Ecobella Blog

by Achim Steiner

NAIROBI – With unemployment soaring, bankruptcies climbing, and stock markets in free-fall, it may at first glance seem sensible to ditch the fight against climate change and put environmental investments on hold. But this would be a devastating mistake of immediate, as well as inter-generational, proportions.

Far from burdening an already over-stressed, over-stretched global economy, environmental investments are exactly what is needed to get people back to work, get order books flowing, and assist in powering economies back to health.

In the past, concern for the environment was viewed as a luxury; today, it is a necessity – a point grasped by some, but by no means all, economic architects yet.

A big slice of President Barack Obama’s $825 billion stimulus package for the United States includes a boost to renewable energy, “weatherizing” a million homes, and upgrading the country’s inefficient electricity grid. Such investments could generate an estimated five million “green-collar” jobs, provide a shot in the arm for the construction and engineering industries, and get America back into the equally serious business of combating climate change and achieving energy security.

The Republic of Korea, which is losing jobs for the first time in more than five years, has also spotted the green lining to grim economic times. President Lee Myung-Bak’s government plans to invest $38 billion employing people to clean up four major rivers and reduce disaster risks by building embankments and water-treatment facilities.

Other elements of Lee’s plan include construction of eco-friendly transportation networks, such as high-speed railways and hundreds of kilometers of bicycle tracks, and generating energy using waste methane from landfills. The package also counts on investments in hybrid vehicle technologies.

Similar pro-employment “Green New Deal” packages have been lined up in China, Japan, and the United Kingdom. They are equally relevant to developing economies in terms of jobs, fighting poverty, and creating new opportunities at a time of increasingly uncertain commodity prices and exports.

In South Africa, the government-backed Working for Water initiative – which employs more than 30,000 people, including women, youth, and the disabled – also sees opportunity in crisis. The country spends roughly $60 million annually fighting invasive alien plants that threaten native wildlife, water supplies, important tourism destinations, and farmland.

This work is set to expand as more than 40 million tons of invasive alien plants are harvested for power-station fuel. As a result, an estimated 500 megawatts of electricity, equal to 2% of the country’s electricity needs, will be generated, along with more than 5,000 jobs.

So it is clear that some countries now view environmental investments in infrastructure, energy systems, and ecosystems as among the best bets for recovery. Others may be unsure about the potential returns from investing in ecosystem services such as forest carbon storage or in renewable energy for the 80% of Africans who have no access to electricity. Still others may simply be unaware of how to precisely follow suit.

In early February, the United Nations Environment Program will convene some of the world’s leading economists at the UN’s headquarters in New York. A strategy for a Global Green New Deal, tailored to different national challenges, will be fleshed out in order to assist world leaders and ministers craft stimulus packages that work on multiple fronts.

The Global Green New Deal, which UNEP launched as a concept in October 2008, responds to the current economic malaise. Spent wisely, however, these stimulus packages could trigger far-reaching and transformational trends, setting the stage for a more sustainable, urgently needed Green Economy for the twenty-first century.

The trillions of dollars that have been mobilized to address current woes, together with the trillions of investors’ dollars waiting in the wings, represent an opportunity that was unthinkable only 12 months ago: the chance to steer a more resource-efficient and intelligent course that can address problems ranging from climate change and natural-resource scarcity to water shortages and biodiversity loss.

Blindly pumping the current bail-out billions into old industries and exhausted economic models will be throwing good money after bad while mortgaging our children’s future. Instead, political leaders must use these windfalls to invest in innovation, promote sustainable businesses, and encourage new patterns of decent, long-lasting employment.

Permalink: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/asteiner3

By Bjorn Lomborg

COPENHAGEN – This December, global leaders will meet in Copenhagen to negotiate a new climate change pact to reduce carbon emissions. Yet, the way that it has been set up, it will inevitably fail. The best hope is that we use this lesson finally to deal with this issue in a smarter fashion.

