The idea of a green economy is fast becoming a key component of mainstream economic discourse, offering a blueprint for the transition to a more efficient and equitable economy that makes better use of natural resources to achieve sustainable growth. A green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication is one of the key themes for the forthcoming Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development.

On 15th April 2011 the SEED Initiative, with UNEP, hosted a high-level symposium on the green economy in Pretoria, South Africa, where speakers and panellists from government, civil society, industry bodies, international organizations and academia exchanged information about the barriers to transitioning to a greener economy and ideas about how to create better enabling conditions not only to stimulate green investment and create jobs, but also to help an increasing number of local social and environmental entrepreneurs to establish and scale up their activities.

The Symposium was coupled with a celebration of the thirty 2010 SEED winners in an international award ceremony, generously supported by Hisense, the SEED corporate awards sponsor. The winners demonstrated their initiatives in a marketplace, so allowing participants in the symposium to see first-hand some practical ways of accelerating the transition to a green economy in the developing world.

Some of the 2010 SEED Award winners

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director, explained the lessons provided by the entrepreneurial SEED winners:

“The SEED winners underline how the green shoots of a Green Economy are sprouting across the developing world. Governments and public policymakers can learn a lot from how these entrepreneurs have catalyzed creative solutions to local challenges and in doing so generated livelihoods, employment, environmental benefits and ways of eradicating poverty within and outside their communities.

“Next year’s Rio+20 meeting is an opportunity to scale-up and accelerate these kinds of transitions. Our SEED winners offer valuable insights and knowledge on what works and how best this can be realized.”

The symposium included panel discussions and presentations from:

• Enoch Godongwana, Deputy Minister of Economic Development in South Africa;
• Achim Steiner, UNEP Executive Director;
• Agostinho Zacarias, UN Resident Coordinator UNDP Resident Representative;
• Roeland van de Geer, EU Ambassador to South Africa;
• Imraan Patel, Chief Director, Department of Science and Technology;
• Susan Steinman, Director, Centre for Social Entrepreneurship and Social Economy, University of Johannesburg.

The symposium was designed to look at the big policy drivers and to connect these to the green economy at the local level, drawing on the experience of practitioners and those who set out to assist emerging green enterprises to flourish. By bringing those together, SEED hoped to uncover new ideas for how to build linkages between the national, regional and international policy drivers, and grassroots efforts to grow new green enterprises and to green existing ones.

SEED will publish a report of the symposium in the coming weeks.

Further reading

• SEED Symposium: The Green Economy: Accelerating the Transition: full story.

Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication is a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), setting out an economic and social case for investing two per cent of global GDP to kick-start a transition towards a low carbon, resource efficient green economy.

In his foreword to the report, UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner explains the ambition for a global green economy:

“Such a transition can catalyse economic activity of at least a comparable size to business as usual, but with a reduced risk of the crises and shocks increasingly inherent in the existing model.

“New ideas are by their very nature disruptive, but far less disruptive than a world running low on drinking water and productive land, set against the backdrop of climate change, extreme weather events and rising natural resource scarcities.

“A green economy does not favour one political perspective over another. It is relevant to all economies, be they state or more market-led.”

Ten central sectors of the economy, where investment will shift development and unleash public and private capital flows onto a low-carbon, resource-efficient path, are identified for investment:

• $108 billion for greening agriculture, including on small-holder farms.
• $134 billion in greening the building sector by improving energy efficiency.
• Over $360 billion in greening energy supply.
• Close to $110 billion for greening fisheries, including reducing the capacity of the world’s fleets.
• $15 billion in greening forestry with important knock-on benefits for combating climate change.
• Over $75 billion in greening industry, including manufacturing.
• Close to $135 billion on greening the tourism sector.
• Over $190 billion on greening transport.
• Nearly $110 billion on waste, including recycling.
• A similar amount on the water sector, including addressing sanitation.

The report stresses that the transition to a green economy is already underway, highlighting success stories from waste management in South Korea and solar energy in Barbados to woodlot management in Tanzania and ecosystem services in Ecuador. The challenge is to build on the existing momentum for a global green economy.

The road to Rio

Achim Steiner describes the report’s context in the run-up to the 2012 Earth Summit in Rio:

“Nearly 20 years after the Earth Summit, nations are again on the Road to Rio, but in a world very different and very changed from that of 1992.

“Then we were just glimpsing some of the challenges emerging across the planet from climate change and the loss of species to desertification and land degradation.

