Asian Development Bank (ADB) supports climate change initiatives across its developing member countries in Asia and the Pacific through its Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency and Climate Change (REACH) Program supported by the trust funds from the Governments of the Netherlands, Denmark and Canada, and through the CDM Facility established in 2003. The US$ 700,000, 18-month Technical Assistance (TA) project in India is being funded through the Canadian Cooperation Fund on Climate Change under the REACH program. The implementation of this TA is expected to start from June 2005. ADB would provide technical assistance for Capacity Building, for Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in India. While adopting a learning-by-doing approach, this TA project will target CDM opportunities available at selected urban local bodies, municipalities and rural sectors. It will mainstream CDM opportunities in the domestic financial sector and help structure a dedicated fund for facilitating widespread implementation of CDM projects in India.

The ADB TA project, would be implemented in close cooperation with the Ministry of Environment and Forests, and will address the capacity building needs of various stakeholders to strengthen India's position as a key player in the rapidly evolving international carbon markets.

The Project will provide broad-based institutional development, technical, and training support. The project shall build capacity of various stakeholders including urban local bodies in selected States for assessing, evaluating and developing potential CDM projects and project design documents (PDDs) It shall also develop a limited number of best practice CDM methodologies and PDDs, and formulate bundling mechanisms and financial structuring options in close cooperation with suitable banks and local bodies, in selected small-scale CDM sectors such as rural energy supply and SME industry clusters, and prepare an operational toolkit/handbook based on these small-scale demonstration projects. The project shall also provide targeted training to domestic financial and insurance sector in the area of appraising and structuring CDM projects; and develop the detailed feasibility design of a dedicated fund for facilitating widespread implementation of CDM activities in the country.