Designated Operational Entities. En legitim form av offentlig-privat governance inom ramarna för Clean Development Mechanism?

This thesis investigates the Designated Operational Entities (DOEs) under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol. The DOEs serves as independent third-party auditors with the task of validating, verifying and certifying projects under the CDM. The majority of the DOEs are private entities. This is in line with the CDM objective of including the private sector in the climate change combat. The introduction of private entities in the role of DOEs can be questioned from a legitimacy point of view, but is corresponding to a development in international environmental governance where private actors are increasingly involved in governance arrangements. The thesis concludes the DOEs to be a form of public-private partnership and investigates the legitimacy of this form. The governance of the DOEs is reviewed from a set of understandings of legitimacy. The legitimacy is identified as important to the work of the DOEs and efforts to strengthen their legitimacy seem to have been made when designing CDM framework. However, some of the mechanisms creating legitimacy is found to be lacking or in need of improvement