Sufficiency and Sustainability

by Dr. John Blewitt

Being based in a former manufacturing and engineering region of the UK where the automotive industry was once one of the largest, if not the largest, employer the industrial restructuring over the previous twenty years and the more recent economic downturn has given sustainability a greater urgency than ever before.

The ecological threats we are all facing such as climate change, resource depletion, biodiversity loss and so on are directly and indirectly our responsibility. These threats are worsening by the day but the very real economic difficulties seem more immediate, more pressing, more real. Infact, both are equally pressing and equally real and it is time for all of us, especially those working or directing big and small businesses, to do things differently. Clearly, it is important that a decent standard and quality of life is important and it doesn’t matter whether you are in Bangladesh, China, the UK, the US or anywhere else these things are important. However, we need to recognise that sustainability, living within the ecological carrying capacity of our planet, is linked to sufficiency. Surely, there is such a thing as enough. We should not just want new and more things because we can see them advertised on bill boards, on TV or on the internet. More does not necessarily mean a better life although for those who do live in poverty more does indeed mean that. We need to address sufficiency and sustainability, quality of life rather than standard of life, well being rather than growth and consumption.

For me, being socially and environmentally responsible is understanding that we are part of nature, that we are all on the planet together – for better or for worse. The important thing is that we need to make things better and Business and Higher Education can contribute immensely to make this happen. The problem is that for too long Business and Higher Education have not been as involved in promoting environmental sustainability and ethical business practices as they should have been. In many ways they have been part of the problem and a cause of our present ecological and economic crises. Hopefully, things are changing. They need to. And, fast.

http://www.greenconduct.com/blog/2010/11/30/sufficency-and-sustainability/

Will poor countries get enough money to adapt to climate change?

Will poor countries get enough money to adapt to climate change?

The only way developing world can adapt to climate change is if rich world carries the financial burden needed to help developing nations adapt to droughts, floods and rising sea levels.

Last year's Copenhagen summit was generally one big failure but nevertheless the rich countries have still pledged to raise $100bn a year in climate aid from 2020 in order to help developing world. Can this really be achieved and will poor countries really get enough money to adapt to climate change?

According to the latest UN report obtaining this money will be challenging but still feasible, because UN believes that the public sector could extract more than $100bn and the private sector five times more, up to $500bn a year.

The UN report has also specified possible sources by claiming that between $2bn and $27bn could be raised from financial transaction taxes on foreign exchange, $4bn to $9bn from shipping, $2bn to $3bn from aviation, $3bn to $8bn from removal of fossil fuel subsidies and $8bn to $38bn from auctioning carbon allowances.

Putting prices on carbon emissions is still the key to success, and it has been calculated that carbon price needs to be in the range of $20 to $25 a tonne of carbon dioxide if the world wants to reach the desired $100bn mark.

Global politics is yet to achieve the desired level of political acceptability for this plan because there are still many issues between developed and developing world that need to be sorted out prior to reaching the final agreement.

Climate talks in Cancun are fast approaching, and it will be very interesting to see how far did countries progressed since Copenhagen, and whether world is finally ready to act as one in order to tackle climate change.

To read more about this blog log onto:http://climatechangearticles.blogspot.com/search/label/climate%20change

Bring back the Rio 92 Spirit - Mr. Uchita de Soyza

Bring back the Rio92 Spirit

UCHITA DE ZOYSA (CONVENER – CLIMATE SUSTAINABILITY PLATFORM)

In 1991, I was part of a small group of civil society members that came to Geneva to attend the second preparatory committee meeting of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). We all quickly found common ground in sustainability to work together, and when we went to the Earth Summit in 1992 we were in one global forum.

As an International NGO Forum we were united to draft the Alternative NGO Treaties, as we all knew that we had to act together to save the earth. Despite our enormous diversity we came together in the true spirit of an Earth Summit. Sadly, the Rio+20 process appears to lack the Rio92 spirit and civil society particularly appears to have forgotten the simple concept of “united we thrive and divided we perish”.

A Low Key Earth Summit

Twenty Years later, another Earth Summit is being organized without many governments, civil society members, stakeholders or the populations of nations knowing much or anything about it. As the self appointed and UN appointed NGO representatives continue to enjoy the perks of conferencing, the rest of the world waits to hear what decisions are being made on their behalf.

