The basis of current multilateral effort at addressing the issue of climate change is carbon trading. As the CDM is constituted and implemented on this basis, there has to be a willingness on the part of global and national policy elites to accept the fact that the expanding weaknesses of the CDM is not in the interest of the climate. The continued placing of the mechanism as a foolproof answer to the problem forecloses alternative measures suggested
by many.

Commodification of pollution is an acceptance that pollution is a necessary public good with economic value. This regrettable stance has given a sour political atmosphere at the national and multilateral fronts capable of preventing or delaying genuine measures towards reversing climate change.

In other words, carbon trading is a distraction from the pursuit of fruitful measures against climate change. Although Nigeria's draft climate legislation spots the country's vulnerability to climate change as a core area of interest, there is no indication of the need to move away from the production of fossil fuel as a long term goal. The government has received unequivocally the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as a commitment to its role as a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, but particularly as a fund-raising opportunity. In spite of its impressive objectives, the CDM is faced with many challenges and one way out is an outright replacement with direct climate debt payment to citizens in the developing world.

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