“Today many of those seemingly far off concerns are becoming a reality with sobering implications for not only achieving the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, but challenging the very opportunity for close to seven billion people − rising to nine billion by 2050 − to be able to thrive, let alone survive.”

Drawing on existing successes offers a real chance for a better, sustainable future:

“Rio+20 offers a real opportunity to scale-up and embed these “green shoots”. In doing so, this report offers not only a roadmap to Rio but beyond 2012, where a far more intelligent management of the natural and human capital of this planet finally shapes the wealth creation and direction of this world.”

Further reading

• Green Economy: full set of resources from UNEP, including the full report, a synthesis for policy-makers, success stories and more.

As the 16th conference of the parties (COP16) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) gets underway today in Cancún, Mexico, UK Climate Change and Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has expressed his intention to ensure progress:

“We’ve got this next fortnight to get the global climate talks back on track. We won’t get a full binding deal in Cancun, but people and businesses around the world will be watching and expecting to see us prepare the ground.

“This means making progress on issues such as financial assistance to help developing countries deal with climate change, tackling deforestation, bringing the promises made in the Copenhagen Accord into the formal UN process, and agreeing a system to make sure countries live up to their commitments to take action on emissions.”

Promoting dialogue and a broader agenda

As conference host, Mexico has asserted its desire to promote dialogue and facilitate parallel activities to allow a wider range of participants, including business and civil society, to create an “agenda that goes beyond mere technical discussions”.

The Climate Change Village is a public space hosting cultural and artistic events and exhibits, business presentations and thematic debates amongst representatives of civil society, to promote concepts, projects and dialogue on the subject of climate change.

Spotlight on the emissions gap

A new report, compiled by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and launched ahead of the Cancun conference, finds that the pledges made at COP15 in Copenhagen last year will, if fully met, deliver 60% of the emissions reductions required to keep the rise in global temperatures under 2 degrees. The report draws attention to the 5 gigatonne “emissions gap” between where nations might be in 2020 and where science suggests they should be.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, stressed the need for pledges to be met:

“The results indicate that the UN meeting in Copenhagen could prove to have been more of a success than a failure if all the commitments, intentions and funding, including fully supporting the pledges of developing economies, are met.”

“There is a gap between the science and current ambition levels. But, what this report shows is that the options on the table right now in the negotiations can get us almost 60 per cent of the way there. This is a good first step.”

UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, urged nations to go further:

“I encourage all Parties to make good on their national mitigation pledges, and to further progress within the negotiations as well as through strengthened efforts on the ground to curb emissions. There is no time to waste. By closing the gap between the science and current ambition levels, we can seize the opportunity to usher in a new era of low-carbon prosperity and sustainable development for all.”

Six key issues

The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), an independent, non-profit research institute, has published a briefing setting out what it sees as the six key issues:

• Shared vision;
• Adaptation;
• Climate finance;
• Technology transfer;
• Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation;
• Post-2012 emissions reductions targets.

Webcasts and further reading

• Live and on-demand webcasts of conference proceedings;
• UN Framework Convention on Climate Change;
• COP16, Cancun, Mexico;
• The Emissions Gap Report Are the Copenhagen Accord pledges sufficient to limit global warming to 2°C or 1.5°C? (United Nations Environment Programme);
• Climate watchlist: key issues for Cancun negotiations: IIED briefing.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has announced the 30 winners of the 2010 SEED Awards, recognising inspiring social and environmental entrepreneurs whose businesses can help meet sustainable development challenges.

Nomadic villagers in China discuss SolSource, one of the winning initiatives in the 2010 SEED Awards

The winners include a novel solar device that turns waste heat into electricity in rural China, a Ugandan business manufacturing stationery from agricultural waste, bamboo bicycle and shea nut projects in Ghana and a female-run business in South Africa making a hand-held laundry device that saves water.

Two Ghanaian award winners: The Bamboo Bikes Initiative and Shea Economic Empowerment Program

Encouraging entrepreneurship for a green economy

The SEED Initiative, hosted by UNEP, helps entrepreneurs to scale-up their activities, in order to boost local economies and tackle poverty, while promoting the sustainable use of resources and ecosystems.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director, explained the relevance of the awards:

“The SEED Award winners exemplify the strong spirit of entrepreneurship in the developing world and its significance in creating a Green Economy. While the Awards recognize individual outstanding projects, governments must also show leadership in supporting grassroots efforts through diverse and dynamic standards, forward-looking policies and incentives to further catalyze corporate and community-led change.”