People’s representatives from the South are marginalized in this process and have no ways and means to contribute to a decisive global event that may have a determining impact on the future of mankind on earth. Even smaller and poorer governments are in the dark, while another intercessional meeting for Rio+20 is convened.

The success of the earth summit will depend on the ability of the UN secretariat to ensure true global participation and dialogue, and not by adding to the hundreds of already existing international agreements for non-action by nations. If this can not be achieved another ‘last chance to save the earth’, as mentioned in 1992, will be wasted.

Greening the Trade War

The central theme emerging for Rio+20 is the Green Economy. While greening the economy is a process intended to regulate the world’s unsustainable consumption, production and trading, the objective of creating a green economy appears to be focused more on creating new market opportunities. Greening the existing industrial production system will not help green the economy; it will not take us towards a carbon neutral society, nor drive us away from wasteful lifestyles.

The questions that should be asked here include; are we entering into a new phase of a global trading regime that favours the rich and powerful? And are we using the concepts of environmentalism to green wash the black industrial economies?

Poverty Eradication

While discussing sustainability for the past four decades, the world has failed in the eradication of hunger and poverty on earth. Currently, half of the world’s peoples are under the poverty line and are desperately struggling to survive on a daily basis.

Poverty is a result of a hypocritical global governance system. This is a system that has promoted unsustainable production regimes and over-consuming societies to grow further; a system that rewards exploitation by a few and obstructs access to resources by the majority; a system where the unconcerned and non-compassionate continue to decide the destinies of humanity.

If any hope for sustainability is to be drawn in the development processes in the developing countries where the poor reside, poverty needs to be eradicated.

Sustainable Consumption and Production

The prevailing unsustainable consumption and production system is the largest contributing factor to both climate change and poverty on earth and thus requires greater emphasis and focus at the levels of international regulation. If anthropogenic climate change is to be controlled, then developing a regulatory framework for sustainable consumption and production must be a priority as well.

In very simple terms, unsustainable consumption and production needs to be regulated on earth, parallel to emission cuts as a solution to both problems of climate change and poverty.

Climate Sustainability

Climate change is no longer a possibility but a larger reality that has already commenced and is ascending. While the Kyoto Protocol is said to be expiring in 2012, and the world is looking for a new binding agreement in 2012, the Rio+20 UNCSD Summit once again fails to include it in its agenda. Sadly, the Climate Change Convention that was signed at the first Earth Summit in 1992 has become out of reach of the sustainable development programme and has become another separate programme in the UN system.

International Sustainable Development Governance

The current International Environmental Governance (IEG) initiative may be two decades too old. Obviously the UN needs to clean up the big mess of managing the Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEA). However, trying to segregate environmental governance would only create another distraction to the sustainability processes and isolate that crucial pillar from economic and social considerations of a way forward on earth.

What we require at this stage is to create more central coordination on sustainable development as a holistic approach towards facing climate change, poverty eradication and global peace on earth. This would be a better strategy to achieve wellbeing and happiness for all on earth.

A Low Carbon Future: Renewable Energy

The whole idea of having a 'low carbon future' and maintaining it, is built around the effectiveness of Renewable Energy sources. Renewable Energy, or energy that is replenished by natural phenomenon, is one that is now of major importance to nations all over the world.

Over the last decade, new technology that can effectively, yet sustainably tap into renewable resources are being developed, with the most focus being put on hydro, wind and solar power. Lets have a look at how each different type of renewable energy is being touched:

1. Solar energy: This energy is generated by heat and light from the sun. A growing of wide variety of solar photo voltaic plants are also called utility scale is greater which now account for one quarter of total grid attached solar PV capacity. The greater part of renewable energy sources come straight or indirectly from the sun. The purposes are hot water plants in buildings, solar cooling, for electricity and lighting of houses and complexes.

2. Wind power: The preservation of wind energy into electrical energy utilizing wind turbines. These types of wind times as a collective term called as wind farms. Firms continue to improve common turbine sizes and improves technologies, such as with gearless designs which creates additional power.

3. Biomass power: These biomass power plants can be found in over 50 nations throughout the globe and offer an improving nature of electricity. Biogas for power development is also a developing craze in many countries.

4. Geothermal power: Exists in 20 nations which use heat beneath the earth’s surface to generate energy.

5.Bio fuels: The primary bio fuels consists of corn ethanol, sugar ethanol and bio diesel. The United States and Brazil accounted for just about 90 percent of global ethanol production.

