book 6

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CONTENT Introduction........................................... 3

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Lead author: David Woollcombe Designer: Romain Oria

Thanks are due to the UN Human Development Report Office for permission to summarise their 2010 and 2011 Reports; to UNEP’s Green Economy Unit for permission to summarise their excellent “Towards a Green Economy” Briefing Paper and Pavan Sukhdev, its author, for his concern to make his report accessible to young people. Finally, thanks to the European Commission for funding the Road to Rio+20 project of which these booklets are a central part, and for providing their excellent Communication and “Road Map to a Resource Efficient Europe” – also summarised in this booklet.

The UN 2010 and 2011 Human Development Reports.

Getting better… Human Development 1990 - 2010................................................ 4 Sustainability + Equity = A Better Future for All................................................ 6 It’s Just Not FAIR!!!..................................... 8 Finding the Positive Policy Solutions.... 10

The UN Environment Programme’s Green Economy Briefing Paper What does a Green Economy means?... 14 What does a Green Economy solve?...... 16 20 Steps to a Green Economy................. 18 Green Economy = Resource Efficiency.. 22 Green Growth Rocks!.................................. 26

Education for Rio+20 Educating the Next Generation: Day(s) of Action for Rio+20.................................. 28 Satellite+20s – Do your own Model Rio+20........................................................... 30

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Do-it-yourself National Green Economy Transition Plan........................... 32

Introduction - THE IMPORTANCE OF RIO+20: The Green Growth Summit The UN Secretary General is calling Rio+20: “The most important Summit meeting in the UN’s History.” Why? Because he, like many concerned economists, scientists and any of you who have read all these booklets, realise that the way we, and our planet, are heading is over a cliff.

Rio+20 is the perfect opportunity to change direction – away from the precipice towards the sunlit uplands of peace, prosperity and sustainability with Equity. Will it do so? – probably not. Our governments failed in Copenhagen – and there is every chance that they will fail again in Rio. Why? Because there is a big problem in the negotiation: the richer countries think the Rio+20 theme of a Green Economy is a great idea. The poorer countries think it distracts from the central social, environmental and development themes which were at the heart of Sustainable Development. Also, they feel that putting a price on natural resources makes the forests, the seas, the rivers just another commodity which is culturally offensive to them. After a year of negotiation, this gulf remains.

There is another problem: the basic negotiating text (the ‘Zero Draft’) produced by UN staff for the Rio+20 Outcome Statement is hopelessly weak. This was intentional: the UN staff thought that, by being weak, they would make the governments more bold. But that’s like a general going into battle telling his troops: “I am going to lead this attack so hopelessly, you will feel sorry for me, and fight more boldly to make up for my lack of leadership!” Doesn’t work!

Youth can make up for that lack of leadership by running their own, parallel “My City+20” simulations of the Rio Summit, then following it up by doing a personal, household or Community Green Transition Plan. Or you could do a Day of Action & Learning about Rio+20. The last six pages of this booklet explain how to do these. Anything you come up with will feed into the Youth Statement that will be handed to every Head of State as they arrive for the Summit in Rio. In this booklet, we summarise the best learning we’ve found on Rio+20: the first part is drawn from the 2011 UN Human Development Report: Sustainability and Equity; the second is from the UN Environment Programme’s policy brief: Towards a Green Economy – excellent in spite of the Green Economy jargon.

My position? I would like to re-brand Rio+20 as the “Green Growth Summit.” Every country, rich and poor, can get behind that, can’t they? We all want growth and the jobs and prosperity that growth brings. But we want it to be green and sustainable and to be accompanied by equity – fairness: human rights for all! Health for all! Education for all + an end to war. Demilitarisation – Peace!

Green Growth + Equity = Sustainability All governments have to do is to tax unsustainable behaviour so it is more expensive than sustainable behaviour. It’s as simple as that. If people realise that things will HAVE to change as oil runs out and that, actually, things could be better in the postoil, post-carbon world, they will demand that their governments move in this direction.

The UN was created for ‘We the Peoples…’ – and where we the people lead, governments will follow. So - Read on - and get leading!

by David Woollcombe, Lead Author

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Getting better… Human Development 1990 - 2010 “I’ve got to admit it's getting better (can’t get no worse!)…”

John Lennon and Paul McCartney - The Beatles.

Human Development : In 1990, the first Human Development Report (HDR) introduced a new approach to Development. It put people at the centre, saying “Development is about enlarging people’s choices! – giving them the political freedoms to be active agents of change.” Human development also ensures that current achievements are not attained at the expense of future generations – which is why it is the foundation of Sustainability.

Human Development Index(HDI) : If you want to find out if peoples’ lives were getting better – you need a way to measure it. Money is a good measure – because it is easy to count. But – you need others. So the HDR came up with the HDI – which linked incomes to the numbers of people getting an education, and how many years they live. So – now you have Low HDI countries which are the least-developed, poorest countries as well as medium and High HDI countries. It’s complicated – but the HDRs are respected internationally because they are constantly improving the way they measure the health of societies. And – as PCI is fond of saying in relation to evaluation and monitoring – if you can’t measure it – you’re guessing!

It is getting better : Because of the HDI, we know we’re not guessing. People are healthier, better educated, live longer and less likely to die of starvation or malnutrition than they were in 1990 even though there are nearly 2 billion more of us. The graph shows that, on average, countries have improved by 18% - only three have gone backwards. (See if you can spot which they are – from the graph.)

More people are able to select their leaders democratically, and influence public decisions and opinions. Technological development, especially in the field of communications, enables more people to be in touch with each other freely across the planet. Although the digital divide is deep, people, especially young people, in even the poorest countries are finding ways to bridge it.

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So what’s the trick?

What are the factors that make things better?

Good governments help.. One need only compare the relative affluence of South Korea with its Northern neighbour to see how a government affects human development. Throughout the world, economic growth and human progress can be traced back to thoughtful government institutions and policies. The HDR points out that markets are very bad at guaranteeing provision of security (defence) – health and education. Markets are also weak in promoting environmental sustainability.

This is why the HDRs concentrate on promoting good policy decisions – to both government and Civil Society. We need them, if we are to survive!

We also need Jobs and Income: It is true, as early HDRs were fond of pointing out, that good health and education were not always linked to economic growth. There were legions of examples - from the Indian state of Kerala, to Sri Lanka, Costa Rica and Cuba – that showed faster Human Development improvements than much richer countries like Saudi Arabia. But incomes, obviously, do matter: individuals with higher incomes have more choices than those who don’t. They are the result of decent, high-paying jobs which, in turn, deliver tax revenue to governments that allow them to deliver better services to their citizens.

Inequality: Though democracy has spread from around 30% of UN member states in 1970 to over 60% now, inequality has gotten worse. For every ONE country where income inequality has improved (chiefly in Latin America) – TWO have got worse: most former Soviet states, and East Asian and Pacific countries have higher inequality than 20 years ago.

