Thousands of bloggers
unite for the environment on 15 October
Nairobi, 12 October 2007 - Thousands of
voices will speak out for the environment
for the first-ever Blog Action Day on 15
October. This non-profit event, partnered
by the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP), is an unprecedented call for bloggers
around the planet to write about environmental
issues on the same day.
Over 10,000 blogs are taking part in the
event, and the incredibly diverse range
of websites taking part is a powerful signal
that the environment affects every one of
us: they include environmental blogs like
"Greensavvy" as well as practical
sites such as "Ask the career counsellor",
and they span the planet from "My Kiev
Journal" to the "Indian cookery
podcast".
At the heart of this innovative idea is
the message that by uniting the world's
blogging community, we can reach a combined
audience of millions to raise awareness
of the environment, get people thinking
and trigger a global debate. The range of
topics bloggers can write about is virtually
endless: from green household tips to climate
change, and from local pollution to major
worldwide initiatives like the UNEP-led
Billion Tree Campaign.
UNEP welcomes the simple yet powerful concept
of Blog Action Day and calls on bloggers
around world to participate. To find out
more, go to http://www.blogactionday.com/
Nick Nuttall, UNEP Spokesperson
The United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) has launched a major worldwide tree
planting campaign. Under the Plant for the
Planet: Billion Tree Campaign, people, communities,
business and industry, civil society organizations
and governments are encouraged to enter
tree planting pledges online with the objective
of planting at least one billion trees worldwide
during 2007.
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But it is Not all Doom and Gloom-2007 Marks
a Watershed
Ladies and gentlemen,
This is the reality but in 2007 there is
another one emerging too-one that, like
a little bird in the hand, is cause for
both optimism and for a chance to reverse
the sometimes seemingly irreversible if
only we can keep it alive.
I mentioned the IPCC earlier. This year
they produced their fourth assessment reports.
These 2,000 or so scientists have now provided
the final conclusive evidence that human
beings are impacting the climate-"unequivocal"
is the word they use.
There are still people who think the Earth
is flat and there will always be some who
believe climate change is the work of Martians
or pixies or evil elves - but no serious
world leader, now doubts the facts.
It has taken 20 years-20 perhaps lost years-but
the full stop has been out behind the scientific
debate.
The IPCC has also fast forwarded the time
lines-many quite sobering impacts will occur
in the life time of people in this room,
not in some far off date.
The consequences of over 30 million people
in Bangladesh being displaced and summer
rivers running dry across Asia, parts of
Europe and elsewhere as a result of glaciers
melting away, is concentrating minds further
and wider than ever before.
For example this year retired US military
leaders and military men and women in the
UK and Australia, have publicly acknowledged
the security threat.
We now have well over 300 cities in the
United States alone who have signed up to
emission reduction strategies as are states
including California.
Europe has stated it will cut emissions
by 20 per cent, 30 per cent if others follow.
The IPCC this year has also empowered society
to act by calculating the costs of combating
climate change - perhaps 0.1 per cent of
global GDP a year over 30 years.
Business and industry, far from shunning
regulation and demanding less red tape in
a globalized world, are calling for measures
to control emissions so they can respond
with cleaner and greener energy investments.
Increasing numbers of companies are also
pledging action on their carbon fooprint.
For example Eurostar in Europe have said
they will be C-neutral in November and Russian
aluminium smelting company, Rusal, has announced
its will be C-neutral by 2015.
Energy companies, worried that investments
in bio-fuels could backfire if they are
produced at the expense of tropical rainforests,
are demanding global sustainability 'norms
ands standards' which only the UN - and
then through national laws - can truly provide.
Fossil fuels may still dominate. But according
to a recent report by UNEP's Sustainable
Energy Finance Initiative, investment in
renewables has reached $100 billion.
While renewable sources today produce about
2% of the world's energy, they now account
for about 18% of world investment in power
generation, with wind generation at the
investment forefront.
Meanwhile the flexible mechanisms of the
Kyoto Protocol are alive and kicking.
An estimated $100 billion of funds are
set to flow from the North to the South
as a result off the Clean Development Mechanism-the
mechanism that allows developed countries
to offset some of their emissions in developing
ones via cleaner and greener energy projects.
That so much is happening is in no small
measure due to the UN-either through the
science and reports of the IPCC or the achievements
of the climate convention and its Kyoto
Protocol.
The UN is also stepping up to the bar in
other ways. UNEP and UNDP for example are
building the capacity of developing countries
to share in the funds and projects flowing
from the CDM while advancing the adaptation
or climate proofing agenda.
Agencies like the World Food Programme
are piloting weather or climate derivatives
that pay out when droughts are forecast
and well before communities are in such
parlous conditions they are forced to sell
their last cow or goat.
The UN is also assisting to build trust-the
SG's High Level Event is one concrete example.
Just before it was held, governments across
the world agreed to an accelerated freeze
and phase out of gases under the UNEP Montreal
ozone treaty specifically because of their
greenhouse impacts.
The role of parliaments is crucial in all
this-working with the UN, taking the decisions
made globally and framing the national legislation
needed including creative market mechanisms
and price signals to enable these developments
to occur and to occur swiftly.
Germany, once a minor player in the wind
power sector, has leapt to number one as
a result off a change in legislation that
required utilities to buy a certain per
cent age of renewables.
Next month UNEP - with funding from the
GEF - will announce a new cogeneration initiative
and one on hydro-power for the tea industry
in East Africa.
This is being made possible as a result
of legislation on Power Purchase Agreements
approved by the parliaments such as Kenya's
that allows companies; factories and tea
plantations to sell surplus electricity
into the Grid.
Similar national laws are aiding the take
up of renewables in China and in India.
At the Secretary General's High Level Event,
India's Finance Minister mentioned other
emerging strategies including the raising
of energy efficiency standards in sectors
like the steel industry and a plan to sell
compact fluorescent light bulbs at the price
of conventional, energy guzzling ones.
Initiatives all driven by the science;
impacts and costs of climate change but
with wide sustainability benefits such as
improved air quality beyond the need to
just reduce greenhouse gases.
Indeed, if at the next climate convention
meeting in Bali, Indonesia, governments
can get down to the serious business of
negotiating an international agreement post
- 2012, then biodiversity may also finally
get a boost.
Deeper emission cuts may allow standing
forests to be part of the CDM giving economic
incentives to conserve them rather than
chop them down.
Ladies and gentlemen, we live in fragile
but exciting times. Climate change is one
pressing issue but there are others some
of which can never be fully solved even
if global warming is curbed.
As mentioned earlier, part of the path
to sustainability must include a new partnership
between governments and the international
environmental governance structures we have
inherited from the 20th century.
Under the banner of UN reform, discussions
are on-going as to the future of UNEP -whether
it should be strengthened or upgraded to
a specialized agency to match the realities
of the 21st century.
Ladies and gentlemen, ideally my job at
UNEP might be to wind the agency down, switch
off the compact fluorescent light bulbs
and lock the recycled-wood doors.
Environment would be fully integrated across
the UN and across governments and ministries
in developed and developing countries -
but that is not the case.
So a strengthened UNEP or a specialized
environment organization should now be a
matter of priority for nation states-a priority
whose resources and funding also start matching
the challenge and the opportunities facing
the world today.
The word Parliament, as I am sure many
of you know, comes from the French 'to speak'.
Well talking is good but action is even
better. The UN and UNEP stand ready to join
in this, so the fragile but exciting prospect
of a more sustainable future - glimpsed
through lens of climate change but through
other lens too - is finally put on track.
It will not in the final analysis happen
without the support of all sectors of society
including you the legislators of this world.
Thank you
