Gerard Wynn, PlanetArk 3 Apr 09;
LONDON - World leaders at the G20 summit disappointed environmental groups on Thursday who said their commitment to fight climate change had been vague.
The leaders reaffirmed a previous commitment to sign a U.N. climate deal this year, a step the U.N. climate-change chief said was useful, though action would be better.
The London summit had focused on averting a financial meltdown, pledging a $1 trillion package to save the world economy and boost fragile consumer and business confidence.
On "green" causes the leaders affirmed a 15-month-old commitment to agree in December this year a new climate treaty and resolved to "accelerate the transition" to a low-carbon economy.
"In mobilizing the world's economies to fight back against recession we are resolved to ... promote low-carbon growth and to create the green jobs on which our future prosperity depends," said summit host British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
"We are committed to ... working together to seek agreement on a post-2012 climate change regime at the UN conference in Copenhagen in December."
Environment experts and lobbyists had wanted a stronger message to re-build a leaner economy run on wind and solar power to avoid a future climate crisis and energy crunch even worse then the financial crisis.
"For making the transition to a 'green' economy there is no money on the table, just vague aspirations," said environmental group Greenpeace's executive director John Sauven.
COMMON UNDERSTANDING
U.N. climate change chief Yvo de Boer said words were good, but action better.
"It's always useful to reiterate the commitment, better to actually do it," he said.
"I think it's good," he told Reuters of the G20 outcome. "This is a good example of the major economies of the world coming together and developing a common understanding." The summit was never likely to assign targets for green spending estimated at up to 15 percent of recovery plans now -- and which green policy analysts say should be between a fifth and a half.
Countries led by China, the United States, South Korea and the European Union have already committed to use a portion of recovery spending for green causes.
A report for WWF and environment think-tank E3G published on Thursday said Britain's and Italy's recovery plans did more climate harm than good when road-building was included.
British energy and climate minister Ed Miliband told Reuters stimulus spend on climate wasn't about "plucking figures out of the air" but shifting the issue into mainstream economic debate.
A representative of small island states at 175-nation climate talks in Germany said the G20 leaders should have put more money into preventing rising seas caused by climate change.
"If they can mobilize trillions of dollars to create jobs why can't they do more to stop climate change?" said M.J. Mace, legal advisor to the Federated States of Micronesia.
G20 forgets the environment
George Monbiot The Guardian 2 Apr 09;
Climate breakdown, peak oil and resource depletion all dwarf the financial crisis in financial and humanitarian terms
Here is the text of the G20 communique, in compressed form.
"We, the Leaders of the Group of Twenty, will use every cent we don't possess to rescue corporate capitalism from its contradictions and set the world economy back onto the path of unsustainable growth. We have already spent trillions of dollars of your money on bailing out the banks, so that they can be returned to their proper functions of fleecing the poor and wrecking the Earth's living systems. Now we're going to spend another $1.1 trillion. As an exemplary punishment for their long record of promoting crises, we will give the IMF and the World Bank even more of your money. These actions constitute the greatest mobilisation of resources to support global financial flows in modern times.
Oh - and we nearly forgot. We must do something about the environment. We don't have any definite plans as yet, but we'll think of something in due course."
The G20's strategy for solving the financial and economic crisis, in other words, is detailed, innovative, fully costed and of vast scale and ambition. Its plans for solving the environmental crisis are brief, vague and uncosted. The environmental clauses - which contradict almost everything that goes before - have been tacked onto the end of the communique as an afterthought. No new money has been set aside. No new ideas are proposed; just the usual wishful thinking: let's call the whole package green and hope for the best.
So much for the pledge, expressed in different forms by most of the governments present at the talks, to put the environment at the heart of decision-making. Though the economy is merely a measure of our engagement with the environment; though, as most of the leaders acknowledge, continued prosperity is impossible without sustainability, the communique shows that the environment still comes last. No expense is spared in saving the banks. Every expense is spared in saving the biosphere.
This suggests to me that our leaders have learnt nothing from the financial crisis. It was caused by allowing powerful agents (the banks) to exploit a common resource (the global economy) without proper control or regulation. Governments deployed a form of magical thinking: that the boom would go on forever, that a bunch of predatory psychopaths would regulate themselves, that profits, dividends and share prices could grow indefinitely even though they bore no relation to actual value.
They treat the environmental crisis the same way. Climate breakdown, peak oil and resource depletion will all dwarf the current financial crisis, in both financial and humanitarian terms. But, just as they did with the banks, the G20 leaders appear to have decided to deal with these problems only when they have to - in other words, when it's too late. They persuade themselves that getting the economy back to where it was - infinite growth on a finite planet - can somehow be reconciled with the pledge "to address the threat of irreversible climate change".
Next time this magical thinking fails, there'll be no chance of a bail-out.
Civil society wants sustainable growth package from G-20
WWF 2 Apr 09;
WWF International Director General James Leape and others have signed an open letter addressed to G-20 heads of state on behalf of an "international global coalition for a green economy” asking the group to pick an economic stimulus package that supports sustainable growth.
Signatories include top leaders from environment, development, business and labour groups, such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Bellagio Forum for Sustainable Development.
“We urge you to ensure that the entirety of the G20 emergency package supports three goals: (1) building economic resilience; (2) social justice and distributional equity by promoting decent work for all; (3) protection and sustainable use of the environment,” Leape and others wrote in the letter.
The letter goes on to ask G-20 leaders “to allocate $750 billion of this stimulus package, which is around 1% of global GDP, to investments that will build an inclusive and green economy.”
Established in 1999, the Group of Twenty, known better as the G-20, is composed of finance ministers, political leaders and central bank governors and aims to bring together industrialized and developing economies to discuss key issues in the global economy, according to its website. Heads of state are currently meeting to participate in the G-20 in London.
Download the letter here (PDF).