Amongst the winners

This year, as well as seeking innovative start-ups throughout the developing world, the awards had a special focus on Africa, placing particular emphasis on initiatives from South Africa, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Rwanda and Senegal.

The winners receive from SEED a package of individually-tailored support for their business, including access to relevant expertise and technical assistance, meeting new partners and building networks, developing business plans and identifying sources of finance.

Amongst the thirty 2010 winners are:

• Manufacture and Popularization of Biomass Briquettes, Burkina Faso
  Replacing wood and charcoal with biomass briquettes from fallen leaves and other sources of unused biomass;
• SolSource, China
  Satellite dish-shaped solar device with removable modules that turns its own waste heat into electricity or stores it in thermal fabrics for later use;
• Bamboo Bikes Initiative, Ghana
  Manufacturing and assembling high-quality bamboo bikes – suitable for the road conditions and terrain in Ghana and affordable to the poor;
• Shea Economic Empowerment Program (SEEP), Ghana
  Improving the livelihoods of women shea nut producers by offering training, greater ownership within the supply chain and access to improved technology;
• Backpack Farm Agriculture Program, Kenya:
  Providing small landholders with a dynamic set of agricultural tools, comprehensive training and monitoring – delivered and distributed in a canvas backpack;
• Production and Distribution of Pressurized Biogas in Gas Cylinders, Rwanda
  Producing and storing pressurised biogas for cooking made from urban, domestic and industrial wastes;
• Micro Power Economy for Rural Electrification, Senegal
  Off-grid power system operation and the utilisation of renewable energy sources, such as wind-solar-diesel hybrid power systems;
• IziWasha, South Africa
  Handheld laundry device to facilitate washing in low-income communities;
• Oribags Innovations (U) ltd, Uganda
  Manufacturing hand-made paper bags, printing paper and jewellery from agricultural wastes including wheat straw, elephant grass and other natural fibres.

Full details of all these and the other winners are available on the SEED website.

The 2010 awards saw applications from just under 60 countries, representing the collaborative efforts of non-governmental organizations, women’s and youth groups, labour organisations, public authorities, international agencies and academia.

While most of the applications were in the agriculture and rural development sector, many entries addressed issues around climate change and energy, the conservation of biodiversity, and waste management. The selection of the winners was by an independent international jury of experts.

As the 10th Conference of the Parties (COP10) of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) closed on Friday, representatives of almost 200 nations agreed a new strategy “to meet the unprecedented
challenges of the continued loss of biodiversity compounded by climate change”.

The agreement includes:

• The Aichi Target
  Under the new 10-year strategic plan for the Convention on Biological Diversity signatories will draw up national biodiversity plans to meet 20 headline targets under five strategic goals:
  • addressing the underlying causes of biodiversity loss;
  • reducing the pressures on biodiversity;
  • safeguarding biodiversity at all levels;
  • enhancing the benefits provided by biodiversity;
  • providing for capacity-building.

  Targets include at least halving the rate of loss of natural habitats, restoring at least 15% of degraded areas, and expanding protected areas to 17% of the world’s land and 10% of marine areas.

• The Nagoya Protocol
  The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from Their Utilization creates a framework to balance access to the genetic resources of developing countries with an equitable sharing of the benefits.

Parties at the conference also endorsed a plan of action for cities and biodiversity, announced financial resources to support the agreement, and agreed to to identify further necessary finance in time for the 11th Conference of the Parties in India in 2012.

Securing the planet’s variety of life

Caroline Spelman, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who led the UK delegation, welcomed the agreement:

“These have been long and hard negotiations, but we have successfully achieved a new global plan to help protect our natural environment. We have also agreed an historic protocol which has been 18 years in the making, establishing a regime where developing countries will allow access to their genetic and natural resources in return for a share of the benefits for their use.

“The new agreement states we will take effective and urgent action to halt the loss of habitats and species in order to ensure that by 2020 our natural environment is resilient and can continue to provide the essential services that we would otherwise take for granted. This will secure the planet’s variety of life, our well being and help eradicate poverty.”

Key elements of the agreement will be incorporated into Defra’s Natural Environment White Paper, to be published in Spring 2011.

Linking climate change, global poverty and biodiversity

The conference acknowledged the need to better integrate the biodiversity agenda with climate change and land degradation. The Nagoya protocol is intended to ensure that developing nations enjoy a fair share of the benefits of genetic resources, while defining adequate development funding is a priority for further negotiation.

