UNEP Joins Forces
with Africa's Finance, Economic and Development
Organizations to Fast Track Low Carbon,
Resource Efficient Growth
Addis Ababa/Nairobi,
13 October 2010 - A major Africa-wide conference
highlighting on how the more than 50 nations
on the Continent can transit to a low-carbon,
resource-efficient Green Economy will take
place next year in response to the call
by the African Ministerial Conference on
the Environment (AMCEN).
The conference will
showcase how smart policy moves and creative
investments across sectors, ranging from
agriculture and transport to fisheries and
forests, can drive green and sustainable
growth alongside job creation and livelihood
for Africa's one billion citizens.
The conference will
be among the first fruits of a partnership
on Africa's options for a Green Economy
-backed by the African Union; the African
Development Bank; the UN Economic Commission
for Africa (UNECA) and the UN Environment
Programme (UNEP)-which emerged today at
the VII African Development Forum in Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary
General and UNEP Executive Director who
is attending the forum, said: "Africa
is at key crossroads in its history. It
is facing multiple challenges from overcoming
poverty and coping with climate change to
rising water scarcity and food insecurity
in part linked with sharp levels of desertification."
"But it is also
a moment of rising opportunities that many
leaders in Africa are glimpsing from the
potential for renewable energy such as wind
and solar to the extraordinary economic
importance of Africa's nature-based assets
such as its forests, river systems and coastal
waters-not to speak of a young and in many
cases, an increasingly skilled work force,"
he added.
Mr. Steiner is among
700 delegates from Africa and beyond including
the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, the Prime
Minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg; the
Chairperson of the African Union Commission,
Jean Ping; French Environment Minister Jean-Louis
Borloo; Africa Development Bank President,
Donald Kaberuka and UNECA Executive Secretary
Abdouile Janneh.
Since launching the
Green Economy Initiative in 2008, during
the height of the ongoing global financial
and economic crisis, many countries have
come forward seeking advisory services from
UNEP on how they can tailor their economies
along such a path.
In Africa, UNEP has
started the implementation of a regional
pilot partnership covering seven countries
- Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda,
Senegal and South Africa - in advance of
the Rio+20 Summit where the Green Economy
is one of the two main themes.
Speaking today at sessions
on climate change and the Green Economy,
Mr. Steiner pointed out that the 'world
was awash with crises'.
"It may seem that
escalating crises and the often glacial
international response means countries,
including those on the African continent,
are unable to respond. But Africa is not
doing this," he added.
"Indeed, when you
look across this Continent leaders and business,
communities and citizens are seizing opportunities
to re-define and re-focus their development
paths along Green Economic lines,"
said Mr. Steiner.
"In part this comes
out of understandable frustration with the
pace of change internationally. And in part
because many leaders here have glimpsed
a future based on a transition to a low
carbon, resource efficient economy in which
environmental sustainability is the engine
room," he added.
Mr. Steiner highlighted
these transitions with several examples:
In July this year Heads of State meeting
under the Economic Community of West African
States endorsed an initiative by President
Aboulaye Wade of Senegal on significantly
expanding solar power in order to boost
energy access.
Meanwhile, in Kenya,
where UNEP is headquartered, a new government
feed-in tariff has triggered investment
in what will be one of the biggest wind
farms on the Continent-300 MW in the Turkana
region.
Restoration of Kenya's
Mau forest complex, after decades of degradation,
is also underway after assessments produced
by the government and with support from
UNEP were indicating that the value of that
forest to the economy-including tourism,
hydro power, agriculture and the tea industry-
is perhaps as much as US$1.5 billion a year.
Ethiopia is also part
of this transition, not least through some
of its pioneering work in 'green accounting'
which has been putting monetary values on
soil erosion and deforestation in terms
of the impacts on GDP and the tripling of
forest cover since the turn of the century.
Uganda, a country where
85 per cent of the working population is
employed in agriculture, has turned to organic
production to boost exports and incomes.
Farm-gate prices for organic vanilla, ginger
and pineapples are higher than for conventional
produce.
Since 2004, the number of certified organic
farmers in Uganda has grown from 45,000
to over 200,000, the area of land under
organic cultivation from 185,000 hectares
to close to 300,000 hectares and organic
exports have increased from US$3.7 million
in 2003/4, to US$6.3 million in 2004/5,
before jumping to US$22.8 million in 2007/8.
Mr. Steiner underlined
that a Green Economy was as much about spotlighting
the economic absurdities at large in the
world as showcasing smart policy decisions.
Around US$27 billion
of fisheries subsidizes are fueling over-fishing
and threatening the lives and livelihoods
of one billion people who directly rely
on fish as protein.
"Why are we investing
in the means of capture-over capture-rather
than in the recovery of the stock?"
Mr. Steiner added.
Fossil fuel subsidies
totaling some US$500 billion a year which,
according to research, rarely reaches the
poor and benefits the middle classes, fuel
companies and equipment makers.
"And which contribute
to economic inefficiencies. Greenhouse gas
emissions and the perpetuation of fossil
fuel dependency or agricultural subsides,
including fertilizers and pesticides allied
to food wastes, represent one of the biggest
market failures globally," said the
UNEP Executive Director.
Earlier Mr. Steiner
attended a debate on Environmental Diplomacy
saying it might seem new to some, but that
it was as "as old as the Entoto hills,
near Addis Ababa".
He said the difference
between the past and the present in which
communities and countries often used time-honoured
traditions to resolve natural resource disputes,
was the sheer scale of humanity's contemporary
footprint allied to the fact that pollution
and degradation is now 'exported' hundreds
and thousands of miles.
"Some of the poorest
and most vulnerable can become victims as
a result of pollution generated not by them
but by others-Environmental Diplomacy is
about finding fair and equitable solutions
to such realities," Mr. Steiner said.
"And perhaps more
importantly of finding cooperative and forward-looking
agreements between over 190 nations for
managing-down impacts en route to sustainable
development-agreements that recognize the
historical responsibilities of some countries
and increasingly the rights of generations
yet born," he added.
"Rights to a healthy
and productive planet that will allow the
next generation to reach its full potential
rather than being marginalized or short-changed
by an over-exploitative previous one,"
said Mr. Steiner.
Delegates agreed that
evolving Environmental Diplomacy is becoming
an increasingly important and strategic
policy platform for international relations
and called for a further workshop that engages
Africa diplomats at the UN headquarters
in New York.
Notes to Editors
The decision to establish
an Africa-wide Green Economy conference
has come in response to the Bamako Declaration.
The Declaration, including
fostering a Green Economy, was made at the
13th session of the African Ministerial
Conference on the Environment, the Secretariat
of which was hosted by UNEP in June this
year in Mali.
The two speeches by
Achim Steiner to the VII African Development
Forum are available on www.unep.org in the
newsroom under speeches:
The VII African Development
Forum http://www.uneca.org/adfvii/
UNEP's Green Economy Initiative www.unep.org/greeneconomy