Vigilance is needed in measurement: Amartya Sen, who with Mahbub al Haq helped developed the HDI, would be the first to agree that it is a ‘crude’ measure of development. As data gathering improved, the HDRs introduced several important new measures like the Gender Empowerment Index and the Human Poverty Index. But – the 2010 Report went much further: at a stroke, it introduced THREE new measures of human development. There is a new Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, a Gender Inequality Index and a Multidimensional Poverty Index. You can read all about them on the UN HDR website (www.undp/hdro.org).

Cover of the 2011 UNDP Report.

This cover explores the integral link between environmental sustainability and equity and shows that these are critical to extend human freedoms for people today and the generations to come. It symbolises how different policies can have different implications for sustainability and equity. Whenever available, we should prefer solutions that are good for the environment while also promoting equity and human development.

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Sustainability + Equity = A Better Future for All “Investments that improve Equity – in access to renewable energy, water, sanitation and reproductive healthcare – could advance both sustainability and Human Development. The world needs a post-2015 development framework that reflects equity and sustainability. Rio+20 stands out as a key opportunity to reach a shared understanding of how to achieve it.”

Helen Clark, Administrator, UN Development Programme.

What do we mean by Sustainability?

In a word, ‘Survival’!

The 2011 HDR puts it very starkly: “If the rates of progress outlined in the 2010 HDR continue, 75% of the world’s population will achieve European standards of Human Development by 2050.” But they won’t – because that development model will run up against the brick wall of resource limits. UN-sustainability. As those fun computer simulations show – we would need the resources of another three or four planets to deliver European levels of prosperity to a global family of 9 to 10 billion. So sustainability must move to front and centre of our policy-making, and – crucially – our education systems. For it is essential that you, dear reader, fully understand what sustainability means and how to achieve it! It’s very, very hard! meeting the needs of today’s people who are physically present, shouting for their rights, voting for the people who will deliver what they need NOW, while at the same time protecting resources to meet the needs of unheard, unseen, unborn future generations. Hard – but essential.

For, as the HDR says: “People born today should not have a greater claim on the earth’s resources than those born a hundred or a thousand years from now. If we fail to act now, future generations may remember the early 21st Century as the moment when the doors to a better future closed for most of the world’s people.”

Weak vs. Strong Sustainability?

Some believe that there is a techno-fix for every problem: as a resource is depleted – oil, coal, natural gas etc. – it’s price rises and therefore inventors are offered a higher price, and more profit, for an innovative replacement technology. This leads to “Weak Sustainability” policies – because some believe that sustainability doesn’t really matter since a replacement will be found for anything and everything that runs out. On the ‘Strong Sustainability’ side are those who believe that most resources have no real substitutes and thus must be preserved. Though they agree that some resources have been replaced by others – timber houses by brick etc. – history is not necessarily a good guide to the future. Climate change is the ultimate example of this: there is no techno-fix that can possibly deal with a global problem of this kind. And, as the great advocate of ‘Steady-State Economics’ Herman Daly has pointed out: “We have moved from an Empty World where natural capital is super-abundant and human resources are limited, to a Full World where natural capital is depleted and human resources are over-abundant.” Because of the uncertainty, Strong Sustainability should be the policy of choice.

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The difficulties of achieving Equity?

Equity is about fairness. Any who have played the “World Game” will know that young people have a good sense of what is fair. The world game divides 100 students up into the global population by income – and feeds them accordingly. So – - 6 get a 5-course banquet - 7 get a 3-course meal - 9 get a 2-course meal - 20 1-course - 20 a bowl of rice with meat - 22 a bowl of rice with no meat – and the remaining 16 get empty bowls with a few sticks and roots.

Inevitably, any time we have done this, the students with food rush to give some of their’s, to those without. It is a natural instinct to share – and that is Equity. But – as we have noted, unequal income distribution is growing in most places, and political efforts to enforce equality – as in the former Soviet Union – deliver arthritic societies with no innovative drive and endless corruption. So – equity is easy to talk about – but very, very hard to deliver.

Why Sustainability + Equity?

So why does the UN seek to grasp these two, seemingly impossible / seemingly contradictory, policy goals? Because the UN is centrally concerned with JUSTICE: it is inherently unjust to plunder resources today and leave none for the citizens of tomorrow.

Equally, it is UN-just for some today to have abundant access to jobs, education and healthcare while others have none of these things. Amartya Sen puts it succinctly: “It is as important to be concerned with Intra-Generational Justice as it is to be concerned about Inter-Generational Justice.” The HDR’s goal is to find the positive synergies between sustainability and equity – as the Graphic on the front cover illustrates. It is not always possible to find synergies: indeed the imperative of farmers cutting down forests to feed their families and stay alive, is a direct challenge to sustainability. But there are synergies – and it is the job of this generation, and this HDR, to find them. Because, without equity, sustainability will be a luxury for the rich and a punishment for the poor.

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It’s Just Not FAIR!!!

Balancing Our Resources - Where is the fairness?

The faster the HDI goes up, carbon emissions grow even faster: the richer the country, the higher the HDI and the greater the GHG emissions. Even more unfair, since1850, very high HDI countries have together generated 9 times more carbon emissions than low, medium and high countries combined! That’s why, in the Kyoto Protocol, Very High HDI countries were required to make the big reductions and why India and China fight so fiercely to keep this ‘Equity’ component while countries like the USA insist that all countries be treated equally.

Whichever way you look at it, the poor are always punished for the behaviour of the rich. The 2011 HDR lists many ways in which the poor are suffering most from our failure to achieve sustainable norms of global behaviour. Here are some of them:

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CO2

Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions:

People in very high HDI countries drive cars, use air-conditioning and electricity from fossil-fuel driven plants so, of course, cause more GHG emissions. The average UK citizen emits as much GHG in two months as a person in a low HDI country generates in a year – or the average Qatari generates in 10 days. The growth is non-linear: the faster the HDI goes up, carbon emissions grow even faster: the richer the country, the higher the HDI and the greater the GHG emissions. Even more unfair, since1850, very high HDI countries have together generated 9 times more carbon emissions than low, medium and high countries combined. That’s why, in the Kyoto Protocol, Very High HDI countries were required to make the big reductions and why India and China fight so fiercely to keep this ‘Equity’ component while countries like the USA insist that all countries be treated equally.

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Climate Change:

Most GHG emissions are carbon dioxide. But there are others – methane and nitrous oxide, which are 300 times more potent. Few, outside the extreme right, doubt that climate change is the result of human activity – our burning of fossil fuels, cutting down of forests, cement manufacture etc. Carbon intensive production and consumption is up 112% from 40 years ago. In low, medium and high HDI countries, it’s up by 248%, while in very high HDI countries, it’s down by 52%. So – lower carbon emissions are possible if you can afford it. Low HDI countries cannot – and they suffer most from its consequences, thus:

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i.

