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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 EconomyGreen 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 of institutional reforms and regulatory,

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 in Green Economy:

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 promote interdisciplinary research.

•More involvement in community based interventions.

•Efforts are to be made for more interaction between researchers and decision –makers.

•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

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