Chennakhotapalli, a village on the Bangalore-Hyderabad highway, could be a show case for climate mitigation action. Over a thousand farmers in the area are running projects – like organic agriculture and cooking without coal or wood – under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) that reduce carbon emissions. But most of them are under no illusion that their efforts will actually stem climate change.
The CDM, a part of the Kyoto Protocol, encourages emission-reduction projects in developing countries, which earn certified emission reduction (CER) credits. Each credit is equivalent to one tonne of CO2, and can be sold and traded—mostly to be used by developed countries to meet their emission reduction targets.