Nairobi, 9 November
2010 - As part of a concerted effort to
'green' UN peacekeeping operations, an intensive
training programme for UN peacekeeping missions
on environmental matters
is taking place at UNEP headquarters in
Nairobi.
According to the 2009
UN Greenhouse Gas inventory, UN Field Missions
globally account for 56% of UN total greenhouse
gas emissions.
The training in Nairobi
will equip UN Field Mission staff with the
tools to address environmental issues related
to the work and mandate of UN peacekeeping
missions.
Participating in the
four-day course are 25 environmental focal
points representing all current peacekeeping
missions and six representatives from national
peacekeeping training centres (from Ghana,
Rwanda, Zimbabwe, India, Malaysia and the
African Union).
It is the first stage
of a capacity building programme on "Natural
Resources Management in Post-Conflict Countries"
developed by UNEP in partnership with the
United Nations Institute for Training and
Research (UNITAR) and the International
Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).
A study by the UN Environment
Programme (UNEP), Department of Field Support
(DFS) and United Nations Support Office
for the African Union Mission in Somalia
(UNSOA) demonstrated that significant savings
in energy and water inputs and waste outputs
can be achieved by mainstreaming environmental
concerns in the design and operation of
UN peacekeeping camps.
Improving the environmental
management of UN Field Missions will not
only contribute to better troop protection
and security, but can also help to maximise
the sustainability of base camps, reduce
costs and ensure the maintenance of good
community relations.
As part of its ongoing
efforts to support the UN-wide "Greening
the Blue" campaign, UNEP has collaborated
with the UN Department of Peacekeeping and
Field Support to assist in the implementation
of an Environmental Policy launched in 2009.
The module will be integrated
into the UNITAR Peacekeeping Training Programme
for pre-deployed peacekeepers.
The training is the
latest UNEP-led initiative aimed at making
relief and recovery operations more environmentally-sound
to help ensure that both human welfare and
the environment are protected and conserved
in response to a conflict or disaster.
G-20 can play key role
in transition to global green economy, says
UNEP chief
Op-ed article by UNEP
Executive Director as published in South
Korea's JoongAng Daily on 9 November 2010
The G-20 has acted to
stabilize banks and to counter the financial
and economic crisis: A recovery is under
way, albeit and in many places, still fragile.
But what about the G-20's
future role in embedding a fundamental transition
to a more sustainable global economy that
looks beyond the current, narrow definition
of wealth and GDP?
Could this week in Seoul
be a watershed in international financial
and economic affairs, where the pledge,
made at the G-20 in London, toward a green
and more sustainable recovery moves from
communique to concrete commitment?
There are encouraging
signs, not least from the G-20's Korean
hosts, whose own economic stimulus package
had earmarked close to 90 percent of its
funds to a short- and long-term vision of
green growth.
The country's leaders
have also made the indivisible link between
the leadership role of public policy making
in terms of unleashing private sector investment
into clean tech and other green sectors.
For the first time at
a G-20 Summit, about 100 CEOs are meeting
at a business summit, which is expected
to provide invaluable input toward shaping
the outcome inked by world leaders.
Finance and trade are
two of the key themes before CEOs but so,
too, are how to advance green growth and
corporate social responsibility.
Themes that look into
how future - perhaps more traditional -
economic crises can be minimized must also
look into the even bigger and more complex
ones emerging as a result of climate change,
environmental degradation and unsustainable
overexploitation of the planet's natural
assets.
Business in the broadest
sense is certainly looking long and hard
to governments for more forward-looking
and imaginative responses, which clearly
emerged last month in Nagoya, Japan, at
the Convention on Biological Diversity.
An increasing number
of banks and pension funds see rising risks
to their investments from the loss of ecosystems,
such as forests and wetlands, and the multitrillion
dollar services they produce.
And a rising number
now see the disruption to food supplies,
supply chains and other challenges linked
with natural resource losses as a bigger
threat than that from international terrorism.
This dramatic shift
is in part linked with the findings of the
Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity
(TEEB), an assessment requested by the G-8
and developing country environment ministers.
It has calculated the
global, multitrillion dollar losses being
sustained while spotlighting the huge returns
- including social returns such as new green
jobs - from investing and reinvesting in
natural systems.
Some countries have
begun to take the lead. Brazil and India,
for example, announced that they will be
carrying out similar country-level TEEB
studies: a first step toward factoring and
mainstreaming the economics of nature into
policy making.
Japan and the European
Union have also signaled interest, as has
the Asian Development Bank for a continentwide
assessment.
The World Bank, in partnership
with organizations including UNEP, will
be assisting initially up to 10 developing
countries ranging from Colombia to Mexico
with developing national, green accounts.
By acting in concert
and cooperation, G-20 as a whole has the
potential to become a key and pivotal enabler
of these transitions.
In terms of combating
climate change and restoring fish stocks,
canceling or phasing-down global subsidies
totaling up to US$700 billion and over US$27
billion a year respectively would be a good
start.
However, financial sustainability,
more sustainable employment prospects and
wider challenges such as addressing poverty
in the 21st century will not happen just
by fixing the contradictions inherent in
existing economic models.
It will only happen
if public policy and private sector investments
are aligned in ways that meet the short-term
recovery challenges with a longer-term vision
of opportunity for the many and not just
the few.
A year ago in London,
G-20 leaders articulated this vision as
building an "inclusive, sustainable
and green recovery."
In Seoul, this vision
needs to be evolved toward not only a green
recovery, but to inclusive, sustainable
green growth underpinned by clean technologies
and the economic importance of maintaining
nature's multitrillion dollar services.