Earlier in the conference, Caroline Spelman announced £100 million of UK Government funding for international forestry projects benefiting biodiversity, demonstrating the potential for international climate finance to deliver additional benefits:

“We have also secured an agreement to link climate change, global poverty and biodiversity together in protecting the world’s forests, which is essential if we are to achieve our aims in these areas. This was a key objective for the UK and this week I announced £100 million specifically to fund biodiversity projects in forest regions.”

International cooperation for biodiversity

Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, welcomed the Nagoya agreement as an example of nations successfully finding common ground to tackle a global problem:

“This is a day to celebrate in terms of a new and innovative response to the alarming loss of biodiversity and ecosystems. It is an important moment for the United Nations and the ability of countries to put aside the narrow differences that all too often divide in favour of the broader, shared issues that can united peoples and nations.”

The 10th Conference of the Parties (COP10) of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) runs from 18 to 29 October 2010, in Nagoya, Japan, culminating in a high-level ministerial segment between 27 and 29 October. The UK delegation will be led by Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman.

Japan’s Environment Minister, Ryu Matsumoto, explains the importance of the conference in his welcome message:

“Biodiversity loss is accelerating around the globe, exacerbated by the impacts of climate change. In this regard, the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties provides a unique opportunity to respond to the global challenge of biodiversity and meet the needs of present generation and generations to come.”

UK priorities for Nagoya

2010, the International Year of Biodiversity, has seen a growing appreciation of the importance of biodiversity and a recognition of the global failure to address the issue of biodiversity to date. The TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) study has raised awareness of the issue’s economic significance.

The UK’s stated priorities for the Nagoya conference are:

1. To address the fact that the 2010 target has not been met, and identify the reasons behind this.
2. To develop an ambitious and realistic successor to the 2010 biodiversity target, supported by a set of measurable and achievable sub-targets which will drive action on biodiversity worldwide.
3. Greater integration of the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services in decision-making.
4. Greater linkages between biodiversity, climate change and development, including through international forest conservation

A new response to the challenges facing natural systems

Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, asserts the “real opportunity to boost the prospects for biodiversity and the health of natural systems”:

“The ground work has been laid for a new response to the persistent and emerging challenges facing natural systems and their biodiversity.

“2010 is the opportunity to open a new chapter where the myriad of intelligent policies and smart market mechanisms that have been tried and tested over the past decades are rapidly evolved to become part of mainstream economic policy.

“On a planet of six billion, rising to over nine billion by 2050, more creative ways of managing ecosystems and biodiversity that reflect their central role in human well being and their inordinate contribution to live, livelihoods and economies will in large part determine whether an ever more populous humanity can survive and thrive in the 21st century.”

He highlights some of the striking findings of TEEB on the potential for “more creative management of the Earth’s nature-based assets”:

• The world’s 100,000 National Parks and protected areas generate wealth via nature-based good and services equal to around $5 trillion but only employ 1.5 million people – indicating a potentially significant new area for employment generation.
• TEEB estimates that securing these $5 trillion worth of services might require an additional investment of just $50 billion a year – a good cost benefit ratio of 100:1.
• Coral reefs – whose fishery, tourism and flood protection services are estimated at between $100,000 and $600,000 per square km – could be conserved for an investment of close to $780 per square km or 0.2 per cent of the value of the ecosystem protected.
• Deforestation contributes close to 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions – $17 billion to over $30 billion annually could halve this while securing livelihoods and boosting conservation-related employment in tropical countries.
• A global marine protected area network, involving the closure of 20 per cent of total fishing grounds, could result in profit losses of an estimated $270 million annually but could sustain fisheries worth $80-100 billion a year; assist in conserving an estimated 27 million jobs while generating one million new ones and protect food supplies for over one billion people.

Meeting unprecedented challenges

Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary of the CBD, sums up the challenge presented by the continuing loss of biodiversity and the urgent need for action:

“Our common future is at stake: as a family of nations and people we need to rise up individually and collectively to meet the unprecedented challenges of the loss of biodiversity compounded by climate change that we and our children are confronted with. I therefore sincerely hope that Aichi-Nagoya Summit will be the beginning of a new era for mankind ‘living in harmony with nature, into the Future’. It will therefore be historically associated with biodiversity in the same way as Kyoto is with climate change.”

