United Nations Environment Programme - Achim Steiner, UN Under Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director

Presidents and Prime Ministers should be applauded for the cooperative action taken to rescue the global banking sector over recent months which appears to be bearing fruit. Similar coordinated action and international intervention is needed to avert a growing carbon crisis that threatens to mortgage the future of not only this generation, but the one to come.

Recent ice core samples from Antarctica indicate greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels may now be at their highest for 800,000 years. There are perhaps seven to 15 years left to begin a dramatic and sustained scaling back of those emissions in order to stabilise the atmosphere and lift the sword of Damocles hovering over more than six billion people.

Inking the future

The litmus test comes here in Poznan, Poland at the UN climate convention negotiations. It marks the half-way point in the Bali Road Map agreed, in quite euphoric circumstances in Indonesia last year, on the path towards a new global climate deal. The journey ends in Copenhagen 2009, where deep, decisive and, above all, fair agreement to combat climate change must be inked. The impact is potentially monumental, averting a catastrophe while setting the stage for a global Green Economy, able to generate new employment opportunities and environmentally-sound development alongside blossoming numbers of clean tech and conservation-orientated enterprises.

Nothing less than a growth-orientated Global Green New Deal is needed. There are signs this transition is underway, signals which should strengthen and sharpen international resolve in Poznan and beyond. Over 30 states in the United States now have renewable energy targets and the Investment Tax Credit has been extended for eight years for solar power giving some certainty in uncertain times.

Earlier this year the European Union (EU) agreed unanimously to meet emission reduction targets of 20% by 2020; 30% if others follow. The European Parliament voted last month to require most industrial sectors to cut greenhouse gases by over a fifth by 2020 under a revision of the EU Emission Trading Scheme.

Shining examples

China has doubled tax on gas guzzling cars to 40% and lowered the rate for small-engine ones to 1% while also piloting a crackdown on fixed-asset projects like power stations failing to confirm to new national energy standards. India’s new climate change national action plan is promoting big increases in renewables, energy efficiency and forestry and the government is closing inefficient, coal-fired power plants. South Africa is looking to a national goal of peaking greenhouse gases in 2025 and reducing them thereafter.

Meanwhile some 3,000 Clean Development Mechanism projects are registered or in the pipeline under the UN’s Kyoto Protocol. Countries, previously by-passed by such schemes in regions like sub-Saharan Africa, are beginning to see traction. It is a beginning, but it is not enough.

We urge governments to focus the current multi-billion stimulus packages on the new Green Economy rather than the old, brown one. Investments in energy infrastructure from ‘smart grids’ and metering, to nationwide initiatives that insulate and improve the energy efficiency of homes will deliver dividends in economic and employment growth alongside combating climate change.

An estimated seven-fold increase, or just over 70 billion Euros spent annually on retrofitting all EU households, could cut their emissions by three-quarters and generate over 2.5 million full-time jobs. Encouraging renewable and clean energy generation through public spending, tax breaks, feed-in tariffs and other market mechanisms should also be stepped up. They are already working well in some countries and need to be taken up worldwide.

Nearly half a million people are already employed in the global solar and wind industries – more like over a million if the solar heating sector in China and elsewhere is counted.

With the right pump-priming employment in these industries, this could grow to over 8.5 million by 2030. It is also a pro-poor policy. Clean energy technologies are perhaps the fastest and most cost effective way of delivering energy to the two billion, mainly poor people, without access to it. These are among the concrete measures to get the global economy and the markets back to work on low carbon growth.

Further political and intellectual capital must be spent in Poznan with concrete conclusions and foreword-looking outcomes. This includes a long-term vision of cooperative climate action backed up by the financial landscape to mobilise the markets and the trillions of dollars required. Solid progress is needed on countering deforestation now accounting for some 20% of emissions. If governments are looking for big and long-lasting stimulus packages they need look no further than real achievement in Poznan followed by an outstanding Global Green New Deal in Copenhagen.

These will prove to be the best antidotes to the carbon debt, amassing far too quickly, and the current economic malaise. Anything less will just pay lip service to the needs of six, running shortly to nine, billion people and slide the opportunities from transforming the economy firmly onto the fossil fuel back-burner.

W: www.unep.org