The Deadly Game of Deceit - UNEP discovers green economics
Betreff: The Deadly Game of Deceit - UNEP discovers
green economics
Von: ECOTERRA Intl.
Datum: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 19:32:52 +0300
The Deadly Game of Deceit - UNEP re-discovers green economics
(see the UNEP press release below) 10 Oct. 2005
COMMENT: Some have discovered a new ankle to the deadly game of
deceit.
While the basic idea to include what nature provides into the economic
calculus is good and has as such been lived by indigenous peoples,
taken into consideration by responsible governments, who have
regulations to enforce sustainability, and pushed for worldwide by many
profound thinkers since long, the role of the UN and the sudden turn of
certain schools of though is rather dubious. They will have to prove
that it is not just another tax deduction gimmick for the
hyper-corporations, what they try to promote in London as from today.
Actually Das Gupta himself seems to give away what they really have in
mind when he said: “Poverty will only be made history when nature enters economic
calculations
in the same way as do buildings, machines, roads and for example
software.
It is a particular catastrophe for the very poor,” said Professor Das
Gupta.
This school of thought still has not understood that nature isn't just
simply a machine or a building. Das Gubta et al. thereby only give way
to another deviation. He might have just seen - but not really
understood - the film The Corporation (http://www.thecorportaion.com
-
highly recommended!) or might be now hired by the corporate world
together with UNEP to only diffuse these issues.
That UNEP's Toepfer is not far away from such exercises does not
wonder: Since years the head of the United Nations Environment
Programme tries to rather be in bed with the WTO and the big
corporations than to support work by his own staff, to not only show
clearly the destruction of the biosphere but also the misdeeds by the
corporate world against nature and what need to be done to stop it.
Demands for tough cuts and thorough regulations on what is done so
irresponsibly by the transnationals and their governments against
nature and the people are buried by UNEP regularly in tonnes of papers
containing conventions of pseudo-regulations, as the recent
prolongation of loopholes (not the required 100% and worldwide stop!)
of the use of methyl bromide shows.
Instead of wasting taxpayers money in London, Toepfer should work e.g.
towards stopping the exorbitant and blatant
over-exploitation of marine resources right in front of his doorsteps
in Kenya or abstain from being a mere stirrup-holder for the
water-corporations, whose interests through the proxy-governance of the
actual government of Kenya only create misery for the poor, as seen by
the recent evictions of indigenous peoples from their ancient forest
homeland, which is earmarked to be the water catchment to the growing
demand of the city dwellers. These tribal forest peoples live since
long, what now apparently shall be re-invented by certain economists.
People who still manage to live close to Nature, like the Ogiek or the
San are part of nature - not apart from it, like the corporate profit
maximizers or the UN as example of corporate governance.
To state the intent to uplift "the poor" out of "poverty" needs further
explanations, as to what they actually mean, since Toepfer even does
not manage to achieve a positive chance for the poor right in front of
his nose and in his present country of residence. The former
city-planner Klaus Toepfer certainly should not be allowed to hinder
the proactive moves made by countries like India against the
corporations by misusing the London School of Economics as a mere
fig-leave institution for the interests of the just-for-profit and
governance corporations. The corporate irresponsibility needs radical
surgery rather than talk-shops, which only could serve to deliver the
wording for further PR campaigns, paid for to mislead the public.
Enough of UNEP sentences like: "Studies from Algeria, Italy, Portugal,
Syria and Tunisia also point to the value of intact forests." Mr.
Toepfer do you need such to gasp the value of forests? No? Well,
then maybe the economists could tell you or your writers during your
London days at least that the creation of "pro-poor markets" is
a contradictio in se - par excellance.
Otherwise the prize question might be just reduced to: "What is the
economic value of the Executive Director of UNEP?"
-------------
Poverty to Rise Unless Economies Factor ‘Nature’s Capital’ into National
Accounts
Economists and Environmentalists Gather in London to Bring Environment
into
Centre of Wealth Creation
London, 10 October 2005 - Poverty will only be made history when
nature’s
capital is factored into national profit and loss books, one of the
world’s
leading economists will assert today.
Key to this is creating markets that give real and long lasting value to
the goods and services nature provides.