Rising Sea levels: The 2011 HDR says, “Sea-levels have risen by 50cm since 1870 – and are likely to rise 31cm by 2100.” Bad news for Small Island States like the Maldives and Tuvalu – but all low HDI countries will suffer from sea-water intrusions into their drinking water. They do not have the resources, or often the technology, to deal with rising sea-levels that Western European Countries, like the Netherlands, have. The HDR calculates that 63 million people in East Asia and the Pacific will be affected by sea-level rise.

ii.

Declining Rainfall: Climate change causes less rain– especially in Africa. In Sub-Saharan African raiinfall is down 7% - with Low HDI countries down overall by 4%. High HDI countries experience much lower declines. iii.

Natural Disasters: The number of storms, droughts and floods has increased from 132 a year in 1980 to 357 a year in 2007. Surprisingly, Low HDI countries have less to lose from such natural disasters than Medium HDI countries: a typical natural disaster in a Medium HDI country takes 11% more lives than a similar one in a Low HDI country. And overall, natural disasters are taking fewer lives now than they were 40 years ago. iv.

Deforestation: Very High HDI countries have experienced forest growth recently – but Low HDI countries have lost 11% of their forests. Latin America (the Amazon), the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa are worst affected. There are increasing instances of ‘land grabs’ by High HDI countries of land in Low HDI countries to get timber and agricultural products. v. Soil erosion and Degradation: Desertification and soil erosion are affecting agricultural land everywhere – and Low HDI countries are worse equipped to deal with it than High HDI countries. In the same countries, aquifers are being depleted which result in lower crop yields.

vi.

Disappearing Fisheries: “The current annual fish catch of 145m tonnes far exceeds the maximum annual sustainable yield of 80-100m tonnes,” says the HDR. We are at – or close to – ‘Peak Fish’ and already catches of some large fish have declined considerably since 1980. Again, Low HDI countries suffer most – as the large, industrial fishing operations of the High HDI countries are responsible for 90% of the total catch even though 85% of fisherman live in Asia. Their average catch is 2.3 tonnes per fisherman compared with 23.9 tonnes per fisherman in Western Europe. Is that fair?

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Income & Consumption: Where incomes are lower, consumption is

lower: there are 900 cars per 1000 people of driving age in the USA compared to 10 in India; 2 TV sets per household in the USA to 1 TV per 10 households in Liberia. Average water consumption in Very High HDI countries is 452 liters per day, compared to 67 litres per day in Low HDI countries.

• Future: Without change, by 2050, Low HDI countries will experience less rain, rising sea-level, more deforestation, soil erosion, and marine eco-system deterioriation than High and Very High HDI countries.

2050

• Glimmers of Hope: Education really helps as well-educated countries like Sweden demonstrate. 96% of Swedes are aware of Climate Change, compared to only 60% globally. [see: www.gallup.com/se/126848/worldview.aspx] Because they know, surveys show that Swedes are prepared to accept slower economic growth and higher taxes in return for better environment quality.

The people of Costa Rica also support their government’s initiatives to protect their forests and pay for eco-system services. Curitiba, Brazil, has the world’s highest rate of journeys by public transport (45%) – and one of the lowest levels of urban air pollution in the world – again through inspired leadership by the municipal government. So governments – local and national – can change things.

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Finding the Positive Policy Solutions “It is time to launch a global campaign to kick-start a shift from incremental to transformative change. The UN General Assembly has identified 2012 as the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All – and Rio+20 will provide a unique opportunity to define a global approach for that universal access and to combine the energy, green economy and climate change agendas.”

Human Development Report, 2011, Page 98

• Energy for All: Today, 1.5 billion people have no access to electricity and 2.6 billion cook their meals on open fires. Off-grid micro-generation from hydro- and solarpower can deliver gains in better jobs, increased food security, more time spent studying, more leisure choices and more empowered communities. In India, CleanIN’s zero carbon village project has raised income, and lowered carbon emissions in 100 villages across Andrha Pradesh using solar cookers, bio-digesters and photo-voltaic power generation. Grameen Shakthi has done the same for 3 million people in Bangladesh. Renewables account for 20% of today’s electricity supply – a 100-fold increase since 2000. Gaining access to electricity is one of the first steps along the road to Equity: it should be taken NOW using sustainable, renewable Green Energy!

SOLBEN is a full-service Bio-fuels company that both builds modular bio-fuel production plants and offers consultancy to other bio-fuel producers. Started by 20-year old Daniel Gómez in Mexico the company turned over $1 million in 2010, and is set to turn over $3 million in 2011. It sources its fuels in nonfood products like algae and Jatropha.

• Managing Population: Obviously, a lower global population is more sustainable making equity easier to deliver. The HDR points out that halving the 2010 Population Growth Rate would deliver about a quarter of the carbon emission reductions needed by 2050. Another study shows that averting 53 million unwanted pregnancies annually would cut 17% off the global emissions total. Access to contraception is part of it: Bangladesh’s population growth rate dropped from 6.6 births per 1000 in 1970 to 2.4 in 2009 chiefly through providing access for women to family planning.

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•Gender empowerment Educating and empowering girls and young women remains the best way to lower population growth: the HDR shows that girls who have never gone to school have 4.5 children; those with a few years of schooling have 3; those with a couple of years of secondary schooling have 1.9. But gender empowerment also delivers sustainability and equity in many other ways: studies show that countries with more female members of parliament set aside more protected land areas and forests, ratify more environmental treaties and reduce their carbon emissions faster than those with male-dominated parliaments.

• Access to Clean, safe Water for All: There are many different ways to deliver clean water, sustainably in Low HDI countries. Cheap biosand filters are one way; tablets which consolidate impurities in a single, removable lump are another; solar distillers are yet another. The technology exists and it needs to be prioritised as, without water, humans and their animals and farms, die. The Sustainability / Equity balance needs to be observed at all levels: sometimes, paying for the water eco-system services of forests and mountain areas – in order to sustain them – is the best way to do this. The HDR points out that water from 18 national parks in Venezuela supplies fresh water to 19 million people and in several Arab states like Egypt and Yemen, water efficiencies are being driven by charging farmers market rates for water for their irrigation systems.

• Sanitation: Sanitation is, clearly, key to good health – and there are many remarkable programmes delivering to that 50% of the population of Low HDI countries who lack access to sanitation. One of the best is Community-led Total Sanitation which started in Bangladesh in 2000. (See: http://www. communityledtotalsanitation.org/) No hardware, no standard design – just empowering communities to ‘face their waste” and dig the pits necessary to dispose of their waste in safe ways.

Cash Transfers: A good way to improve equity is simply to give the poor money.

Surprisingly, it’s also quite cheap: Mexico’s Opportunidades Cash Transfer programme benefits 20% of the population and costs only 0.5% of GDP. Brasil’s Bolsa Familia is a similar scheme, and India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act costs 0.5% of GDP and supports 45 million households with 100 days of guaranteed labour. The International Labour Organisation calculates that cash transfers amounting to just 2% of global GDP could provide education, health and basic food provision for all the world’s poor: surely an equitable social safety net worth considering?

