDM as possible, and then to apply this knowledge to see how CDM can address Africa’s problems.

CDM could be intelligently inflected, the report suggests, to address rural inequities. It could transfer a whole host of energy technologies suited to rural areas — liquid fuel production from biomass, biomass co-combustion, wind energy technologies, solar-thermal for heat and electricity, photovoltaics, methane production from solid and liquid residues and wastes, thermal generation from biomass sources, and small hydro-electric plants.

In short, rural Africa — where a majority of its population live — is uniquely positioned for renewable technologies. And CDM is uniquely positioned to deliver it. After all, is not an ecological ethic the basis of its philosophy? Is it not committed to sustainable development?