Clean Development Mechanism projects have waxed and waned in their popularity and have expired as of 2020. As we look towards the future of sustainable development initiatives in carbon financing and carbon markets, we must learn from the lessons the CDM initiative provides us. Though CDM projects were critiqued mainly for their additionality problem, this paper focuses on public-private interactions and their impact on local stakeholders and CDM projects as a whole. This research analyzes data from 258 project design documents from the CDM registry for registered projects in Vietnam from 2008-2019. The results reveal differences in project types, local stakeholder impacts, and the level of documentation and reporting with majority public versus majority private participation. This is a first step in gleaning some lessons from CDM public-private partnerships and paves the way for further investigation into best practices going forward.