HIGHLIGHTS OF REMARKS OF SHA ZUKANG, UNDER-SECRETARY GENERAL OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS, DELIVERED AT PRESS CONFERENCE IN GENEVA

Opening Remarks

“Over the next three to four decades, humankind must manage a fundamental, global technological overhaul to end poverty and avert the catastrophic impacts of climate change and environmental degradation.

The World Economic and Social Survey, produced by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, is one of the UN’s flagship reports. This year’s report is entitled, “The Great Green Technological Transformation”. The report argues that efforts to stage a green technological transformation must be at the centre of national policies and multilateral cooperation over the next 30 to 40 years.

We need a complete overhaul of how we generate and use our energy and how we produce our food. Continuing to use existing technologies is likely to make the Earth unlivable.

Economic progress over the past two centuries has been enormous. But it has been unevenly distributed and it has come at the cost of degradation of our natural environment.

We cannot stop the engines of growth, because much more economic progress is still needed in order for people in developing countries to also have access to a decent standard of living. By mid-century the world’s population is projected to increase by another two billion people. They will need to have access to modern energy and to sufficient food.

This report sets out the path for achieving an urgent global technological and economic overhaul needed for sustainable development. Given the pace of climate change, we do not have much time, probably only three or four decades, to make this transformation. Previous major energy transitions took no less than 70 to 100 years to achieve. Therefore, governments need to play a much more active role in accelerating the green energy transformation.

This survey stresses that a much stronger push is needed to develop end-use energy technologies that are sustainable. That means making automobiles, computers, heating, production equipment, and what have you, more energy efficient and powered by clean energy. This can take us a long way.

The survey calls for a truly green revolution in agriculture. Global food production will need to increase by between 70 and 100 per cent from present levels by 2050 in order to feed the growing world population. We had a green agricultural revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. It modernized agriculture and it pushed up food production, but it also contributed to air and water pollution and land degradation. Agriculture currently contributes about 14 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation is adding another 17 per cent. So, in order to feed the growing world population we now need a new green revolution by, among other things, shifting to farming techniques that require less water and produce less land degradation. The technologies are there, but governments and international cooperation need to create the conditions for widespread adaptation of those techniques and make them available to developing countries at affordable costs. Of course here there is the question of intellectual property.

The survey argues that innovation policies for sustainable development should be an integral part of national development strategies. It calls for the greening of every country’s national innovation system. This will also have important implications for education systems; farmers, engineers and other technicians will need training on how to handle green technologies and to support scientists to develop and improve new technologies.

The survey further proposes to build a global technology sharing regime. It also recommends creating networks of international technology research and application centers. We need these to share information across borders to spread green technology globally. Although this will also require expanding options regarding multilateral intellectual property rights.

Financing remains a key constraint in all of this. Inadequate financing is consistently mentioned by businesses and governments as the greatest obstacle to their rapid adaption of clean technologies. The survey estimates that over the next 40 years an additional $1.9 trillion per year will be needed for incremental investments in green technologies. At least half, or $1 trillion, of the required investments would need to take place in developing countries.

All of these issues will also be central to the Rio +20 Conference next June. The World Economic and Social Survey suggests a number of possible solutions of how to achieve the “great, green technological transformation. However, we must not rely on technology alone; one crucial pillar of sustainable development is social development. This means green technologies must not lead to widening gaps between the rich and the poor, developing countries; in particular, the poor should have access to these technologies at affordable costs. We must take these very seriously if we really want to achieve sustainable development and avert catastrophic damage to the Earth’s natural environment, as well as a social and economic crisis. There is very little time left, so we must come together and agree to joint action at Rio +20.”

Q & A with Journalists

Q: Who should pay for the money needed to accomplish this green revolution?
A: Mr. Vos, Director of DESA’s Division of Development Policy and Analysis, said that the financing should come from various sources and the starting point should be through domestic resource mobilization and strengthening. Developing countries may lack these resources and international resources could be mobilized to finance investments in green economies. Improved disaster risk management and better farming technologies would also help. International reserves could be pooled to free up resources for monetary transfers to countries to make investments in the green economy.