Traditional measures such as gross domestic product (GDP) are short
changing current and future generations says Professor Sir Partha
Dasgupta
of Cambridge University.
This is because they fail to value the goods and services generated by
the
natural world and instead treat them as free to use and limitless in
their
abundance and ability to withstand damage and decay.
Such services include the carbon soaking power of forests, the fisheries
and coastal defense activities of coral reefs, the pollution
filtering-potential of wetlands and the nutrient recycling processes of
the
earth’s soils.
Currently countries who fell their forests for timber exports, dynamite
reefs for fish, pollute their land for intensive agriculture and
contaminate their waterways with farm and factory run off can appear to
be
getting richer in the short term.
In reality, they are likely to be sliding into poverty or, at the very
best, treading water, because they are plundering their natural
capital—a
key pillar of medium and long term wealth.
“Take the Indian sub-continent as an example. On the basis of
traditional
measures, like GDP, the region has been getting richer since the 1970s
but
in reality wealth per capita has actually declined. This is because,
relative to population growth, investments in manufactured capital,
knowledge, skills and health, and improvements in institutions were not
sufficient to compensate for the depreciation of natural capital,” said
Professor Das Gupta.
This has alarming consequences for not only this but the next generation
who stand to inherit a planet with insufficient clean and functioning
‘ecosystems’ to sustain their basic needs let lone their hopes and
aspirations.
“Poverty will only be made history when nature enters economic
calculations
in the same way as do buildings, machines, roads and for example
software.
It is a particular catastrophe for the very poor,” said Professor Das
Gupta.
“As countries mine their natural wealth to fuel economic activity, the
poorest of the poor lose their very life support systems. If fish
disappears from a rich country’s supermarket shelves shoppers can
substitute this loss of protein by buying another form for example pork,
beef or soya. Poor people, depending on the natural resources around
them,
do not have this luxury, do not have this kind of choice,” said
Professor
Das Gupta.
Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP) which is running a two day brainstorming at the London
School of Economics on how to mainstream environment in pro poor
development strategies, said: “In the end we are all facing poverty if
we
fail to address environmental decline, if we fail to reinvest in
nature’s
capital. You cannot continue to drive a car if all you do is put petrol
in
the tank. It needs servicing, parts require replacing and we must pay
for
the roads and infrastructure on which it runs”.
“In reality, nature is even more complicated. By continually depleting
and
damaging it and without investment in the running, maintenance and
management costs, the Earth’s life support can suddenly and abruptly
fade
or switch to become less productive and unpredictable. I believe we are
slowly winning this political and economic argument but not fast
enough. So
we must hurry up otherwise all six billion of us will eventually be
scratching around trying to survive,” he added.
Mr Toepfer said this was given fresh urgency by the Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment, the work of over 1,300 experts.
According to the assessment, some 60 per cent of the planet's ecosystem
services are currently being degraded by human activities.
This week’s two day brainstorming, running from 10 to 12 October, has
brought together some of the finest minds in environmental economics as
well as senior figures from the environmental and intergovernmental
fields.
It is hoped to engage the so called Multilateral Environmental
Agreements,
covering areas like biological diversity, migratory species and climate.
These treaties could go a long way towards helping refine ecosystem
valuations and to improve cost benefit analysis of targeted investments
in
degraded ecosystems to boost political and financial support for this
nature-based approach.
One of the primary aims is to see how pro-poor markets can be created
that
generate income for those in desperate need while conserving the life
support systems upon which they and the rest of the world depend.
Currently, most of the goods and services provided by ecosystems have
little or no market value despite their importance in the economic
lives of
communities, nations and the globe.
It has been calculated that tropical forests are worth some $60 billion
a
year as a result of their carbon removal activities alone which are
helping
in the fight against global warming.
But these forests, found in countries like the Democratic Republic of
Congo
or Indonesia, are only valued as timber resources rather than for their
even more valuable carbon sequestration services.
Thus governments and local people have less incentive to conserve them
and
more incentive to cut them down.
Mr Toepfer said the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and other reports
released during the year have made compelling economic cases for
conserving
ecosystems and for carrying out targeted investments in restoring
degraded
ones.
