This report sets out the final recommendations of the Panel for the role, design, and operations of the CDM. Presented at the 69th meeting of the CDM Executive Board (September 2012) and subsequently made public, it affirms the importance of maintaining the CDM as a tool to help address the climate change challenge, proposing 51 recommendations across 12 areas. The recommendations address not only the CDM Executive Board and the UNFCCC Secretariat, but also the many other stakeholders in the CDM. There is an urgent need for broad and cooperative action aimed at reviving the mechanism and repositioning it so that by learning from the past it will be an even more useful policy tool for the future. These recommendations are made on the understanding that they will be applied to strengthen the mechanism in the future, and are not intended to have retroactive application in a manner that would disadvantage CDM stakeholders.