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Promote Community Management In the Zambezi basin, researchers discovered that forests considered sacred by indigenous tribes were being cut down at half the rate of those that weren’t. Delegating management of Environmental Assets to community groups – particularly women – has paid huge dividends in terms of ensuring their sustainability: “Community-conserved areas help ensure access to resources, sustain human development and maintain eco-system integrity…”

(HDR 2011) Locally managed marine areas also sustain fisheries effectively: in Andavadoaka in Madagascar, local fisherman developed a sustainable octopus fishing industry which spread and involved 24 villages in successfully managing a marine area for their profit.

AC T

• Empowerment delivering sustainability and equity: Environmental degradation is driven by the dis-empowerment of local communities. Therefore empowering them is a key driver of sustainability and also of equity. And part of that empowerment is education and awareness-raising about the challenge of climate change and eco-system maintenance. Where there is a free press, and strong civil society organisations, democracy is proven to be eco-friendly. But self-interest also drives a thirst for cheap fossil fuels so in countries the USA and in the European Union they still deliver subsidies that are harmful to the environment and undermine equity.

• The rights of Nature: For many years, the world has debated how to enshrine in law the rights of the natural world and the environment. There is a tablet proclaiming the Rights of Nature on the wall of the UN Environment Programme’s Headquarters in Nairobi and many HDRs assert that “A clean and safe environment is a Right not a privilege…” 31 African countries include environmental rights in their constitutions, and 120 countries include the provision of environmental norms amongst State obligations. In Chile, a court overturned a government licence because of its environmental impact. Hungary appointed an Ombudsman for Future Generations to ensure that no laws impact meeting future needs.

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• Financing these Policy Solutions: The world economy turns over $63 Trillion a year. You would have thought we could find a few million of that to conserve our natural assets for future generations. You would be wrong! Official development assistance reaches only 1.6% of the figure needed for achieving low-carbon energy, and 11% of that needed to combat climate change. And yet the world continues to spend around $650 Billion on fossil fuel subsidies. Uzbekistan spends 10 times more on oil subsidies than it does on health. Iran spends 4 times more on it than it does on education. Worse, many rich nations pledge funds for environmental initiatives – then fail to deliver on those pledges.

What to do? The 2011 HDR returns to what looks like the only secure source for financing Sustainability and Equity: the Financial Transaction or Tobin Tax. Designed originally to damp-down risky speculation in the global currency casino, this tax could deliver $200 billion if operated by Europe alone, up to $650 billion a year if operated globally. Substantially more than the $129 billion generated by Overseas Aid Budgets. But – who would you trust to spend it?? The UN?? The World Bank?? – NGOs?? The 2011 HDR does not address that question!

Amory Lovins has been in the vanguard of new thinking about energy since his breakthrough book, “Soft Energy Paths” in the 1980s. He was in his 20s when he wrote it. Later, he introduced the Resource Efficiency revolution with his book, “Factor Four.”

Now, with his book, “Reinventing Fire” (Rocky Mountain Institute: http://rmi.org/ReinventingFire), he shows how business and industry, without any UN or government agreement, can make the change away from fossil fuels to renewables and the Green Economy. Why? Because it is now profitable to do so. The book explains how the transportation industry can operate by 2050 without oil; how the private sector can profitably provide the electricity needed by cities and industry without oil. It looks only at the USA – which is behind the curve in the move to renewables. Lovins shows, convincingly, how the US could lead the world in the drive to the Green Economy. His ideas are endorsed by former President Bill Clinton and the introduction is by the President of Shell Oil. The idea that private Industry, driven by the profit motive, could achieve what governments, in their search search for legallybinding Climate Change agreements, has failed to achieve – is both intriguing and attractive. It concludes: “We only get to choose once. Choose well.”

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What does it mean? – Green Economy??

The European Union Commissioner for Environment, Janos Potocnik, said: “Don’t spend too much time trying to define a Green Economy. We all know what it means…” It’s true! We know it means recycling waste, getting polluters to pay, using public transport rather than private cars, saving water, using resources efficiently, caring for woodlands and natural resources etc. It’s just the best way of achieving sustainability.

The UN Definition UNEP defines a green economy as “one that results in improved human well-being and equity while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities.” The UN knows that poverty only goes down when there is cheap and abundant energy – and fossil fuel energy will never again be either cheap or abundant. The UN’s main mission is to reduce poverty – which is why it is so committed to the idea of a Green Economy.

Etymology Green is the global short-hand for ‘environmental’ / ‘sustainable’ / ‘eco-friendly.’ No argument there. But many people think that ‘economy’ is just about banks, money and rich people. Wrong! The word ‘Economy’ – like ‘Ecology’ – comes from the Greek: ‘Oikos’ – meaning Home: our planet! And ‘Numos’ – meaning to manage. So ‘Economy’ is about the management of our planet – and a Green Economy about managing our planet in an eco-friendly way.

Why would anyone be against that?

At the Rio+20 Summit negotiations, most of the world’s poorer countries are insisting that the phrase: ‘Green Economy’ be replaced by ‘Sustainable Development.’ They say that a Green Economy is a ‘Mirage’ – a way to exclude poverty eradication from the international agenda. UNEP and others have been arguing for over a year that the main purpose of a Green Economy is poverty eradication and social improvement but the South is not buying it.

What’s their problem?

They say sustainable Development has THREE pillars and the Green Economy focuses just on the economic pillar ignoring the social and environment ones. They argue further that a Green Economy attempts to put a price on Nature, calling it “the creeping commodiification of natural resources.” They’re right about that: the people behind the Green Economy at UNEP also developed TEEB: The Economics of Eco-Systems and Biodiversity (see: http://www.teebweb.org/) TEEB does put a price on Natural Resources.

For example, if a Mountain River System supplies irrigation water for a billion dollars worth of agricultural production downstream, TEEB tells politicians and business leaders: “You’d better protect it! It’s worth a billion dollars to your national economy!” TEEB puts cash values on forests, bees, marine eco-systems – everything! And it works: conservation is now a mainstream priority for all governments and business.

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The Value of the Banking Metaphor A lot in household management comes down to money: we save a little every week, and try not to run up debts. Environmental management is the same – we should save and not bankrupt ourselves by running up huge environmental debts. But we don’t: everywhere you look - forests, water, fish, minerals - environmental savings accounts are sinking into the red. We are recklessly consuming resources that have been built up over millions of years, endangering future generations by our carelessness. Every gallon of petrol/gas you use comes from 100 tons of compressed, swamp/forest waste, distilled over 200 million years. As our fossil fuel saving account dips towards the red, we make the transition to renewable fuels an imperative.

