A Barbadian expert scientist, Hugh Sealy, has been elected to head the United Nations panel overseeing the world body’s carbon market.
Sealy, a prominent international environmental scientist and chemical engineer was elected to chairman of the executive board of the Clean Development Mechanism, CDM. He will serve until 2015. It’s the first time that a scientist from the Caribbean was chosen to be the panel’s chairman.
He is assuming the executive board’s leadership at a time when the UN programme which has transferred more than US$315 billion in climate finance from rich nations to developing countries has stalled.
Supply of the tradable credits it generates has expanded rapidly in recent times while their credits have fallen significantly after many nations declined to use the market to help meet emissions goals. Sealy, a professor at the St George’s University in Grenada, was the vice chairman of the executive board for the past year and his elevation to the top spot didn’t come as a surprise.
He succeeds Peer Stansen of Norway. His deputy will be Lambert Schneider, a German expert in carbon markets, climate and energy policy.
The CDM, as it is more commonly called, gives the green light to governments, companies and individuals to fund greenhouse gas reduction projects in developing countries, and in return they receive carbon offsets that can then be used against their own emission targets or sold for profit.
The son of the late Nicky Sealy, Professor Sealy had served as a Barbados government environmental expert adviser until about 2008. (TB)
