Beijing 8 April,
2010 - Climate Change has been described
as the biggest market failure of this generation.
But there are other
market failures too.
The recent food or food
price crisis and the rapidly emerging natural
resource scarcity crisis are also part of
this market failure mentality.
There is also an employment
crisis with two billion people likely to
be unemployed or under-employed within the
next decade.
Will they all be put
to work making cars, washing machines and
I-pods-will we all own three or four cars;
10 mobile phones and PCs?
Or are there different
kinds of jobs in sustainable industries
such as recyling, materials recovery and
natural resource management?
We live in a world that
is pushing, if not pushing past critical
limits-climate change is a key one.
In the past, in a world
of a few millions or hundred million people,
one option was too mine the natural world
and to pollute the seas, the land and the
atmosphere and move on.
This is not possible
in a world of six billion, moving to nine
billion people by 2050.
There is no where to
go.
It is also not possible
if, as appears to be happening not least
as a result of climate change, humans are
fundamentally and systematically changing
their life support systems at regional and
global level.
We need to manage the
multiple challenges.
And manage not in a
piecemeal, bit by bit way, but in a joined-up
far smarter and intelligent strategic approach.
UNEP recently launched
its Green Economy Initiative.
It is a broad-based
and aimed at catalyzing a transition to
a low carbon, high-tech, resource efficient
and job generating 21st century global economy.
It is showcasing smart
market mechanisms and intelligent fiscal
and other government policies able to unleash
the private sector towards a less wasteful
economic path.
For markets are not
God given: they are man-made and as such
can be steered in a direction that maximizes
environmental, social and economic returns.
Some Asian economies
such as the Republic of Korea (95 per cent)
and China (over a third) have invested a
significant slice of their stimulus packages-in
response to the global financial crisis-
in green sectors.
These include low carbon
vehicles, high speed rail links; recycling;
energy efficiency and renewable energies
and so on.
This is the hard, Green
Economy infrastructure.
But there is perhaps
one missed opportunity here. And that is
what one might call investments and re-investments
in the soft Green Economy, what we call
ecological infrastructure.
Forests are a case in
point.
At the recent UN climate
convention meeting in Copenhagen, governments
gave the green light to REDD-reduced emissions
from deforestation and forest degradation.
Deforestation currently
accounts for somewhere near 20 per cent
of greenhouse gas emissions.
Investments here are
not just good for the climate, but for water
supplies, nutrient recycling, soil stabilization;
biodiversity and jobs-a real Green Economy
investment.
Several Asian countries
are working under the UN-REDD programme
to be part of this new carbon investment
opportunity including Indonesia and Vietnam.
Why not more.
And what about agriculture,
can we farm in a far more carbon friendly
ways.
UNEP is working with
farmers and landowners in Kenya, Niger,
Nigeria and China to test this and to set
a standard.
One that can allow a
carbon market investor in London or Frankfurt
to assess how much to pay for every tonne
of carbon locked away under different land
management regimes.
And what about other
ecosystems, say mangroves.
These tropical ecosystems
are being rapidly cleared-something like
five per cent annually- for coastal development
and for shrimp farms.
Yet they are nurseries
for fish, water purification systems and
important for coastal defenses.
They are also important
in the fight against climate change.
UNEP and others estimate
that along with seagrasses and salt marshes,
mangroves may be soaking up greenhouse gases
equal to half the world's transport emissions.
So why are we clearing
them when they are worth far more intact
than damaged and destroyed-clearly another
market failure here too.
The path Asia takes
over the coming years and decades will in
large part define the sustainability or
unsustainability of planet Earth including
in respect to climate change.
Asia is undoubtedly
going to grow: the question is how that
growth will happen-old brown growth or Green
Growth.
Unlike developed economies,
whose infrastructures are largely in place,
vast swathes of Asia are a bright, blank
canvas upon which modern, low carbon-rather
than carbon hungry-development could occur.
International support
will be crucial, but so too enabling, encouraging
and imaginative national policies will also
be central.
Asia is also home to
vast natural assets from forests to marine
ecosystems which if creatively managed could
underpin increasing levels of wealth and
employment including via solutions to the
climate change challenge.
Yet another reason why
it is in Asia's interests to fully re-engage
at the next UN climate convention meeting
in Mexico later in the year.
So ladies and gentlemen,
the elements of green growth are emerging
in Asia.
With the right political
impetus this region become the power house
and the leader in a low carbon, high-tech
rather than dirty tech, resource efficient
Green Economic future
One that makes Asia
also highly competitive, less dependent
on finite natural resources and a model
for overcoming poverty and a beacon for
sustainability.
It is in the end a choice-but
one that is already starting to be made:
the time has come to embed it into policy
decisions region-wide that embrace multiple
sectors from the hard to the soft.