Sustainable Development vs. Green Economy We, in Peace Child, have been trying to educate young people about Sustainable Development for the last 20 years without great success. The phrase has simply NOT captured the public imagination. For a start, it’s a contradiction in terms: sustainable means continuous, and development means growth. You can’t have continuous growth on a small, finite planet. So we feel that, on balance, 20 years on from the earth summit, we should drop the language of sustainable development and talk about a Green economy with equity at its heart. That’s a much more attractive sounding concept. A Green and Fair Economy – one that seeks the well-being of all, rather than opulent wealth for the few and grinding poverty for the many – and also one that takes care of the needs of future generations – that’s a concept we could get behind and educate about.

In his novel, Solar, Ian McEwan defines a green economy as: “ - like a thirsty man who in a forest who cuts down trees to drink the sap – while ignoring a rushing stream at the edge of the forest.”

How can we be that stupid? The sap is oil - and the stream is sun. Thomas Edison, the inventor of electricity, predicted that the sun would be the best source of electricity. And he didn’t see the diagram(right) showing that enough sun falls on a small area of the Sahara Desert to provide all the world’s energy needs!

Enough sun falls on the top square to meet the World demand for energy; the middle square represents Europe’s demand and the bottom one, that of the Middle East and Africa (based on 2005 figures. Source: Desertec Foundation).

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What does a Green Economy solve?

The UN Environment Programme’s “Towards a Green Economy” policy briefing has THREE Key Findings: 1. As well as conserving the environment, after 6 years, it produces a faster rate of GDP growth than the Brown Economy!

2. There is an “inextricable link between poverty eradication and better conservation of the environment.

3. The green economy creates more jobs than those that would be lost by closing down the Brown Economy.

How does it do this? Well – a Green Economy solves problems in many areas….

Forestry: Forests provide livelihoods to over a billion people, homes to more than 80% of the earth’s biodiversity, and the lungs that soak up much of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions. And yet, we are tearing them down – recklessly: a Green Economy would require all governments to practise “Sustainable Forestry” – certifying all timber products, paying for all forest eco-system services, community-based forest management etc.

Farming: By 2050, our farms have to feed 9 billion people – probably with more eroded land, higher temperatures and scarcer water. Current farming practice uses 70% of the world’s fresh water, causes 3-5 million cases of pesticide poisoning – which kill 40,000 people a year. A Green Economy would shift both industrial and subsistence farms to more organic farming, with integrated pest control, efficient use of water, optimal tillage and plants that offer nutrition to the soil. An investment of $100+ billion dollars in green farming would increase yields 10% over current practice, save water and improve soil quality at the same time. It must be done – and existing farm subsidies must be ended.

Fisheries: Look at the chart: $20 billion dollar subsidies of industrial fishing have brought many of the world’s richest fishing grounds to the brink of extinction. A Green Economy would end those subsidies immediately, invest $100+ billion in restoring capacity and raise catches from 80 to 90 million tons a year from sustainable fishing grounds. Instead of declines and further collapses of fishing grounds, a green economy fishing sector would return 3 to 5 times the value of the investment required in it. Surely worthwhile!

Energy: The energy sector is responsible for 70% of all greenhouse gas emissions – and represents half the import costs several Low HDI countries. A green economy energy system would internalise energy generation for those countries – reducing their costs, creating jobs, and reducing the dangers of climate change. Win-win-win! And renewable energy technologies are still in their infancy: the US government invests $3 billion a year in renewable energy research compared to $72 billion in military research. When serious research is invested in bio-fuels, solar voltaics and fusion technologies, the Green Energy Economy will produce more energy than the current fossil fuel one. That rushing stream!

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Waste: In a Green Economy, all waste is product for which uses can be found. With waste expected to rise 20% to over 13 billion tons a year by 2050 – that’s a huge product!

Today, only 25% of the world’s waste is recycled or re-used: if all was, it could create a $410 billion industry. In Brazil, the recycling industry generates $2 billion, saves 10 million tonnes of greenhouse gas and employs 500,000 people – but still $5bn goes to landfill. Currently, about 140 billion metric tonnes of farm residue is recycled, generating the equivalent of 50 billion tonnes of oil. In a green economy, by 2050, 100% of all biomass waste would be recycled – including all food waste which would deliver millions of barrels of oil equivalent and trillions of litres of water.

Zero waste is a huge business opportunity: (see: www.zerowaste.org).

Water: Greening the water sector would require everybody to pay for what they use which would result in increased efficiencies in farming, industrial and municipal water use.

An investment of $100+ billion a year in these efficiencies would reduce demand for water by 20% by 2050. Investments in water provision offer significant benefits to the world’s poorest people – 884 billion of whom lack access to safe drinking water. 84% of the $8bn. investment in India’s Rural Employment Guarantee programme goes into water-related investments – benefiting 59 million households.

Sanitation: 2.6 billion people lack access to proper sanitation services – causing massive health problems that result in child deaths and costs of up to 2-3% of GDP in several countries. A Green Economy would prioritise investment in sanitation services, reducing that 2.6 billion figure to 1.7 billion by 2015.

Green Cities: 50% of the world’s people live in cities and consume 70% of the energy and generate 75% of the carbon emissions. Urban populations are increasing: China’s is expected to rise from 656 million today to 905 million by 2030; India’s is expected to almost double to 590 million. So greening our cities is a top priority for the Green Economy – and it can be done through improved planning, building vertical farms, improving buildings, public transport + water and sanitation infrastructure. The model ‘Green City’ of Curitiba uses 30% less fuel than other Brazilian cities.

Green buildings: buildings are the single biggest contributor to greenhouse gases: one third of the world’s energy ends up being used in buildings. Currently, that contribution is expected to almost double to 15.6 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030. UNEP has proved that the application of strict Green Economy Building Standards on all buildings can reduce these costs. Investments of up to a trillion dollars in building stock – retrofitting etc. would generate large numbers of jobs and a third of energy-savings over current methods.

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Transportation: Transport accounts for over half the world’s consumption of liquid fossil fuels and almost a quarter of our carbon emissions. A green economy transport system plans for people to live near where they work, enhance public transportation, reduce congestion by imposing congestion charges, improving clean transport technology by building lighter vehicles, (like RMI’s Hyper-car) and making mass transit much more efficient. Tax and subsidy reform would deliver greener transport within a decade.

20 Steps to a Green Economy The UN Environment Programme encourages governments to invest 2% of their GDP into the creation of a Green Economy every year for the next 30 years. That’s about $40 Trillion dollars – where would that investment go?

1. Command & Control = New Laws: Laws - like making dynamiting, or bottom-trawling, for fish illegal – or regulating the oil and other extractive industries – are quicker, cheaper and more efficient than any market instrument.

2. Set New Performance Standards: Make high standards compulsory – like “All cars must achieve 100mpg!” – can achieve incredible and immediate transformation, and many are fairly easy to police.

NEW

OLD

3. Sustainable Public Procurement: Governments are all countries’ biggest individual consumers, so when they only buy sustainably produced, resource efficient products, the impact on carbon emissions is immediate and great.

In Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany and the UK, sustainable procurement reduced the national carbon footprint by 20%.

