Word: toranagallu
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...That's because Toranagallu is also home to a 3,700-acre forest of puffing smokestacks that make up the Jindal South West steel factory. Opened a over a decade ago, Jindal South West has over the past several years claimed an estimated $150 million in carbon credits thanks to its internationally recognized status as a part of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) administered by the U.N. under the Kyoto Protocol. But while the steel plant's efforts to reduce its emissions may in a very small way be helping the earth's atmosphere, villagers complain any benefits are lost...
...controversy in Toranagallu raises questions about the effectiveness of CDM projects and the wisdom of relying on the carbon market to combat climate change. While carbon trading has helped lower overall global emissions, some argue the CDM system has significant flaws that need to be addressed in Copenhagen. One problem, critics say, is that the mechanism is subject to manipulation and creates undeserving winners. For example, the U.N. body in charge of managing carbon trading reportedly has suspended approvals that would have awarded credits for the construction of dozens of wind farms in China. Projects only qualify for credits...
...Toranagallu illustrates another unintended consequence of the CDM system: it tends to prop up the dirtiest industries in developing countries such as India, essentially allowing the industrialized West to outsource the heavy lifting of greenhouse-gas reduction to the world's poorer nations. "The trouble is the design of the CDM has been to guarantee the cheapest option for the Western countries to balance their carbon books," says Sunita Narain of the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi. "It's not [just]what is happening in India that is flawed, it is flawed in design...
...Toranagallu, the Jindal plant continues to expand as the company pursues carbon credits by generating power through the burning of waste gas created during steel manufacture. In a bid for more carbon dollars, a second power plant was built. "The carbon revenues were a major factor in taking up these projects," says Suresh Iyer, the chief coordinator of carbon trading at Jindal South West. If a project is reducing carbon, he says, "we do take the initiative and put up the plant because of that." The second plant, which Iyer estimates cost the company $50 million to build, was approved...
...carbon financial windfall has yet to trickle down to the villagers in Toranagallu, many of whom say life has gotten worse, not better, since the steel mill first arrived. What they don't know is that, like it or not, the global battle against climate change is being fought in their backyard...