UN: Rebuild global economy through green investment

Terry Macalister
guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday October 22 2008 13.00 BST

The United Nations today called for a refocusing of the world's economy towards investments in clean technologies and natural infrastructures such as forests in a Green New Deal that could revive the stumbling global economy, combat climate change, and cut poverty.
The UN's Environment Programme (UNEP) said the financial, fuel and food crises of 2008 highlighted the need for an innovative approach similar to the state-funded scheme used by US president Franklin D Roosevelt, in response to the Great Depression.
The organisation, supported by governments and top economists, is calling for - and believes it will achieve - decisive government action when finance ministers meet for the Financing for Development-Doha Review conference next month in New York.
"Transformative ideas need to be discussed and transformative decisions taken," said Achim Steiner, the US undersecretary general and UNEP executive director.
"The alternative is more boom and bust cycles; a climate-stressed world and a collapse of fish stocks and fertile soils up to forest ecosystems," he added.
It was only a matter of time before investments would begin pouring back into the global economy but they should no longer be aimed at the "old, extractive, short-term economy of tomorrow," but a new green economy that could provide opportunities for the poor and well-off alike, said Pavan Sukdhev.
Sukdhev, a head of global markets for Deutsche Bank, has been seconded to work on UNEP's Green Economy Initiative, which is funded with £2m of cash from the European commission, Germany and Norway and which draws strong links between ecosystem losses and the persistence of poverty in the developing world.
"The economic models of the 20th century are now hitting the limits of what is possible - possible in terms of delivering better livelihoods for the 2.6 billion people still living on less than $2 a day and possible in terms of our ecological footprint," explained Sukdhev.
The initiative highlights five sectors which are likely to offer the best payback in terms of economic returns, environmental sustainability and job creation.
These are clean energy and new technologies including recycling; rural energy including renewables and biomass; sustainable agriculture including organic cultivation; ecosystem infrastructure and reduced emissions from deforestation, and sustainable cities including green building and transport.
The UN points out that £150bn is spent annually on agricultural subsidies with very little going into reforestation. It says that roughly the same amount of public investment currently goes into energy - much to fossil fuels - yet 2 billion people globally do not have electricity, oil or gas to cook food and provide heat and light.
Sukhdev added: "Here you have some of the choices in a nutshell. If we are to lift 2.6 billion people living on less than $2 a day out of poverty, do we put them into making more and more motor cars, TVs and PCs, or do we invest in the protected area network and develop its potential for green and decent new jobs?"
An additional investment of £25bn a year in some 100,000 conservation areas worldwide would secure the £2.5tr worth of services provided by these natural assets "while generating millions of new jobs and securing livelihoods for rural and indigenous peoples," he said.
Andrew Simms, the policy director at the New Economics Foundation in London, which called this summer for its own Green New Deal, said the UNEP initiative was highly important.
"The UN report has seen what several governments, including our own have failed to. It's 'now or never,' with the clock ticking on the global oil economy and the countdown to a new, more perilous phase of climate upheaval. Instead of scrabbling to return the economy to business-as-usual, this could be our last chance save the economy and prevent environmental bankruptcy."
Last month, the UN published another major report, which claimed that far from destroying jobs, tackling climate change would boost employment.
The Green Jobs study was hailed as being crucial to overcoming global resistance from the labour movement, which for many years opposed the Kyoto agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions amid fears that members would lose their jobs.