The objective of this research is to analyze to which extent CDM investments have provided Brazilian municipalities with development benefits through the assessment of impacts on income, poverty and other development indicators. This study contributes to this strand of the literature in two ways: first, most assessments have applied qualitative methods and data based on expected effects; in contrast, we aim at quantifying the aggregated impact of CDM projects by combining difference-in-differences assessment with matching techniques using empirical data for years 2000 (pre-CDM) and 2010 (post-CDM). Second, we estimate impacts across Brazilian municipalities, or at the sub-national scale. Results on poverty indicators indicate an increase in the percentage of poor households and a reduction in their per capita income, in other words, CDM projects have not contributed to reduce poverty at the municipal level for the period analyzed.