STOP

4.

Eliminate Harmful Subsidies: Stop the Subsidies! .

Fossil Fuel: Governments subsidised fossil fuel consumption at an estimated $557 billion dollars in 2008 – with a further $100 billion being given in fossil fuel production subsidies. Fossil Fuel production needs to be taxed heavily now to conserve it for the vital role it has to play in the building of the green economy. .

Agriculture: Rich countries’ agriculture are heavily subsidised to the tune of $300 billion a year. This has the effect of shutting out Low HDI producers from profitable markets, Where does this figure come from? Who gives the money? I want to check this figure with people here: I think it’s low – it’s things like the EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP) – the US subsidies to cotton and coffee farmers – which shut out developing country producers. It is paid by rich country governments to farmers…. .

Fish: $27 billion a year for fisheries which has depleted fish stocks by $50 billion! (what is the time period?) As I say – each year: annually – how can I make it clearer?? .

Subsidies & Green Taxes: Making it cheaper to buy sustainably produced goods – and more expensive to buy goods produced un-sustainably – is the quickest and most effective way to get the public to change their consumption habits. When Europe made taxes on leaded petrol higher than those on unleaded, the public changed to buying unleaded petrol overnight. Providing price support for green products – and taxing ungreen products heavily – transforms purchasing decisions and incentivises the growth of new green industries. Singapore, Germany and Norway are leaders in green pricing.

The result? - hundreds of new companies producing green products.

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5.

Green Investment Incentives: There are a million creative ways that governments can encourage green investments – from reducing property taxes on home-owners who install solar water heaters, to charging more for parking gas-guzzling SUVs, to supporting Feed-in Tariffs with price incentives for individual producers. This is why governments must lead on any National Green Economy Transition Plan (see pages 30-31) 6.

Make Subsidies Time-Bound: Governments must make such subsidies predictable over a decent time period (3-5 years) – and then phase them out gradually.

Suddenly dropping subsidies – the way some governments have done over the last few years – make long-term green investments impossible for the private sector.

7.

Cash Transfers to eliminate poverty: Remember: a Green Economy is one that ‘improves social equity…’ So include in your Green Economy Transition Plan a welfare safety net that helps eradicate poverty. We’ve seen that Cash Transfers help the poorest members of society to consume enough to sustain themselves and their families.

Providing such funds to female heads of household and targeting food, healthcare and education can transform the lives of poor people.

8.

Manage Population Growth: Many years of evidence shows that universal provision of reproductive health (condoms, contraceptive pills, professional mid-wives etc.) + universal primary education for all girls would go most of the way to managing population growth.

CO2

9.

Tradable Permits: The Kyoto Protocol set up systems for trading carbon permits. By 2009, 8.7 billion tonnes of carbon was traded with a value of $144 billion. Paying for carbon pollution is a first step to controlling it: the ultimate step would be to set personal carbon footprints for every member of the human family – meaning that, if rich people in the North want to travel and consume more, they have to buy permits from those in the South.

10. Paying for Eco-System Services: Over the years, the UN has developed several schemes to get people and business to understand the value of, and pay for, the natural resources they plunder from Mother Earth. We noted TEEB (on Page 16 ). There’s Kyoto’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – offsetting dirty investments with investments in clean technologies overseas. There is now the REDD scheme (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) – requiring all governments and private business to pay the full cost of the forest products they extract, including the value of the forest’s sequestration of CO2 emissions. Full cost accounting in the mining, water and fishing industries is also on the horizon – and will contribute greatly both to conservation and international equity.

11. Specific Workforce Training for a Just Transition: In Germany, the Green Economy now employs more people than the German auto industry – and there is a shortage of skilled green workers. UNEP reports that almost all renewable energy sectors are experiencing skill shortages: governments must encourage business schools and technical colleges to ‘green up’ their curricula and produce the Green Economy experts that a Green Economy needs.

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12. Technology Transfer: One of our Rio+20 Youth Prepcoms proposed a new Wikiwebsite offering free transfer of green technologies. Rationale? – it is in the interests of all of us to end pollution and become sustainable as a global family: the polluting technologies of any one of us pollutes all of us eventually. So ‘royalty-free’ sharing of green technologies – North-South and South-South – are a vital step to a global Green Economy.

13. Multi-lateral Environmental Agreements & International Trade Laws: (MEAs) If one country allows its companies to plunder forests at will – and another levies big taxes on timber extraction, timber products from the first will be much cheaper.

And that, self-evidently, is not fair. So the world needs international environment agreements and trade laws to create what is called a ‘level playing field’ – so that all companies and countries can compete equitably for markets. The world is very far from achieving this: the Doha Trade talks are stalled – and, though there are over 500 MEAs, few are enforced and some are mutually contradictory. This is a good reason for setting up some kind of World Environment Organisation, or World Environment Security Council. Such a body should be set up by the Rio+20 Summit.

14. International Enforcement Mechanisms: How do you persuade governments to pass laws that would punish them appropriately if they broke them? Very difficult: but we now have an International Criminal Court – and though its machinations are glacially slow, it has demonstrated to Balkan dictators, global thugs and corrupt mono-maniacs that they are not above the law. Three promising initiatives are being promoted by Civil Society: 1) The idea of an International Court for the Environment (ICE); 2) Making ‘Ecocide’ a crime against humanity like genocide; 3) Appointing an International Ombudsperson for Future Generations. Any of these initiatives would force governments to consider the second part of their definition of Sustainable Development more seriously: “… without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” But – what are the chances of any government passing a law it knows it is likely to break, allowing itself to be prosecuted – and then hauling itself off to jail as punishment? Not high – but worth pushing for anyway!

15. Education for living in the Green Economy: Every Youth Prepcom we held raised the question: “Why don’t we know about these problems?” Answer: because they are not front and centre of any school’s curriculum. It is almost as though there is a government level conspiracy to keep it a secret that oil is running out – and no one really knows what to do about it. Fine if you’re 60 now and will be dead long before 2050 when this really becomes a problem. Not good if you are 20 now and looking forward to waking up in 2050 to a peaceful, warm or air-conditioned retirement in 2050 – and finding that there is no fuel to power those comforts.

Every youth we spoke to called on their governments to educate them about the challenges of sustainability, equity and the green economy from the day they enter primary school to the day they graduate college. This ‘planetary literacy’ should be at the heart of the curriculum – starting with simple lessons in primary school, rising to in-depth exploration of the challenge in different disciplines at undergraduate and graduate levels.

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ACT

16. Fighting Corruption: Absent from all the UN briefings, but very present in all our youth prepcoms, is the idea that a sustainable, equitable society is a corruptionfree society. In many cases, youth offer themselves as corruption vigilantes – seeking out, naming and shaming corrupt practices as they find them amongst their elders.

Not a bad idea: every development professional knows that corruption the 2nd biggest obstacle to successful sustainable development after all-out war.