Meeting at the Business for the Environment Summit (B4E) in Mexico City this month, the leaders of many major global corporations committed to reducing their carbon emissions and called on governments to advance international negotiations for an ambitious outcome at the Cancun talks, stressing the need for a global ‘level playing field’.

Reducing carbon and changing values

Business leaders committed to targets across a wide range of sectors:

• Energy companies present agreed to work towards achieving a target of 100% renewable energy production by 2050;
• ICT companies agreed to reduce 7.6 Gigatons of CO2 emissions by 2020;
• Building sector representatives committed to reduce emissions by 40% in new buildings by 2020 and improve energy efficiency by up to 40% in existing buildings.

Barbara Kux, Chief of Sustainability of Siemens, stressed the risks of climate change and the role of business:

“We all now recognize the huge problems that climate change is posing for our societies. We should now step up, lead and be part of the tidal wave of companies that bring the solutions our societies need.”

Companies also recognized their role in changing behaviour and values for a more equitable future, asserting the need to change supply chains to allow small and medium enterprises to participate in the Green Economy, and “talk and enlist the hundreds and thousands of employees that work for our companies as solution providers”.

Business calls for ambitious global policy and strong frameworks

Meeting ahead of November’s COP16 UN Climate Conference in Cancun, the business leaders called on governments to ensure an ambitious outcome at the Cancun talks, with a global ‘level playing field’ to enable these commitments and foster green entrepreneurship among and across industry sectors.

In their declaration at B4E, business leaders agreed that the creation of global policy and strong national legal frameworks is essential to avoid a major climate crisis comprising economic, political, health, environment, safety and other dimensions. Necessary national policy instruments include:

1. financial mechanisms to offset initial costs and reallocate total costs along the life cycle of buildings,
2. the phasing-out of fossil fuel subsidies,
3. soft-loans on climate solutions,
4. smart-grids, feed-in tariffs and buy-downs in energy that send the right signals to the marketplace.

In his keynote speech, former US Vice-President and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Al Gore said:

“We need the good companies to put pressure on all governments to lead by example and step up their domestic and global commitments.”

James Leape, Director General of WWF-International, said:

“Civil society and business can both take a role in speaking-up so that the right policy-frameworks are put in place as well as in communicating the solutions which are already available. We should all recognize that international negotiations on climate are not moving at the pace needed. This business summit, held immediately before Cancun, should stimulate all governments to act in order to unleash business potential to transform our economies.”

Building sustainable and resilient low-carbon societies

Companies acknowledged that entrepreneurial action to address climate change can play a critical role in stimulating a global economic recovery, creating new jobs and building more sustainable and resilient low-carbon societies.

UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said:

“Many businesses, including those at the B4E Summit, are signaling leadership and seizing the opportunities of the climate change challenge. Why? Because many see rising risks to profits from the impacts of rising greenhouse gases but also an opportunity to become far more resource efficient and innovative enterprises. Governments at the UN climate convention meeting in Cancun and beyond have a responsibility to support these aims and actions by signaling their determination to set the kinds of national and global policy frameworks able to accelerate and sustain these transformations.”

Georg Kell, Executive Director of the UN Global Compact, commented:

“While governments hold the key to setting the right signals and incentives, it is business that provides the solutions we need. Now is the time to support the many efforts that already exist, to ensure that low-carbon innovation is shared widely and to mobilize those still sitting on the fence. We cannot afford to wait any longer.”

About the Business for the Environment summit

The summit is the world’s main conference on global business dialogue and action on the environment, and is jointly organised by Global Initiatives, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Global Compact. It was hosted by the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Mexican Ministry of Environment and the Mexican Ministry of Energy, and supported by WWF.

Company participants included Walmart, The Coca-Cola Company, Grupo Bimbo, PepsiCo, Hewlett Packard, AP Moeller Maersk, Cemex, Tata and Sons, Acciona, Siemens, Nestle, McKinsey, Volvo Group, British Telecom Group, amongst others.

The message for Cancun

Next month, the world’s governments will gather in Cancun, Mexico, for the UN Climate Conference. A key focus of the conference will be how a transition towards a Green Economy model can both reduce worldwide carbon dioxide emissions and bring economic benefits.

The message from business leaders at B4E is that many companies are already addressing today’s climate challenges by transforming the way they operate and achieving benefits both for the environment and for their own companies. Their statement calls for governments to follow suit by promoting the Green Economy model and creating a path towards a low-carbon future.