SouthSouthNorth (SSN) Scholarships

SouthSouthNorth (SSN) came into being in 1999 when Hélène Connor (HELIO International), Emilio La Rovere, (COPPE Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), Steve Thorne, and Stefan Raubenheimer met up during the inter-sessional  Subsidiary Body meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bonn, Germany, in late 1999. Steve and Emilio had been commissioned by Helio International to propose a set of criteria and indicators to appraise sustainable development attributes of Clean Development Mechanism projects and present them at a side event at the Climate Change event.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), an article of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, was at that time under negotiation with modalities and procedures under consideration. The CDM aimed to partner industrialised and developing nations to accredit greenhouse gas emission reductions through projects in the developing world that could be used to offset emissions reduction targets in industrialised countries. Little was known about the rules of the CDM, or how the sustainable development requirement contained in Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol would be institutionalised, determined or measured.

The four presented a paper setting out a theoretical tool for appraising the sustainable development contribution of potential CDM projects according to a list of criteria and indicators. The tool found support from respondents, some of whom had been invited as potential donors to extend the theoretical to a practical appraisal tool. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been an active supporter of the South African Energy Policy and offered a considerable grant, and with that, a new civil society partnership was founded.