Nairobi,
23 January - The spectre of a food crisis
and an environmental emergency is looming
in West Africa as tens of millions of caterpillars
advance through villages in northern Liberia,
destroying crops and sending terrified villagers
fleeing from their homes.
The UN's Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) has announced that many
wells and waterways in several northern
Liberia villages are now unfit for human
consumption because of the huge volume of
feces dropped by the caterpillars.
The plague is Liberia's
worst in 30 years and the situation has
been described as a national emergency.
The FAO has warned that
unless the invasion is quickly contained,
it is likely to escalate into a regional
crisis involving neighbouring Guinea, Sierra
Leone and Cöte d'Ivoire. Hordes of
the caterpillars are said to be already
advancing across the border with Guinea.
The caterpillars are suspected
to be African armyworms (Spodoptera exempta).
According to UNEP experts,
African armyworms were responsible for destroying
over 30,000 hectares of maize around the
Mount Kenya region in 2008.
The last African armyworm
outbreak in West Africa occurred in Ghana
in 2006.
The caterpillar outbreak
is a threat to health and environmental
sustainability, both of which are among
the eight UN Millennium Development Goals.
In February, the United
Nations Environment Programme will release
a report on food security as part of its
annual Governing Council meeting in Nairobi.
Davos: A Green New Deal
for a Post-Crisis World
This year's World Economic
Forum has brought together world leaders
to dicuss the ongoing economic crisis and
shape the global post-crisis agenda, with
a focus on economic reform and climate change.
The meeting, which takes
place in Davos (Switzerland) until 1 st
February, brings together more than 2,500
people – a number unparalleled in the Forum's
forty-year history – including 40 heads
of state, senior UN officials, including
the Secretary General, and 1,400 business
leaders and civil society representatives.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary
General and Executive Director of the UN
Environment Programme (UNEP), is urging
delegates to embrace a transition to a low
carbon Green Economy.
Davos comes in advance
of a meeting next week with senior economists
in New York where Mr Steiner will discuss
and flesh out an a response the the immediate
economic crisis via UNEP's Global Green
New Deal initiative.
The report will be launched
at the upcoming UNEP Governing Council/Global
Ministerial Environment Forum taking place
in Nairobi from 16 to 20 February.
The Global Green New
Deal, seeks to mobilize and refocus the
global economy towards investment in clean
technologies and natural infrastructure
to combat climate change and trigger a green
employment boom, which may provide sustainable
solutions to benefit both the economy and
the environment in the twenty-first century.
So far the US, China,
the Republic of Korea, Germany, the United
Kingdom and Japan have announced 'green
deals' and the G-20 meeting in April in
London is looking to a low carbn future.
Catalyzing Resources
for a Low Carbon Economy
One of the sessions
in Davos on Wednesday, entitled 'Catalysing
Resources for a Low Carbon Economy', brought
together experts from industry, finance
and policy to discuss practical innovations
that can help stimulate the finance and
technology flows required to make low-carbon
investments scalable and create a viable
carbon market.
In his address to participants
at the session, Achim Steiner pointed out
the importance of tackling the issue of
climate finance in order to help the private
sector play a more dynamic role in mobilizing
the necessary international investment and
technology flows needed to help move the
world to a low-carbon economy. He said it
was necessary to encourage public-private
initiatives that aim at helping international
institutions address finance and technology
issues more adequately.
Speakers at the session
included former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair,
Yvo De Boer, the Executive Secretary of
the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Robert B.
Zoellick, President of the World Bank Group.
Shaping the Message
About Climate Change
The role of the media
in raising awareness about climate change
in the build-up to the UN Climate talks
in Copenhagen, was discussed on Thursday
29 in a workshop entitled 'Shaping the Message
about Climate Change'.
The workshop brought
together leaders from the media and entertainment
industry as well as other business sectors,
international organizations, academia and
NGOs to discuss improved communications
around the climate change agenda.
The aim of the workshop
is to gain consensus and support for a global
communications programme which will be rolled
out during 2009 with the support of the
UN Secretary-General, and that will build
momentum for a positive outcome at the UN
climate meeting in Copenhagen in 2009.
Addressing the session,
Steiner referred to the UN-wide campaign
'UNite to Combat Climate Change', launched
in November 2008, which calls on UN entities,
governments, civil society, businesses and
industries to support the call for a post-2012
definitive agreement on climate change.
The campaign urges world leaders to reach
an inclusive, comprehensive and ratifiable
deal during the Copenhagen talks in December
2009.
The session included
special addresses by UN Secretary General
Ban Ki-moon, UNFCCC Executive Secretary
Yvo De Boer and London School of Economics
expert Nicholas Stern.
Aviation, Travel &
Tourism's Route to Copenhagen project
The global travel &
tourism sector can proactively contribute
solutions to the twin challenges of climate
change and poverty alleviation. By providing
an overview of climate change impact on
the entire travel & tourism sector,
the Forum's Climate Change project aims
to highlight how governments, industry and
consumers can collectively make the travel
& tourism sector and destinations more
sustainable. The key project findings and
recommendations will be presented at the
UN Conference on Climate Change that will
take place in Copenhagen in December 2009.
The session brought
together the CEOs of leading businesses
in the travel & tourism sector, policy-makers,
climate change experts, and national regulators
from developed and developing countries
to discuss the innovative cross-sector emissions
reduction opportunities, highlighting the
key implementation challenges and the overall
CO2 emissions abatement impact.
Special Guests included
the President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias
Sánchez, Achim Steiner, the Governor
of Rio de Janeiro, Sérgio de Oliveira
Cabral, EU Environment Commissioner Stavros
Dimas, and former US Vice-President and
Nobel Laureate Al Gore.
In the course of the
next few days, the environment and climate
change will continue to feature high on
the Davos agenda, culminating in a session
entitled "Building Leadership Momentum
Towards Copenhagen".
This high-level session,
which will be attended by the Secretary
General of the United Nations, senior government
representatives, business leaders and climate
experts, will explore how the private sector
can best support the climate discussions
of the major economies over the next twelve
months.
