Carbon trading for sustainable development: Indian perspective

The economic impact of climate change includes effects on climate sensitive sectors like agriculture, forestry, fisheries, changes in water levels etc.; while the non market impact covers effects on health, leisure activities, ecosystems and human settlements. For the developing economies these impacts are extremely severe as majority of their population depends largely on the climate sensitive sectors. This results into unsustainable pathways to the development. Theoretically, climate itself is a public good and that too, a global public good. The costs of environmental damages are externalized on the whole world. So putting a price on GHG emissions is a way to internalize these costs. Therefore the logic behind the carbon markets is to commodify emissions and reduce them by putting a price through the mechanisms like Clean Development Mechanism under Kyoto Protocol. This book explores the official secondary as well as primary data and emphasizes the role of CDM in achieving sustainable development particularly for India which is the second leading country in CDM projects worldwide. This study is undertaken at national, regional and sample levels.