The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and leading economists have called for mobilising and re-focusing the global economy towards investments in clean technologies and 'natural' infrastructure such as forests and soils is the best bet for real growth, combating climate change and triggering an employment boom in the 21st century.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said, "The financial, fuel and food crises of 2008 are in part a result of speculation and a failure of governments to intelligently manage and focus markets".
"But they are also part of a wider market failure triggering ever deeper and disturbing losses of natural capital and nature-based assets coupled with an over-reliance of finite, often subsidised fossil fuels," he said.
"The flip side of the coin is the enormous economic, social and environmental benefits likely to arise from combating climate change and re-investing in natural infrastructure - benefits ranging from new green jobs in clean tech and clean energy businesses up to ones in sustainable agriculture and conservation-based enterprises," he added.
Steiner said there was a crucial and urgent need to bring creative, forward-looking and 'transformational thinking' into next month's Financing for Development Review Conference-taking place in Doha, Qatar.
Other critical dates rapidly coming up in the international calendar include a proposed financial crisis summit of the G8+5, called for by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the next round of UN climate convention negotiations in Poznan, Poland in December.
"Transformative ideas need to be discussed and transformative decisions taken. 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 - vast, natural 'utilities' that for a fraction of the cost of machines store water and carbon, stabilise soils; sustain indigenous and rural livelihoods and harbor genetic resources to the value of trillions of dollars a year," said Steiner.
Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who held the launch, said, "The green technological revolution needs to gather pace, as more and more of the worlds jobs will in future be in environmental industries. Britain is committed to building a green economy at home and abroad: it will be good for business good for the environment and good for development. UNEP's initiative will help make this change; in particular by helping us to understand just how much we depend on the environment - soil, air, water and biodiversity - for our very existence."
Current Economic Models: Short-Changing People and the Planet
Pavan Sukdhev, a senior banker from Deutsche Bank who is seconded to UNEP to lead the research, said, "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 USD2 a day and possible in terms of our ecological footprint".
"Here you have some of the choices in a nutshell. If we are to lift 2.6 billion people living on less than USD2 a day out of poverty, do we put them into making more and more motor cars, TV's and PC's, or do we invest in the protected area network and develop its potential for green and decent new jobs?," Sukdhev added.
"An additional investment of USD50 billion a year in around 100,000 conservation areas worldwide could secure the USD5 trillion-worth of services provided by these natural assets while generating millions of new jobs and securing livelihoods for rural and indigenous peoples."
Two billion people globally do not yet have electricity, oil or gas to cook food and for daily living. This perpetuates the poverty trap and undermines attempts to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals while putting pressure on economically-important ecosystems such as forests for fuel-wood and charcoal.
It is a crisis but also an opportunity including a business one given the potential size of the market for alternative energy systems. The Clean Development Mechanism of the UN's Kyoto Protocol is starting to reach some of the smaller developing economies.
"Investments will soon be pouring back into the global economy - the question is whether they go into the old, extractive, short-term economy of yesterday or a new green economy that will deal with multiple challenges while generating multiple economic opportunities for the poor and the well-off alike," Sukhdev said.
The new report aims to help governments make better choices and send the right market signals to investors, entrepreneurs and consumers world-wide so "we move from mining the planet to managing and re-investing in it," said Steiner.
The Green Economy Initiative, which has close to USD4 million-worth of funding from the European Commission, Germany and Norway, builds in part on a request by the G8+5 group of nations two years ago.
The G8+5 study on the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), also led by Sukhdev and funded by the European Commission and Germany, reported its Phase I findings in May at the UNEP-linked Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Bonn.
It highlighted the economic magnitude of "business - as-usual" losses, and drew strong links between ecosystem & biodiversity losses and the persistence of poverty.
The Green Economy initiative has three pillars - valuing and mainstreaming nature's services into national and international accounts; employment generation through green jobs and the laying out the policies; instruments and market signals able to accelerate a transition to a Green Economy.
The strategy builds on the findings of TEEB while also linking with the Green Jobs Initiative of UNEP, the International Labour Organisation, the International Trades Union Confederation and the International Organisation of Employers.
The Green Economy Initiative will draw on the existing and considerable body of work generated by UNEP, the UN-system and others ranging from the impacts and opportunities of shifting fish, fuel and other subsidies up to innovative market mechanisms and financial products already triggering a transition.
In 18 to 24 months it should deliver for governments - North and South - a comprehensive assessment and tool kit for making the necessary transition.
Erik Solheim, the Norwegian Environment Minister, said, "There are moments in history when an idea's time has come - this is the case for a comprehensive Green Economy Initiative. Norway is delighted to be supporting this UNEP initiative. Innovative approaches and actions are needed in this very complex situation with a fundamental environmental crisis topped by an international financial situation out of control".
"I commend UNEP for responding so fast and timely – in particular how UNEP together with International Labour Organisation (ILO) have demonstrated the huge untapped job potential in sustainable management of natural capital and nature based assets," he added.
Five Priority Sectors Underpinning a Global Green New Deal
The five sectors likely to generate the biggest transition in terms of economic returns; environmental sustainability and job creation are:
- Clean energy and clean technologies including recycling
- Rural energy, including renewables and sustainable biomass
- Sustainable agriculture, including organic agriculture
- Ecosystem Infrastructure
- Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD)
- Sustainable cities including planning, transportation and green building
The Green Economy initiative focuses on better management of our environment infrastructure. Over the past 300 years, the global forest area has shrunk by around 40 per cent; half the globe's wetlands have been lost since 1900 and human - led species extinction rates are now 1,000 higher than the 'natural' rate of extinction.
Some 60 per cent of the Earth's ecosystems and the goods and services they provide are now degraded. Losses of natural areas between 2000 and 2050 are projected to be 7.5 million square km, roughly the size of Australia, if existing economic models continue unfocused and undirected.
The economic losses have recently been emerging. For example in the Caribbean, tourism losses linked with an 80 per cent decline in coral reefs are set to rise to USD300 million a year.
Best practices in the green economy can not only care for our planet but also provide great returns on natural infrastructure investments. An annual investment of USD45 billion could conserve services from protected area ecosystems which deliver an estimated USD5 trillion a year-a good cost benefit ration of 100:1.
Coral reefs, whose fishery, tourism and flood protection services are estimated at between USD100,000 and USD600,000 per square km, could be conserved for an investment of close to USD780 per square km or 0.2 per cent of the value of the ecosystem protected.
Deforestation contributes close to 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions-USD17 billion to over USD30 billion annually could halve this while securing livelihoods and boosting conservation-related employment in tropical countries.
A global marine protected area network, involving the closure of 20 per cent of total fishing grounds could result in profit losses of an estimated USD270 million annually. But could sustain fisheries worth USD80-100 billion a year; assist in conserving an estimated 27 million jobs while generating one million new ones and protect food supplies for over one billion people, especially in developing countries whose main or sole source of animal protein comes from fish.
The Green Economy Initiative seeks to encourage and enable economic, planning, finance, labour, environment, and other policymakers to support increased investments in environmental assets and green production while ensuring a fair and just transition towards a green economy.
