By Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary
General and Executive Director of the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) - Conference
and Debate on the Challenges of Global Sustainable
Development and the Responses of the Multilateral
System (with an Emphasis on Climate Change)
held at IBAMA - 6 March 2007, Brasilia--
Ladies and gentlemen, honorable guests,
dear colleagues and friends,
We are facing an unprecedented challenge
not seen for a generation, perhaps longer.
Human-kind is changing the heart beat, the
pulse and the very corpus of the planet
on a scale unthinkable in the past.
Environmental challenges of the last century
were often perceived as local or national
issuesa polluted lake or river, loss of
individual species, contaminated land.
In the 21st century we now know we have
gone beyond the local to fundamentally impacting
the global life support systems that underpin
existence on the planet.
The scale of environmental mismanagement
is underscored in the Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment,--a UN initiated and UN-led multilateral
initiative whose findings were published
in 2005.
The Assessment says around 60 per cent
of all the ecosystems studied are being
degraded or used unsustainably.
This has resonance here in Brazil, the country
with 20 per cent of the worlds biodiversity.
It has significance for President Lulas
recent announcement of a close to $5 billion
investment in biotechnology.
Brazil is rising to the challenge of conserving
that hugely important economic resource
in a way that also has the potential to
give other developing nations a new and
dynamic direction.
Take the Amazon for example.
By a combination of advanced satellite
monitoring such as the real time Deforestation
Detection (DETER) system, legislation, better
enforcement, creative infrastructure management,
and through the promotion of alternative
livelihoods, Brazil has cut the rate of
loss of forests by some 50 per cent. Federal
Protection of lands will this year hit nearly
12 per cent.
UNEP has been asked to assist in finding
ways to transfer this technology and know
how to developing countries.
Potentially this could be an excellent
example of South-South cooperation and also
exciting route for the Bali Strategic Plan
on Technology Support and Capacity Building.
The central multilateral response to biodiversity
loss and in meeting the 2010 target, to
reverse the rate of the loss, is the Convention
on Biological Diversity.
Its third pillar, namely Access and Benefit
Sharing remains weak and its potential for
poverty eradication and sustainable development
largely unfulfilled. Resolving this impasse
is a key issue for Brazil as part of its
presidency of the CBD.
I share those concerns and have personally
raised the issue with Angela Merkel, the
German Chancellor, as part of her G8 Presidency.
Let us see how far we, as an international
community, can go.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Possibly the summit of this unsustainable
trajectory is the pollution to the atmosphere
from the burning of fossil fuels.
These, among other activities, are causing
a rise in the six key greenhouse gases that
in turn are pushing the climate into unprecedented
changes with wide ranging environmental
and economic risks.
The multilateral response to climate change
may be familiar to many in this room. Like
the Millennium Assessment, one key area
has been the science. You might like to
call it consensus building.
In the late 1980s, UNEP along with the
World Meteorological Organization established
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC).
Earlier this year, in February in Paris,
one aspect of this consensus building achieved
to my mind a full stop.
The IPCC Working Group I of its fourth
assessment concluded that there was now
a 90 per cent certainty that humans are
altering the climate.
Anyone who still thinks that climate change
is just a scary fairy tale, the work of
anarchists or to do with sun spots is either
an ideologist or a refugee from a dying
star.
The IPCC will go further with its Working
Group II and III reports scheduled over
the next few weeks.
Some details of the III Working Group,
designed to inform policy makers and galvanize
a multilateral response, have already been
leaked to the media.
If they are correct, and on this, I am
sworn to secrecy, we have far less than
a generation to act if we are to avoid dangerous
climate changekeeping the global temperature
increase at below two degrees.
The other multilateral response has been
the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change and its 1997 Kyoto Protocolthe
first legally binding treaty on greenhouse
gas emission reductions.
If you asked me 12 months ago, whether
this multilateral response was alive and
kicking, I would have said it was alive
but kickingwell hardly.
As so often has been the case with the
multilateral environmental agreements, the
reluctance of the few has stymied the rest
leaving the process paralyzed by the minority.
But, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished
guests,
The momentum of recent months has put new
wind in the sails driven partly by the science
but also by the twin issues of energy security
and economic calculations on both the costs
of inaction and of action.
There has also been in a sense an expansion
of what one might call the multi-lateral
constituencies and a re-discovery of the
power of Agenda 21--another offspring of
the Rio Earth Summit which is, in some ways,
reaching a level of maturity via the climate
change question.
Across the world, concerned consumers are
demanding action and indeed taking it through
climate-change purchasing habitsone thinks
of the rise in sales of green energy in
homes and the demand for more fuel efficient
and hybrid cars.
