Fears Over North Korean Hydro to Finance Nuclear Weapons

What do you do if you're Kim Jong-il, beloved leader of North Korea, and you're facing sanctions because of your nuclear weapons program?

Jump on the carbon offset bandwagon of course!

This week, Reuters reported that North Korea is trying to earn some much-needed foreign currency by selling carbon offsets from three hydropower projects through the UN's Clean Development Mechanism.

However, many experts doubt that the beloved leader can drum up enough interest from European countries, especially with fears that the millions of euros that North Korean would gain from these hydropower projects might be funneled towards their nuclear arms or other military programs.

According to Choi Soo-young, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification:

"Even if they open up, who in the world wants to pay for North Korea that is blamed for its nuclear weapons programme?"

Good question, though European governments haven't had the best track record of picking legitimate projects for their carbon credit purchases. Many of the hydropower projects in the CDM, for instance, have lead to forced evictions, violence, and no additional reductions in carbon emissions due to fake carbon credits (just look at the Barro Blanco in Panama or Xiaoxi in China, for instance).

There are signs already that these North Korean projects may not be legitimate, especially when it comes to the CDM criteria of additionality. (A project is additional only if it can prove it needs CDM financing in order to be buiit.) Reuters reported that a representative of the Hanns Seidel Foundation of Germany, which North Korea has asked to act as a liaison with the CDM validator TUV-Nord, recently visited the three hydropower construction sites in the northeast corner of the country.

The natural follow-up question would be: Why apply for CDM credits if the projects are already under construction? Most sane project developers wouldn't undertake the construction of not just one but three hydropower projects without first securing the necessary funding. (Then again, in this case, who said anything about sane?)

In another mad twist, Reuters last week reported that a NASA computer simulation revealed how – besides devastating nuclear radiation, famine, and chaos – a "limited" nuclear war might temporarily halt global climate change (well, for three years anyway).

So when it comes to climate change, looks like Kim Jong-il has got it right.