Kyoto Protocol and beyond
Kyoto rules
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is the only Kyoto mechanism that allows developed and developing countries to collaborate. There are a number of requirements to be met by project activities to ensure that they truly support “development” for the people living in the area, that they are “clean” and follow proper procedures. Technically, eligibility of lands for the implementation of CDM project activities has to comply with international rules and national regulations and priorities.
In the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, LULUCF activities under the CDM are limited to afforestation and reforestation or A/R CDM. In this connection, the seventh session of the Conference of Parties (COP7) to the UNFCCC provided the defi nition of afforestation and reforestation under the provision of Decision 17/CP.7, where afforestation is the direct human-induced conversion of land that has not been forested for a period of at least 50 years to forested land through planting, seeding and/or the human-induced promotion of natural seed sources.

For the first commitment period, reforestation activities will be limited to reforestation occurring on those lands that did not contain forest on 31 December 1989. The implementation of A/R CDM will be guided by very strict rules concerning methodologies to determine the baseline, to monitor greenhouse gas removals and leakage, and the monitoring plan. There is also a newly launched scheme for LULUCF activities called small-scale A/R CDM (Decision 14/CP.10). This scheme gives smallholder rural communities an opportunity to participate. Such projects should be able to sequester a maximum of 8 kt CO2 per year. This could potentially involve an area of 500-800 ha depending on the species chosen and management of the project. Baseline and monitoring methodologies and approval procedures are very much simplifi ed. This is to ensure that the transaction cost is low enough as compared with larger scale projects as guided by Decision 19/CP.9.