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RIO+20 FEED BACK ON
GREEN ECONOMY AND
REFELCTION IN SUDAN
SITUATION
BY:
Al-Haj Hamad M.K Haj Hamad (Ph.D)
The Green Economy
Green economy is defined by World
Resources Institute as an alternative
vision for growth and development,
one that can generate growth and
improvements in people’s lives in
ways consistent with sustainable
development. A green economy
promotes a triple bottom line;
sustaining and advancing economic,
environmental and social well-being.
A green economy attempts to remedy
problems
of
poverty,
environmental
degradation,
and pollution through a variety
institutional reforms and regulatory,
of
tax and expenditure based on economic
policies and tools.
In many ways green economy objectives
simply support those already articulated as
the
broader
goals
of
sustainable
development.
Literature
on
green
economy
pointed many challenges that face
the transition to green economy.
These include:•Increase public awareness about
the need to change behavior and the
belief that such change is for their
interest.
•Promote new indicators that
complement GDP by adopting more
diverse and representative set of
economic indicators that focus less
on growth and track the pace and
progress of development.
•More
consultations
and
participation in decision-making.
•Political leadership is critical to
overcome
institutional
fragmentation.
•In general Green Economy is based on
six main sectors:-
-Renewable energy (solar, wind, biogas
etc)
-Green buildings, water efficiency,
green products
-Clean transportation alternative fuels
-Water management
-Waste management
-Land management
Rio+20
The high-level UN Earth Summit in
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, last week
was called an ”epic failure” by
Greenpeace and other
environmental organizations. Their
disappointments are reminiscent of
the ”epic failure” of the UN Climate
Conference in Durban, South Africa
only half a year earlier.
Other critics have re-named the
summit “Rio+20”, since no progress at
all has been made since the Earth
Summit in the same city in 1992, when
three important conventions were
adopted on climate change,
biodiversity and desertification.
Yet, despite their noble ambitions,
these conventions have failed
miserably in reversing the negative
global environmental trends: since
1990, yearly emissions of carbon
dioxide have increased 45 % and
soon the atmospheric concentration
will pass 400 ppm, to be compared
with the 280 ppm pre-industrial rate.
The extinction rate of species
today is alarmingly high with
some 30 % of amphibians, 21 %
of birds and 25 % of mammal
species at risk. The fight against
desertification is also being lost,
with the percentage of degraded
land area rising from 15 % in
1991 to 24 % in 2008.
But if the 1992 Rio Summit
convention was too little too late,
at least it still remotely mustered
some global political ambition for
dealing with the ecological
crises. The same cannot be said
of any global environmental
agreements since.
The 2012 Rio declaration,
ironically called “The future we
want”, is nothing but a political
surrender to the forces of
ecological destruction that now
put human civilization as we
know it at stake.
From a geopolitical perspective the
negotiation stalemate is doubtlessly
caused by the inaction of the
developed countries in the North.
Even though their population is
only one fifth of the worlds’, their
accumulated carbon emissions
amount to 75 % of the total.
Similar figures for ecological
footprints inexorably reveals who
has caused – and benefited from –
environmental degradation, and
who therefore should be obliged to
take the lead – and pay the costs –
towards a global green transition.
Twenty years ago, this obligation
was acknowledged through the
adoption of the “common but
differentiated responsibilities”
principle 7 in Rio 1992.
But since the North has never
fulfilled its assignment –
definitely not the US, with the EU
being only slightly better – it is
completely unrealistic that
countries such as China, India,
Brazil or South Africa would put
their partly successful catch-up
development at risk for cleaning
up the mess caused by others.
Seen from an economic system
perspective, the ecological crises
reveal a crisis for the development
model of both North and South.
Inherent in the notion of “sustainable
development” – launched in the 1987
Brundtland Report and the
foundation for all mainstream
environment policy since then – lies
the promise of green growth, of
constant win-win solutions between
ecology and economy, that simply has
not been met in reality.
Not in the classic industrialization
development formula, not in the
private profit-maximizing
structural adjustment
neoliberalism, and not in the
financial market approach of the
so-called “green economy” that
was the flavor of the month in Rio
2012.
While never clearly defined,
green economy usually refers
to attempts at “internalizing
the environmental
externalities” through the
objectification and
commodification of ecosystems
(reduced to their
“environmental services”).
These newly minted services
can then be bought, traded or
securitized as any other
financial commodities.
Experience so far implies that
such market-based solutions
have weak environmental
impacts but strong social
impacts. Evaluations of the CDM
market, part of the carbon
trading scheme of the Kyoto
protocol, reveal that between one
and two third of the projects do
not deliver the promised
emission cuts.
