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CLIMATE
change is one of the most critical global challenges of
our time: that’s an understatement. World scientists
acknowledge it’s a serious challenge, big business is
calling for government action and the International
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finds that billions of
people are at risk from hunger, disease increases,
drastic loss of biodiversity, retreating glaciers,
expanding deserts, among other sobering reports.
Climate
change may be the most serious threat ever to face
humankind, according to Achim Steiner, executive
director of the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep).
BusinessMirror correspondent Imelda V. Abaño recently
interviewed Steiner, UN’s most senior official dealing
with environmental matters, at the sidelines of the
Business for Environment Summit 2008 in Singapore, on
the environmental crisis facing the world and the
solutions to that crisis.
What do
you consider to be the single greatest challenge that
the world is facing today?
Perhaps
you can reduce it to understanding that environment has
very much become an integral part of sustaining the
economic development and growth. But the last century
has been largely premised on a view that the environment
poses the greatest challenge to humanity.
Certain
regions of the planet are expected to reach ecological
tipping points in the near future, meaning that the
ecology will be so damaged that it can no longer
recover.
How
urgent do you think it is to address threats of climate
change? Why does Unep have a major role to play?
It is
interesting because it is today at the top of the
international agenda. As the world is not doing enough
to combat global warming, the urgency derives in
principle from the fact that we must know more about
what climate change is causing and how we can actually
cope with its implications.
The IPCC
report on climate change showed that societies will head
toward disaster if they allow climate change to continue
unabated. Since the publication of this report last
year, we have heard that glaciers have been melting even
faster then we thought. We have global warming in parts
of the world occurring faster and we have [emerging]
scenarios now and even at the end of the century as we
see 0.08-meter level sea rise. It does not take much
imagination [to see] what the consequences this would
have on infrastructure and coastal communities.
Climate
change affects the fundamental systems on which life
depends on this planet. I think it is critical, and Unep
has a key role to play in not only drawing attention to
the problem, but in identifying solutions and responses
for the next few years. Ultimately, however, I would say
Unep is bringing about tomorrow’s economy into today’s
reality of political and economic policy making. We are
the advanced and “intelligence institution” that is
looking at how the planet can sustain an economy with 9
billion people.
Is the
business sector contributing enough to address climate
change?
The
business sector needs to make investment decisions [on]
technology on the five- or 15-year cycle. Companies are
still looking at the government framework set. [The]
business sector is a follower to the government.
Companies, entrepreneurs and public policymakers have to
work together and accelerate the transition—that has
already begun— to the green economy. We need a better
understanding of the cost of consumption, as well as the
need to act more intelligently by investing in
innovative and energy-efficient technology. Also
important in that regard is how the industrialized world
helps growing economies in the developing world make
that technology transition much faster.
How can
we cope with the effects of climate change on
agriculture and food production? Do you think there is
really a world food shortage at the moment?
I think
we have to be a little bit careful about causalities. It
is really critical for agriculture to be able to adapt
to climate change. Changes in rainfall, seasonality and
ecosystem functioning will have considerable impacts on
agriculture. But what we are experiencing at the moment
is not yet a food shortage. The world has enough food in
2008 in theory to feed everyone, but it is happening in
the backdrop of great uncertainty. What we are seeing is
a market that has exploded in terms of pricing for
commodities that have been traded. And the reason for
that partly is that, because [extreme weather events
such as floods and droughts have resulted in] less
production where we have lower reserves, we have a
scenario of rapidly increasing demand. The market
responded to that by essentially projecting greater
scarcity into the future.
Climate
change threatens agriculture both in developed and
developing nations. Climate shocks I have mentioned such
as drought and flood can cause grave setbacks in
nutritional status as food availability declines, prices
rice and employment opportunities shrink.
While
climate change and biofuels became part of the common
lexicon, do you think biofuels raise food supply risk
for the poor?
Producing enough food for a rapidly growing population,
and taking care of our planet are two of the world’s
biggest challenges. It is too early to do a cost-benefit
analysis on the use of biofuels such as ethanol, which
environmentalists say will help slow global warming. I
would much tread with much greater caution [in arguing]
that our food prices have exploded because of biofuels—[this]
is at best a speculative assumption about a speculative
phenomenon.
Clearly,
when we have discussions on biofuels right now, we must
address more actively the question of the potential
competition between food and biofuels. But this has not
been, I believe, the major driver between price
escalation so climate-change policy is in part about
avoiding the kinds of shocks to our natural production
systems that will make food production and food security
much less predictable. So that’s why addressing food
security is part of addressing climate change and vice
versa.
Do we
need to act now? How will every nation contribute in
curbing climate change?
We risk
running out of time. Rich and poor nations now generally
agree that the world must take action to halt climate
change, but they are divided on how to go about it.
Climate change will affect us all; therefore, we are
bound together to act as one community. All nations have
to be part of the solution. America did not sign the
Kyoto Protocol because it works against its economic
interest, yet China is not willing to sign it without
the US. The slowness is that we are focused on
divisions. We need to help each other make the
transition.
Agreement on a new climate treaty could run the risk of
failure at talks in Copenhagen next year if governments
do not narrow their differences. The result of this
year’s series of talks to discuss commitments to a road
map for battling global will determine what is at stake
with the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
The
meeting in Copenhagen could lead to one of the greatest
failures of public policy consensus in the history of
mankind. But it could also reach an extraordinary
agreement among nations.
Are you
hopeful?
I remain
hopeful. I think we see everywhere in the world today
proof that what we are talking about is [one thing
that’s] practically doable, economically achievable.
What is frustrating sometimes is the inability of our
political and economic decision-making systems to catch
up with the reality of opportunity. All of us pay an
enormously high and increasingly unavoidable price for
slowness in responding. |