The United States has made it clear that developing countries must sign up to substantial reductions in carbon emissions in Copenhagen. Developing nations – especially China and India – will be the main greenhouse gas emitters of the twenty-first century – but were exempted from the Kyoto Protocol because they emitted so little during the West’s industrialization period. Europe, too, has grudgingly accepted that without developing nations’ participation, rich nations’ cuts will have little impact.

Some would have us believe that getting China and India on board will be easy. According to former US Vice President Al Gore, “developing countries that were once reluctant to join in the first phases of a global response to the climate crisis have themselves now become leaders in demanding action and in taking bold steps on their own initiatives.”

But Gore’s fellow Nobel laureate, Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is not so sure. He recently told an Indian audience, “of course, the developing countries will be exempted from any such restrictions, but the developed countries will certainly have to cut down on emissions.”

It is likely that Pachauri is right and Gore is wrong: neither China nor India will commit to significant cuts without a massive payoff.

Their reasons are entirely understandable. The biggest factor is the massive cost and the tiny reward. Reducing emissions is the only response to climate change that environmental campaigners talk about, despite the fact that repeated attempts to do so – in Rio in 1992 and in Kyoto in 1997 – failed to make a dent in emission levels.

Some believe that past agreements did not go far enough, but Kyoto actually turned out to be overly ambitious. Ninety-five percent of its envisioned cuts never happened. Yet, even if Kyoto were fully implemented throughout this century, it would reduce temperatures by an insignificant 0.3°F (0.2oC), at an annual cost of $180 billion.

China and India are enjoying swift growth that is helping millions of people lift themselves out of poverty. India’s External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee recently said, “India is very concerned about climate change, but we have to see the issue in the perspective of our imperative to remove poverty so that all Indians can live a life of dignity.”

And Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao recently said, “it’s difficult for China to take quantified emission reduction quotas at the Copenhagen conference, because this country is still at an early stage of development. Europe started its industrialization several hundred years ago, but for China, it has only been dozens of years.”

Some environmental campaigners argue that, given the effects of global warming, every nation must act. But if one takes a closer look at China, this argument disintegrates.

Climate models show that for at least the rest of this century, China will actually benefit from global warming. Warmer temperatures will boost agricultural production and improve health. The number of lives lost in heat waves will increase, but the number of deaths saved in winter will grow much more rapidly: warming will have a more dramatic effect on minimum temperatures in winter than on maximum temperatures in summer.

There are few arguments for China and India to commit to carbon caps – and compelling reasons for them to resist pressure to do so.

Kyoto’s successor will not be successful unless China and India are somehow included. To achieve that, the European Union has made the inevitable, almost ridiculous proposal of bribing developing nations to take part – at a cost of €175 billion annually by 2020.

In the midst of a financial crisis, it seems unbelievable that European citizens will bear the financial burden of paying off China and India. The sadder thing, though, is that this money would be spent on methane collection from waste dumps in developing nations, instead of on helping those countries’ citizens deal with more pressing concerns like health and education.

There is an alternative to spending so much to achieve so little. Cutting carbon still costs a lot more than the good that it produces. We need to make emission cuts much cheaper so that countries like China and India can afford to help the environment. This means that we need to invest much more in research and development aimed at developing low-carbon energy.

If every country committed to spending 0.05% of its GDP exploring non-carbon-emitting energy technologies, this would translate into $25 billion per year, or ten times more than what the world spends now. Yet, the total also would be seven times cheaper than the Kyoto Protocol, and many times cheaper than the Copenhagen Protocol is likely to be. It would ensure that richer nations pay more, taking much of the political heat from the debate.

Decades of talks have failed to make any impact on carbon emissions. Expecting China and India to make massive emission cuts for little benefit puts the Copenhagen meeting on a sure path to being another lost opportunity. Yet, at the same time, the Chinese and Indian challenge could be the impetus we need to change direction, end our obsession with reducing emissions, and focus instead on research and development, which would be smarter and cheaper – and would actually make a difference.

Permalink: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/lomborg37