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Report "Fighting Poverty through Environmental Policy"
Effective
Environmental Policies are Key to Global Poverty Reduction
Berlin,
1 December 2004. Today the German Advisory Council on Global Change
(WBGU) submits its latest report, entitled "World in Transition:
Fighting Poverty through Environmental Policy", to federal ministers
Edelgard Bulmahn (Research), Jürgen Trittin (Environment) and Heidemarie
Wieczorek-Zeul (Development). In their report, the scientists stress that
successful environmental protection is a prerequisite for effective poverty
eradication. The poor countries' development prospects will only improve
if more intensive mitigation and adaptation measures are adopted in response
to ongoing environmental changes. The industrialized countries must make
their contribution to help overcome this crisis. In the WBGU's view, the
linkages between environmental protection and poverty reduction must be
strengthened and the two areas must be embedded more effectively in national
and international policies as cross-cutting tasks. This approach would
benefit every country.
Human intervention in the natural environment is already jeopardizing
the livelihood of the poor throughout the world. Unless counter-measures
are adopted, environmental changes will have an even more life-threatening
impact in the future. Absolute poverty means not only a lack of income
but also, in most cases, an increased risk of starvation and disease and
a lack of access to education. Even now, 1.1 billion people subsist on
less than one US dollar a day; the same number of people have no access
to safe drinking water, and around 840 million people are malnourished.
And every year, around 1.6 million people die from the effects of indoor
air pollution.
Breathing
life into Global Partnership
Now more than ever, responsible partnership between industrialized and
developing countries is essential in order to protect vital natural resources
and combat poverty. From the WBGU's perspective, this means that the industrialized
countries must establish sustainable consumption and production patterns
at home while supporting viable modernization processes in developing
countries. The present gap between the wealthy countries' rhetoric and
their actual policies is undermining the developing countries' trust and
confidence. At the same time, developing country governments have a responsibility
to practise good governance, improve the rights of the poor, and take
seriously the environmental dimension of sustainability.
UN
reform: Giving development and environmental problems equal priority with
security issues
The
UN is a cumbersome organization which must improve its capability for
global governance and become the backbone of a global environmental and
development partnership. This is the only way to reduce the much-lamented
lack of policy coordination (coherence) and give greater weight to sustainability
goals within the international community. As a long-term vision, the WBGU
recommends the establishment of a "Council for Global Development
and Environment" as a lead agency in the UN system. Its role would
be to coordinate the institutions working on development and environment,
including the international financial institutions such as the World Bank
and the IMF, and focus their activities towards the guiding vision of
sustainability. The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) would be subsumed
into this new body. Since an amendment to the UN Charter would be necessary
to establish this new Council, this reform project can only be achieved
over the long term. A further key reform step is the rapid upgrading of
the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) into a UN specialized agency.
Driving forward local implementation
The WBGU emphasises that international agreements can only be implemented
successfully if the role of national and local players as the driving
force in this process is understood and recognized. In most cases, the
transition from the adoption of global action programmes to their practical
implementation at local level continues to be unsatisfactory. Quantitative
targets for international conventions should therefore be agreed, indicators
to monitor the measures be drafted and coordination between donors be
improved.
Securing the funding
The implementation of internationally agreed targets on poverty and environment
is affordable. According to the WBGU, the additional resources needed
for this purpose run in the low hundreds of billions of US dollars annually.
This matches the OECD countries' annual spending on agricultural subsidies,
which total around US dollars 350 billion. The costs of protecting the
climate and biodiversity also fall within this range. Then there are the
additional costs of adaptation to, and compensation for, climate damage.
There are various ways of generating the extra funding required. For example,
funds could be diverted away from current expenditure: abolishing environmentally
harmful subsidies is one option here. Dismantling trade barriers, which
impede the poor countries' access to the industrialized countries' markets,
would trigger a far higher flow of resources into the developing countries.
An increase in official development assistance (ODA) is also required,
especially for the least developed countries. And finally, funds can also
be generated through public-private partnerships, i.e. alliances between
official development assistance, civil society and the private sector.
Other instruments include charging for the use of global common resources,
such as international airspace or the oceans. For example, an EU-wide
charge on the consumption of aviation fuel would generate as much as €
21 billion in revenue annually.
Using forthcoming political summits for a change in course
The forthcoming G8 Summit in July 2005 will focus on poverty reduction
and climate protection. In this context, the WBGU welcomes the British
Government's announcement that it plans to cancel more of the developing
countries' debt. The German Federal Government should follow suit, since
the high debt burden facing many poor countries is an impediment to their
sustainable development. The Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative,
which links debt relief to specific conditions, should be overhauled and
extended to heavily indebted middle-income countries.
The High-Level Plenary Meeting of the UN General Assembly scheduled for
September 2005 – which will follow up on the Millennium Development
Goals adopted by 150 heads of state and government in 2000 and review
progress on the outcomes of recent world conferences – also offers
the opportunity to develop further international environmental and poverty
reduction policies.
Background: Systems analysis as basis
The recommendations for action contained in this report are based on a
detailed analysis of the systemic links between poverty (income poverty,
disease, malnutrition, lack of education, as well as social stability
and social capital) and environmental changes (climate change, lack of
water resources and water pollution, soil degradation, loss of biological
diversity, as well as air pollution). The manifestations of and interactions
between poverty and environmental problems are investigated, and potential
solutions at political level are derived.
When developing strategies for implementation, the WBGU takes the view
that coherence between action on poverty and environmental policies is
essential. In development cooperation, for example, climate policy should
not be restricted to adaptation measures but should also include emissions
prevention. At the same time, climate-oriented technology transfer should
take greater account of the interests of the poor. This is the only way
to ensure positive system feedback.
Handing
over the Report
From left
to right: Prof. Dr. Luther, Federal Minister Trittin, Prof. Dr. Kulessa,
Prof. Dr. Schulz-Baldes, Federal Minister Wieczorek-Zeul, Prof. Dr. Dr.
Sauerborn, Federal Minister Bulmahn, Prof. Dr. Graßl, Prof. Dr.
Schellnhuber C.B.E., Prof. Dr. Nuscheler
Photos
taken at the press conference
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Prof. Dr. Graßl
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Prof. Dr. Nuscheler
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Please direct your queries to:
WBGU Secretariat
Reichpietschufer 60-62, 8th Floor
D-10785 Berlin
Germany
Tel. +49 30 263948 12
Fax +49 30 263948 50
Email: wbgu@wbgu.de
All press releases and reports can be downloaded
at http://www.wbgu.de.
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