In Africa, India and other parts
of the world, poor rural dwellers
are those most dependent on the
free “services” – e.g. fresh water,
food, firewood, medical plants –
that the natural commons
provide.
Payment schemes may perhaps
slow down deforestation at a
high social price (such as
restricting access to forest
dwellers to use firewood for
example), but the “avoided
emissions” are then traded and
exchanged for continued
emissions in a developed
country.
In this way, commodification often
means zero gains for the environment
but a de-facto transfer of rights and
properties from the poor to the rich.
Essentially, it provides a way for those
who can afford it to occupy double the
environmental space, as they can
continue emitting, while assuaging
their guilt through “green
consumption”.
No wonder the “green economy”
has been enthusiastically hailed
by companies and governments
stuck in the growth discourse
while at the same time has been
unequivocally rejected by social
and environmental movements
throughout the global South.
In order to find genuinely
sustainable solutions – in both an
environmental and social sense –
to the current crises other
methods and policies will most
certainly prove necessary.
But even more crucial is the insight that
these crises cannot be solved only by the
win-win market-based solutions. The
social metabolism – the economy’s
material and energy throughput from
extraction to waste – tends to increase
whether economic growth is dubbed
green or not, and as it grows, so does
ecological degradation and an increase
of environmental distribution conflicts
over the use of the resources – for social
or market purposes.
Stated goals to reduce the
ecological and carbon footprint
and at the same time improve
life for the billions who still
lack basic resources cannot be
achieved while simultaneously
maintaining growth for those
who already live in prosperity.
Someone will have to make
sacrifices.
Sudan:
Initiatives
Economy:
in
Green
Governments have a central role to
play in putting in place strategies
targeting policy reforms to promote
initiatives contributing to green
economy. These include:-
•Bringing energy to the rural poor as one
of the most important contributions to
green economy. Efforts in expanding
solar energy in rural areas are a good
example of such initiative.
•There are attempts to further efforts in
the rehabilitation of degraded areas and
increase green cover to reduce impacts
of climate change.
•Sustainable forms of agriculture can
increase yields and ensure food security
•There is more involvements in clean
energy technology such as solar energy,
wind energy and hydro
•Attempts are made in rural areas through
adaptation to impacts of climate change
through use of indigenous knowledge
merged with scientific research results
(water harvesting, range improvement and
community action plans).
•There is need for more training for green
workforce supported with new perspective
and managerial capacities.
•There
is
need
to
interdisciplinary research.
promote
•More involvement in community based
interventions.
•Efforts are to be
interaction between
decision –makers.
made for more
researchers and
•Food security and challenges of
climate change, competition for land
and water, food security can be
enhanced by improving the ecological
base through sound use of land
resources, reducing water waste and
promote intensification.
•It is important to enhance agriculture
through water conservation , water
harvesting and restoration of degraded
lands
•The concentration of people, industry
and infrastructure in urban areas, has a
major influence on environment outside
the cities. Cities contain 35%of Sudan’s
population and consume about 60-8o%of
its energy and emit about 75% of carbon
dioxide emissions –green economy will
reduce such impacts. Hence green cities
require compactness that reduce travel
time and reduce energy use and air
pollution. High densities
also brings low
costs for water and sewage system, street
infrastructure as well as lower per capita
demands for land
•No
country
can
meet
its
development
objectives
without
improving the way its water resources
are managed. Hence present attempts
in
Integrated
Water
Resources
Management (IWRM) are supported at
both federal and state levels.
•Government policies can encourage
a shift in production process in vital
sectors such as agriculture, thereby
increasing incomes while achieving
sustainability. It is important to
incorporate policies that encourage
technologies with relatively low
economic
costs
and
significant
returns (solar energy, labor intensive,
water harvesting etc.).
About Carbon War Room:
CWR is a global entrepreneur initiative
set up by Sir Richard Branson that
accelerates entrepreneurial solutions to
deploy profitable, scalable clean
technologies. It focuses on breaking down
market barriers for capital to flow to
entrepreneurial solutions, and takes a
global sector-based approach
New Partnership: The cement
industry is one of the most carbonintensive. While the majority of
cement production occurs in China,
and China's percentage of market
share is rapidly rising, many of the
technologies that can greatly reduce
emissions in this industry are being
developed in the United States,
Europe, and throughout the world.
To stimulate investment in
these new technologies, the
Carbon War Room and MIT
Center for Collective
Intelligence announced a new
partnership today to co-host a
MITClimate CoLab contest on
cement. The goal of the contest
is to find solutions for deploying
profitable, scalable clean
technology or process changes
that can result in an annual,
gigaton-scale (billion tons)
abatement of CO2 emissions.