17. De-militarisation & de-nuclearisation: Obviously, the first priority of government is to protect its peoples from external threats – but very few countries are under direct threat of external attack at this moment. Costa Rica has prospered without an army since the 1950s. To provide welfare to the world’s poorest, defense budgets must be cut: currently, they dwarf the health, welfare and education budgets of many countries. All youth agree: a sustainable world is one where peoples and nations get along without the threat of military action.

18. New Indicators to measure progress towards Green, Sustainable Societies: Many now agree that mere ‘money measures’ – gross national or gross domestic product(GNP / GDP) – are not sufficient to measure progress to sustainability. Like the Human Development Index, GDP must be married to indicators that cover all the steps above – education, green taxes & subsidies, procurement decisions etc.

So governments, or the UN, must create a comprehensive measure to assess where each nation, and community, sits on the Global Sustainability League Table.

19. Financing the Green Economy - Where do you get the MONEY? The cost of building the Green Economy will be the biggest single investment made by the generation passing through our schools today. The World Bank estimates costs of between $40 and $50 Trillion dollars over the next 30 years. The UN Environmental Programme calls for 2% of global GDP per year: that is $1.26 trillion x 30 = $37.8 trillion. A whole lot of money. But we have $178 trillion in sovereign wealth, and pension, funds: so if, as Amory Lovins shows in Reinventing Fire, the Green Economy can be proved to be profitable, the private sector can – and will – provide the investment. But the other 19 steps need to be taken first to ensure that the Green Economy is both profitable and publicly understood for the priority it is.

20. Rio+20 Decisions: The single biggest step towards a Green Economy will be taken in the document governments sign – or fail to sign – on June 22nd 2012 in Rio de Janeiro. What would we like to see in it? Number ONE – a commitment to prepare National Green Economy Transition Plans and lodge them with the UN Secretariat by – say – December 2014. Such plans must include a lot of the steps mentioned above – and also have milestones – dates by which each step will be taken. Number TWO – some commitment to an international enforcement mechanism: an idea of what steps the international community will take to punish or outlaw governments that intentionally continue to plunder the natural environment to the detriment of the whole world.

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A Road Map to Resource efficiency As part of their contribution to the preparations for Rio+20, the European Union prepared a “Road Map to Resource Efficiency.” It reckons we need a 10-fold increase in resource efficiency to survive beyond 2050 – otherwise, a human family of 9+ billion people is going to need to find more planets to live on. That’s why resource efficiency – getting more miles per gallon, more tons of food per acre of land – is so important.

2050 The Vision:

2050

By Make Europe – and the world resource efficient. This will deliver: .

An economy that is competitive, inclusive and that provides a high standard of living with much lower environmental impacts. .

Resources – from raw materials to energy, water, air, soil & land – that are all sustainably managed. .

Climate change milestones that have been reached and surpassed if possible. .

Biodiversity and ecosystem services that have been protected, valued and restored.

By December 2013 : Set measures for the vision: the Commission seeks to agree on ways of measuring the delivery of this vision. It proposes a lead ‘Resource Productivity’ Indicator to measure improved economic performance against the natural resources consumed to achieve it.

Goal: the goal is to ‘de-couple’ economic growth and wellbeing from resource use.

In other words, growth in the future must come from increases in efficiency. Recent studies suggest that, in Germany, resource-efficiency gains in manufacturing could generate cost savings of up to 30% and create up to 1 million jobs for the country.

In the UK, £23 billion in savings could come from low or no-cost resource efficiency measures in business. UNEP has proved that de-coupling can work because Denmark has doubled its GDP in the last 15 years without increasing its carbon emissions.

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Sustainable Consumption: By 2020 , the right incentives and price signals must be in place to encourage consumers, through advertising, to buy only sustainable products and services.

Waste : By 2020 , waste is managed as a resource and per capita waste is in absolute decline. Landfilling is virtually eliminated and recycling / re-use of waste are economically attractive options for public and private actors through the development of functional markets for secondary raw materials.

2020

Research & Development : By 2020 , the Commission plans that scientific breakthroughs and sustained innovation will have dramatically improved how we understand, manage, reduce, reuse, recycle, substitute and safeguard and value resources. It will target research through Innovation Partnerships, ‘Joint Technology and Programming Initiatives’ and focussed public research funding.

Harmful Subsidies: By 2020 , the EU plans to phase out current subsidies that negatively impact the environment estimated globally, to be at $1 trillion a year, while taking care of the impact that this removal may have on people in need. Removing these subsidies will improve competitiveness, encourage businesses to invest in green technologies and deliver economic, social and environmental benefits.

2014

Natural Capital: By 2014 , EU member states will map the condition of their Ecosystems and the services they provide. By 2020, natural capital and ecosystem services will be properly valued and accounted for by public authorities and businesses and the loss of biodiversity halted.

Water: By resources.

2020

, water extraction will stay below 20% of renewable water

Air Quality: By 2020 , to set and meet air quality standards that eliminate costs to ecosystems and agriculture ,damage from air pollution causing acidification,

eutrophication and ozone damage to vegetation. If unchecked, the annual

economic cost of this by 200 is estimated at €537 billion.

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‘Land take’: Every ten years, we in Europe ‘take land’ equal to the land area of the island of

Cyprus and put buildings, roads etc. on it. By 2050 , the Road Map requires no net land take – along with reduced soil erosion, all contaminated soils / sites restored and agricultural soils enriched.

Marine Resources: By 2015 , fishing is within maximum sustainable yields through the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy and the phasing out of all fisheries subsidies; and by 2020 , good environmental status of all EU marine waters is achieved.

2020

Food: By 2020 , incentives to healthier and more sustainable food production and consumption will be widespread and will have driven a 20% reduction in the food chain's resource inputs. Disposal of edible food waste should have been halved in the EU. By 2020 , healthier eating and more sustainable food production will drive a 20% reduction in the food resources consumed and the tonnage of edible food thrown away should have been halved. (Currently, we throw away 90 million tonnes of edible food every year.) Food and drink consumption in the EU causes 17% of our greenhouse gas emissions and 28% of our resource use – including the majority of our high-quality water.

Buildings: By 2020 , all new buildings will be nearly zero-energy and highly material efficient; policies for renovating the existing building stock will be in place so that it is costefficiently refurbished at a rate of 2% per year. (Buildings currently use more than 50% of all extracted materials, 30% of our water, 42% of our energy causing 35% of our greenhouse gas emissions).

Transport: Starting in 2012 , there should be an average 1% yearly reduction in Greenhouse Gas emissions from the Transport sector. The Commission’s Transport White Paper aims to create a modern, efficient, safe public transport infrastructure within Europe that will deliver this.

Stakeholder Mobilisation: By 2020 , stakeholders at all levels are required to implement policies that relate to resource efficiency. This involves policy, financing, investment, research and innovation. Ambitious targets with robust and timely indicators to guide public and private decision-makers as well as investors in the transformation of the economy towards greater resource efficiency will have been implemented. The rapid increase in investments in renewable energy technologies proves that investor mindsets can be changed through careful incentives and tax breaks.

