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World far from “green economy” – UN

21 February 2011

President Jacob Zuma‘s State of the Nation address two weeks ago highlighted the green economy as one of six focus areas for job creation, and the government’s New Growth Path and other policy documents make the same point.

But, the world is very far from a “green economy” that would improve human well-being while reducing environmental and ecological risk, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Green Economy Report released in Nairobi today.

Zuma told a green economy “summit” in Sandton last year that South Africa believed stimulating investment in green industries would help the country create jobs, and the government’s Medium Term Strategic Framework to 2014 committed it to “pursue and further explore the concept of “˜green jobs’, including scaling up labour-intensive natural resource management practices which contribute to decent work and livelihood opportunities.”

The UNEP report claims that investing 2% of global GDP “” which the UNEP calculated was, on average, $1,3-trillion a year “” into 10 key sectors could “kick-start” transition to the “green economy” while growing the economy at a the same rate, if not higher, than those forecast, if the investment was backed by forward-looking national and international policies. Doing this would also protect the world economy from the “risks, shocks, scarcities and crises increasingly inherent in the existing, resource-depleting, high-carbon ‘brown’ economy”.

Investment was needed in reducing deforestation, “greening” agricultural “processes and infrastructure, mitigating growing water scarcity, tourism development, job creation, energy efficiency and an expansion of the use of renewable energy sources, recycling and waste management and others, according to the document.

World Wide Fund for Nature SA climate change programme manager Richard Worthington said the government policies had thus far failed to live up to its green economy rhetoric, and far more should be done to ensure SA’s development was as kind to the environment as possible.

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