6. Hydropower: This is the most widely applied kind of renewable energy. Energy produced from water turbines relies on the volume and difference in height in between the source and the water’s outflow.

Energy is critical to the entire infrastructure of the world. Energy, in particular clean energy technology, is also becoming a strong driver of the world’s economy. According to research on the Clean Energy Trends for 2010, biofuels provided $44.9 billion to the economy in 2009 and is projected to grow to $112.5 billion by 2019. Wind power is expected to expand from $63.5 billion in 2009 to $114.5 billion in 2019. Solar photovoltaics, including modules, system components, and installation, will grow from $36.1 billion in 2009 to $116.5 billion in 2019.In addition, analysis shows that solar photovoltaics and wind power industries currently account for 8.3 million jobs. The projections for 2019 are more than 3.3 million jobs in those two sectors.

With the natural gas supply running out within the next 35 years, and given the fact that if the current rate of consumption continues for oil, the supply is predicted to run out within the next 14 years, RENEWABLE SOURCES OF ENERGY ARE A MUST for mankind.

If you have any suggestions or information to share with regards to Renewable Sources of Energy, please do share it with us :)

The ever losing battle

By sahan Hattotuwa

As a member of the Core Committee of the Green Lanka Youth Platform, I have thought about environmental sustainability, with regards to the many countries of the World and also thought what our country (Sri Lanka). This will be a part of many documents that I will be publishing.

Today the population of the World is almost around 7 billion, and we have seen that technology has developed greatly and that technology will go on developing in the future and will reach new heights. We can also see that the Consumer trend has changed dramatically over the past 20 years. With this in mind we can conclude that Consumer Demand will increase at an over-whelming pace because of the fast growing population of the world and the constant change of consumer trends. Due to the ever increasing demand of consumers, the environment of the world is deteriorating, as the need for the supply for this demand is increasing. Today people are free to spend their money on whatever they want, and people do change quickly and adjust to different trends in the world.

Today if a person has money or a huge wealth, he is considered a powerful man in the society and will be respected more than the others. This situation escalates to a huge scale when it comes to the World Political Arena, and as of now the new modern warfare is Economics. With this statement in mind , I can conclude that governments in the world, who are greedy for power and respect , will fulfill this wish of theirs’ by doing anything just to have a powerful economy, yet have no concern for the environment.

What do governments substitute in order for development? They Substitute basic human rights and destroy our lovely environment. Today the world is facing Climate Change, because of this problem. We have polluted rivers, air and the whole environment in general, because Governments of the world want to grow, develop and supposedly thrive.

Governments of the world have a duty to protect their environment as it has a direct link to the health of their country’s people. We see that businesses in the world conduct wrongfully to increase their profits; they do incur huge social costs and externalities to the society. One such example is when businesses release toxic chemicals from factories to water bodies which many people use for their basic needs, and when people consume this, they get sick and end up with cancers. Thus people do suffer from these ill practices, yet governments all over the world show little, or no concern about these kinds of issues, simply because they don’t want to upset the so called ‘Corporate Giants’, as they contribute largely to the national income of the Country. We can see that governments are selfish and only think in the short term, without thinking the long term effects that apply to the whole country.

Although we see that some countries have taken a keen interest in the environment by conducting and organizing many Environmental Sustainability Conferences, the final outcome is still very disappointing. These issues are brought out by the small and less powerful states, and what eventually happens is that the powerful states do not cooperate as they fear they might lose their share of the global market.

As I have stated earlier in this document, the main problem for, and the major barrier to achieving environmental sustainability is the very large population and their huge demand for goods and services.

We shall take a small case for consideration. For example as everyone knows there is a huge demand for jeans as it is very popular among the youth. Thus there many jeans manufacturers based in China. Due to extensive production of Jeans, many water bodies in China are polluted and it has caused many problems to the Ecology and Humanity. Why has this happened? Because the sole reason that businesses don’t care about the environment, is that they only care whether they make good profits and supply for the Demand. The Chinese authorities also should be blamed for their negligence. As of fact China do face a water shortage. Then shouldn’t the Chinese government look after it previous water.

So we can see that Governments or relevant authorities don’t care about the environment getting polluted because they think it is has a very a minute problem, but everyone will only wake up when the problem escalates out of control. Shouldn’t everyone take action now, rather than later?