CCOA Project: Joining Hands to Enhance Climate Change Awareness

K. Chatterjee, Global Environment Systems Group

The Climate Change Outreach and Awareness Project (CCOA) funded by USAID is to improve the awareness and understanding of climate change issues in India and promote the partnership projects for Climate Change mitigation. Besides Development Alternatives (DA), other partners in the project activity in India are Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FICCI) and Credit Rating Information and Services India Limited (CRISIL). Following specific actions have been taken up under the project at these institutions :

· A series of one-day roundtable discussions with key industry, environment, and government leaders to explore issues and actions relevant to India.

· Roundtables on issues jointly involving Indian and U.S. industry. This will work towards building a bilateral consensus on policies and actions.

· Research to be conducted by Indian institutions to analyse climate change issues related to CO2 mitigation partnership project development in India.

· Workshops on operational aspects of the climate change partnership projects.

The first workshop under the CCOA Project at Development Alternatives was organised on August 2, 1999 at the India International Centre, New Delhi. The theme of the workshop was "The Climate Change Outreach and Awareness Project in India : Services for the Concerned Ministries and Organisations".

The objective of the workshop was :

· to brief the concerned ministries and organisations of the various activities of the CCOA project in India.

· to get their views and comments to fine-tune the CCOA programme activities.

Besides the concerned ministries (Ministry of Environment and Forests, Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Ministry of Coal, Ministry of Power and Planning Commission) and organisations, representatives of USAID, India, Hagler Bailly, partner organisations and a few NGOs also participated in the workshop.

Dr. Ashok Khosla, President, DA gave a brief introduction of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Kyoto Protocol, Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and
CCOA project and stressed the need to share the views with the concerned Government Ministries and organisations on the CDM and CCOA project activities in India. He mentioned that in a scenario of shrinking Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) the future of India’s development lies in concessional funds or grants through the mechanisms like CDM.

Mr. Richard L Edwards, of USAID informed the participants that USAID was already funding projects in the field of DSM, co-generation, energy efficiency etc. as a part of the GEP Project of the USAID (Greenhouse Gas Environmental Pollution Prevention Project) and CCOA project was initiated as a supplementary activity. He mentioned that CDM and other greenhouse gas pollution prevention projects were to assist developing countries in achieving sustainable development.

The partners of the project briefed the participants of the activities going on in their respective organisations under the project. DA has been identified as a nodal agency working in the field of sustainable development as applied to climate change.

 

The Ongoing Activities under the CCOA Project in DA are :

· developing a background paper on the Sustainable Development Indicators (SDIs) for CDM projects in India as a part of capacity building in the field of developing climate change partnership projects.

· design of SDIs in climate change partnership projects in the field of energy efficiency, renewable sources of energy, building materials etc. so that these projects could be designed as CDM projects.

· guidelines for government certification of sustainability of CDM projects.

· under the outreach part, several workshops and round tables are being organised on various design and operational issues related to climate change partnership projects.

· integrating SDIs in the projects received by CII from Indian CEOs as well as designing about six projects in the building and decentralised energy sector so that these projects could be submitted for approval.

Activities of other Partner Institutions

IIM, Ahmedabad is developing a methodology for construction of baselines and examining additionality. The Institute also has an outreach component, including the development of a website, in collaboration with FICCI for dissemination of information on Climate Change activities and research in India, as a part of their activity .

CII has established a Climate Change Information Centre and brings out a quarterly newsletter dedicated to Climate Change and its impacts on Indian industries. It would further facilitate dialogue between Government and Industries and between Indian and US CEOs to optimize benefits from CDM.

The CRISIL is entrusted with the task of exploring the investment potential and arranging finances for CDM projects. FICCI is working on information dissemination by developing a website which will provide information on various issues of CDM. IIMA is working with FICCI in developing the website. Besides, FICCI is preparing modules for local level people also.

 

Output of the Workshop

The discussion with the ministries’ representatives was quite lively; several issues came into light. The workshop was very much useful for the organisations which were not aware of the CCOA project and other technical aspects of CCOA project and the CDM. The participants hailed the activities going on under the project and expressed their intention of active cooperation in these activities. Dr. J R Bhatt, MoEF pointed out that cost-effectiveness of Climate Change mitigation efforts was important but he felt that there should be a paradigm shift from the focus on cost-effectiveness to risk-minimization. The participants drew attention towards various sectors where there was scope for CDM projects. Dr. Raghuraman, CII stressed on the preparedness of Indian CEOs with a portfolio of projects to be able to take the advantage of this mechanism soon after the Protocol comes into force and CDM becomes operational.

Follow-up

Considering the importance of such workshop, the participants were unanimous in their views on setting up a regular mechanism and organising such a meet at least once in every three months for informing and exchanging views between the CCOA partners and the concerned ministries and organisations. q

 

 

 

 

 

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