Valuing Natural Capital and Ecosystems
New figures show that an intact wetland in Canada is worth $6,000 a
hectare
versus $2,000 a hectare for one cleared for intensive agriculture.
Intact tropical mangroves, coastal ecosystems that are nurseries for
fish,
natural pollution filters and coastal defenses, are worth around $1,000
a
hectare. Cleared for shrimp farms, the value falls to around $200 a
hectare.
The Assessment also puts a value on peat bogs and marshlands. It
estimates
that the Muthurajawela Marsh, a more than 3,000 hectare coastal bog in
Sri
Lanka, is worth an estimated $5 million a year as a result of services
such
as local flood control.
Losses as a result of damage by alien invasive species in the Cape
Floral
region of South Africa is calculated at around $2,000 a hectare.
The annual recreational value of coral reefs in the six Marine
Management
Areas of the Hawaiian islands ranges from $300,000 to tens of millions
of
dollars a year.
Studies from Algeria, Italy, Portugal, Syria and Tunisia also point to
the
value of intact forests.
These estimate that the value of the timber and fuel-wood from a forest
is
worth less than a third when compared with the value of their services
such
as water-shed protection and recreation to the absorption of pollutants
like greenhouse gases.
The burning of 10 million hectares of Indonesia's forests in the late
1990s
cost an estimated $9 billion as a result of factors including increased
health care and tourism losses.
There are also new findings on the link between the spread of disease
and
environmental destruction. The provision of treated bed nets, the better
availability of low cost anti-malarial drugs and the development of
vaccines are crucial but so are healthy ecosystems.
Studies in the Amazon by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the
United States have concluded that for every one per cent increase in
deforestation, there is an eight per cent increase in the number of
malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
This has implications for human health but also to economic
development. It
is calculated that Africa's Gross National Product (GNP) in 2000 could
have
been 25 per cent or $100 billion higher if malaria had been eradicated
35
years ago.
Investing in Ecosystems to Meet the Millennium Development Goals on
Poverty, Health, Women and Water Research indicates that investing
in nature can provide an excellent rate of return and help meet the
internationally agreed development goals.
Every dollar invested in fighting land degradation and desertification
may
conservatively generate over three dollars in economic benefits helping
to
fight poverty among the millions living on fragile lands.
Money could be spent on such traditional and soil conserving features
like
terracing.
Meanwhile every dollar spent on delivering clean water and sanitation is
likely to give impressive rates of return of up to $14. It indicates
that
in some cases the income of the very poor could be boosted fourteen
fold.
Here the economic benefits arise from areas including reduced health
care
costs, increased productivity because of workers spending less time
searching for water and improved school attendance.
Conservation of habitats and ecosystems are also cost effective when
compared with the short term profits from environmentally damaging
activities such as dynamite fishing, mining and sedimentation as a
result
of deforestation in the interior.
A study of coral reefs in the Caribbean indicates that sustainable
harvesting of coral fish for food and industries such as the pet and
aquaria trade may be worth $300 million a year, coral-based tourism just
over $2 billion annually and shoreline protection from reefs up to $2.2
billion a year.
However, these economic benefits are threatened by damage and
degradation
amounting to between $350 million and $870 million a year. Overall for
every dollar invested in coral reef conservation economic returns will
total up to $5.
Meanwhile the carbon storage or “sequestration” potential of forests
ranges
between $360 and $2,200 per hectare which makes them worth far more
than if
they are converted to grazing or cropland.
Indeed once carbon reaches over $30 a ton it becomes far more cost
effective to conserve forests than to clear them.
Natural capital also serves as back up against calamities such as
droughts
or crop failures. Studies from Brazil show that farmers in the Amazon’s
Tapajos National Park turn to forests products such as nuts and berries
when crop yields tumble.
In other words, the forest acts as a kind of nature-based insurance
policy
for those denied access to formal insurance and financial markets.
Notes to Editors
Creating Pro-Poor Markets for Ecosystem Services
A High-Level Brainstorming Workshop 10 – 12 October 2005, London School
of
Economics, United Kingdom
Organized by UNEP through its Division of Environmental Conventions and
Division of Policy Development and Law, UNEP in conjunction with the
LSE.