Now we also have requests in Europe that
supermarkets carry labels setting out the
carbon footprint of agricultural produce,
so called carbon counting or carbon miles.
This citizen-led response is being echoed
by local authorities with over 300 cities
in the United States alone setting emission
reduction targets and goals in the spirit
of Kyoto.
Industry and financial institutions are
also pushing for caps on emissions and regulationsuncertainty
is the killer of commerce, certainty in
the carbon markets is seen as an economic
opportunity and a way of guaranteeing future
market stability.
This push was underlined only days before
President Bushs State of the Union address.
Ten leading corporations therefrom power
and electrical appliance companies to aluminum
smeltersformally requested emission caps.
I was recently in Moscow, where Russian
companies were asking for the same kind
of thing.
Later this week, this enthusiasm by investors
and corporations in the developing world
will be underlined at a meeting at Bovespa
that I am scheduled to attend.
The Brazilian stock exchange, along with
South Africa, is setting the pace among
developing countries in the establishment
of sustainability indexes.
The momentum driven by companies and consumers
has a political dimension. If voters and
the business sector want action on climate
change, this can only give governments the
legitimacy to act multilaterally.
The UN itself is responding with organizations
like UNEP working on mainstreaming environment
and climate in its poverty eradication and
wider work.
Climate change, possibly the ultimate so
called cross cutting issue, is proving an
opportunity in terms of reforming the UN
to deliver as one.
At the last climate convention meeting,
UNEP and UNDP put together a new initiative
to assist developing countries better access
the carbon funds and adapt to climate change.
It has funding from Spain and Sweden and
more countries look set to join as financial
supporters.
The focus has been on sub-Saharan Africa
where many countries are losing out on the
multi-millionset to become multi-hundred
billion dollar-- Kyoto Clean Development
Mechanism.
Latin America is in a similar situation.
Brazil is the worlds third largest player
in CDM market. I believe it could use its
experience and expertise to assist smaller
countries in the region.
The UN Climate Change Convention is also
driving new thinking on forestry management
with clear implications for water to biodiversity
management.
In doing so, it is also assisting towards
other targets such as those in the Millennium
Development Goals and those agreed at the
World Summit on Sustainable Development.
Ladies and gentlemen,
We will have wait until the end of the
year during the next round of climate change
talks in Bali, to see whether the multilateral
response to climate change can make the
next critical step.
Whether the momentum this year, supported
by consumers and corporations, can assist
governments to the next important movethe
leap towards a really inclusive emission
reduction regime that takes the world beyond
2012 towards the 60 per cent to 80 per cent
emission reductions deemed needed to stabilize
the atmosphere.
One string to this bow will be alternative
fuels including biofuelsan area in which
Brazil, through the conversion of sugar
cane into ethanol, is a pioneer.
Targets for biofuels have been drawn up
by Brazil, the United States and Europe
among others. But there is concern among
consumers and the energy industry that forests
and other ecosystems could suffer unless
there are clear guidelines, norms and rules
of engagement.
Certainly industry it looking for a multi-lateral
response and UNEP is examining how this
playing field could be laid out.
Last week, Brazil along with the US, South
Africa, India, and the European Commission
launched an international biofuels forum.
I believe unless sustainability is factored
in, such a forum may run the risk of satisfying
only certain constituencies.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I would not wish to give the impression
that a multilateral solution to climate
change is the ultimate flag around which
all sustainability issues can or should
rally.
There are many areas where the solutions
rest elsewhere. One thinks of fisheries
where one of the real challenges is to reform
the multilateral trading system under the
Doha Round of the World Trade Organization.
But it is my conviction that a renewed
understanding as to the importance of multilateralism
is emerging as a result of climate change
and as a result of need to give globalization
and international markets a more intelligent
trajectory.
UNEP is certainly working in a renewed
spirit of cooperation with the development,
industrial and trade arms of the UN.
Governments, as a result of the Secretary-Generals
High Level Panel on UN reform, are also
assessing the future of UNEP in recognition
that the environment pillar of sustainable
development needs strengthening to meet
the challenges.
The alternative to multilateralism may
be a fragmented world of competing power
blocks, of protectionism and continuing
poverty for far too manythis is not a recipe
for reversing environmental degradation
and achieving sustainability.
I believe the multilateral response to
many sustainability issues has achieved
milestones in terms of laying out the risks
and to a certain extent, highlighting the
opportunitiesin building consensus on the
magnitude of the problems we face.
It has now begun achieving important steps
on the policy response.
If we can move 191 nations together to
really combat climate change--if we can
successfully complete the Doha Round-- then
I really believe we will have given multilateralism
a renewed delivery-orientated life upon
which true sustainability can begin to flourish
now and for the future.
Thanks for your attention.