Q: Could Mr. Vos provide a break down of the $1.9 trillion figure? Could countries really raise such sums domestically?
A: Mr. Sha said financing would never be enough. Most donors were undergoing a period of austerity so it was not a great time to ask for more money for developing countries. 2012 was also an election year in many countries and governments would be hesitant to make commitments, but he was confident the shadow of slow growth left over from the financial crisis would lift soon. Regarding intellectual property, the survey showed that relying solely on the private sector to diffuse green technology would be too slow. The world needed to make the transition in half the time it usually takes to transition technologies or else face dire consequences for the environment. The West insisted that private activities should be stimulated rather than obstructed and measures taken to promote green technology.

Mr. Vos said that $1.9 trillion sounded like a lot of money, but put into perspective it was only about 2 to 3 per cent of global output. So the $1 trillion needed by developing countries represented an increased investment of 2 to 4 per cent of GDP. Most countries would have to increase investment rates anyway just to sustain growth. If these investments were not made now, it could become much more costly down the line for both developing and developing countries.

Q: What evidence was there that small farms could produce more and produce it more efficiently than large farms? How would this change policies of investing in large scale producers?
A: Mr. Sha said he had asked his team the same question when they were drafting the survey. Based on his experience in China he could say that the State had to invest in and help small farmers to alleviate poverty and build infrastructure such as dams, transportation lines and electrical lines.

Mr. Vos said the main reason the report focused on small scale farms was because 70 to 90 per cent of world food production took place on small farms and in many cases the problem small farms faced was the scale economies you could get from better irrigation systems, better infrastructure, and better marketing and distribution networks. One of the first orders of business was to give priority to enlarging the scales of economy through public and private investments in infrastructure and technology. Each country had to find the right balance.

Q: What was the figure for investment today in green technology? How were subsidies compatible with efficiencies?
A: Regarding subsidies, Mr. Sha said based on his experience a country had to comply with the rules if it was part of the WTO and under certain circumstances subsidies were permitted, particularly for developing countries.

Mr. Vos noted that the $1.9 trillion investment requirements for green technology were in addition to current investments. $100 billion was the estimate of what was currently spent on research and development in green technology/green energy and this was much too little. Also, much more priority should be given to increasing efficiencies because that was where most of the gains could be made in cutting emissions.

Q: How much was currently spent on conventional technologies such as coal, and was it just a matter of shifting these monies to green technologies or transforming these conventional technologies as well?
A: Mr. Vos replied that approximately 60 per cent of gains could be made in increasing efficiencies, by making household appliances more efficient for example. The rest would have to come from transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable forms of energy.

Q: Japan had a great deal of success in energy efficiency 30 years ago which allowed its economy to take off; why haven't more countries followed its example?
A: Mr. Vos said Japan set government standards for energy efficiency and subsidized firms to reach that level of efficiency and helped them overcome technical hurdles and this was an example that could be followed globally. Japan incentivized energy efficiency and diffused it so that it became more widespread and affordable.

Q: UNEP said that $1.3 billion was needed in yearly investments in green technology and this report cited a figure of $1.9 billion; could they explain the difference in figures? What were DESA's views on nuclear energy and the impact of the Fukushima incident on the investment in nuclear energy?
A: Mr. Vos said UNEP projections were based on a global model they used so they were in the same ball park as the figures in the present report, but not exactly the same because they took into consideration a range of other factors such as disaster risk management. In the report they did not take a position on nuclear energy, although barring an accident it could be considered clean energy if the nuclear waste was disposed of properly. Nuclear energy was about as expensive as scaling up solar or wind energy. It was hard to say how countries would invest in energy options in the future because it all depended on how soon they could widely adopt various types of clean energy.

Mr. Sha said that green trade protectionism was a huge issue for countries as was the question of standards, so what Japan accomplished was not necessarily applicable in all countries. There was no one-size fits all approach and particular attention had to be paid to the needs of developing and least-developed countries.