2015

International Mobilisation: By 2020 , resource efficiency must be a shared objective of the international community. That is why the Commission is committed to a successful outcome of the Rio+20 Summit and believes the Summit can deliver concrete progress towards the green economy and the more efficient use of natural resources.

2013 In its conclusion, the Commission concedes that the Road Map is not the ultimate response to all resource efficiency challenges: indeed, if you have read this booklet carefully, you will spot several that it has left out. But it is a good first step towards a coherent action framework that cuts across different policy areas, providing a stable perspective on the pre-requisites for Green economy transition.

2012

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Green Growth Rocks !

Green Growth is a Win-Win-Win-Win solution: • it conserves the environment by being resource efficient; • it creates more jobs than a brown economy; • it helps eradicate poverty and build equity; • it delivers faster economic growth than business as usual; Look at that chart: the brown economy could grow slightly faster for a few more years – but then the Green Economy powers ahead. And that chart doesn’t take into account the costs of rising fossil fuel prices, or climate change. Many think that Green Growth is the ONLY way the world will pull out of our financial crisis. One German politician said: “In future, growth will be green, or it won’t be growth.” (See: www. greengrowth.org & www.unep. org/greeneconomy/) That’s why PCI thinks Rio+20 should be called the Green Growth Summit!

Faster Growth: Under UNEP’s proposed 2% of GDP / $1.3 Trillion pa investment in Green Economy transition, about half goes to making buildings and transport more efficient, renewable energy etc. The other half goes to forestry, fisheries, water supply, agriculture and eco-systems.

The result by 2050?

• 16% higher GDP compared to business-as-usual; • 40% reduced energy demand, • 22% reduced water demand, • 48% reduction in per capita carbon footprint. + restored fisheries, improved agricultural yields and less absolute poverty;

Environmental Conservation: In the last 25 years, the world economy has grown from $15 trillion to $63 trillion a year – through destroying, or using unsustainably, 60% of the planet’s ecosystems. Reversing that trend is the only way our human species will survive beyond the end of this century. Business leaders must become conservationists: future growth depends on it.

Job Creation: UNEP calculates that, globally, the 2% of GDP investment would increase the number of jobs in agriculture by 4%, forestry by 20% and in transportation by 10%. Retrofitting homes would create 2 to 3 million jobs in Europe and North America and Eco-Tourism, which is growing six times faster than the rest of the tourist industry, will create millions of jobs worldwide.

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The University of Massachusetts reports that spending $1 million on clean energy investments produces 16.7 jobs compared to 5.3 jobs for the same amount spent on fossil fuel industries. Globally, the UK Green Party calculates that, for every $100m invested in nuclear or fossil fuel industries, you create +/- 1,700 jobs: for every $100m invested in Green Economy industries, you create +/5,000 jobs – almost three times as many. Again– in an era of massive unemployment, why would any one NOT want a Green Economy.

Poverty Eradication: As the UNEP report puts it: “A key feature of a Green Economy is that it seeks to provide a variety of poverty alleviation measures without eroding a country’s natural assets – on which the livelihoods of many poor rural communities depend.

Greening their small farm sector will make more food available to them, reduce their poverty, lower their GHGs, and give them access to expanding international markets for green products.” More programmes like India’s Rural Employment Guarantee scheme – which invests heavily in sustainable fresh water provision - would help not just halve the number of people living in extreme poverty as promised by the MDGs – but eliminate completely by 2050. That must be the major goal of the post-2015 Development Agenda.

Equity: Remember the UNEP definition of a Green Economy as one that “improves human well-being and social equity…” Well, it can – and that is the best reason for moving quickly to it now. Today’s economy encourages greed, corruption and a widening gap between the richest and poorest members of the human family. By re-building the economy from the ground up to be sustainable and equitable, we can go a long way to squeezing out the inequities which see bankers rewarded with million dollar pay-checks as their banks fail – and workers impoverished as their jobs disappear. 2011 saw ‘Occupy Wall Street’ and Arab Spring demonstrations spread across the world: a Green Economy is the solution that will address their complaints. For it will be democratic, fair, sustainable – and a far, far happier place to live than the current unsustainable, inequitable, unjust, corrupt and polluted place we live today.

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England

India

Slovenia

Turkey

Scotland

Kenya

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ou y o t er v O

h Africa

The Green Economy in Action Educating the Next Generation: Days of Action for Rio+20 We all know that most governments are doing very little to educatie thie ‘future generation’ about the environmental needs that they will have to address. Youth are likely to emerge from today’s schools with a deeper knowledge of the history of the last 200 years than about the challenges of the next 200. This is why we urge every school and college to arrange a Day or Days of Action for Rio+20 – so the entire student body can learn about this momentous UN Summit – and watch to see how their political leaders address what are undoubtedly the greatest dangers threatening their future well-being.

PLANNING: Your Day(s) of Action: If you have several days to work on it why not run a Satellite+20 Event – which allows your students to come up with their own input to the UN process. (See Next Page). Or, if you can carve out a whole day to learn about the Importance of Rio+20, Here is a suggestion for how you might fill the day. If you only have a morning or one lesson or assembly – choose one of these activities which best suits your students.

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Schedule for a Rio+20 Day of Action Assembly(20-30 mins) Introduction by School Principal, Senior Teacher or Expert Speaker.

Then have students perform the “Beyond 2050 – Time-travel Chat Show” Cabaret; Script available at: http://rioplus20education.info/?page_id=720 or

Show Introductory Videos If you look through Youtube, there are many apocalyptic videos showing how the world will end. Earth 2100 (for ages 13+) is a 90-minute ABC special which caused a stir in the USA as it shows how the world might end - badly for most of us. You don’t need to watch it all.

Check the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wufbCh-zxGU However, unless you really want to scare your students out of their lethargy, we would urge you to show videos which express some hope.

Like the Wombat - (suitable for all ages. 1 minute duration) (www.globalcommunity.org/flash/wombat.shtml) Reinventing Fire (Age: 10 + Duration. 2.18 mins.) (www.rmi.org/ReinventFireChangeEnergyUseForever) ‘The Story of Stuff ’ (Age: 10 + . Duration 20 mins.) http://www.youtube.com/storyofstuffproject/#p/u/0/9GorqroigqM ‘You are Here’ is great (Age: 14 + . Duration 30 mins.) (www.postcarbon.org/article/632881-you-are-here-the-oil-journey) If videos aren’t your thing, get your students to do the Rio Earth Summit Implementation Survey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N27Q999) or the Bioregional Personal Footprint Calculator (http://calculator.bioregional.com/) - either as a class or homework assignment.

SUSTAINABLE BREAK with Sustainable, locally-sourced refreshments (15 - 20 mins)

Games, Workshops, Lessons: (90 mins) What you choose will obviously depend on the age and interests of your students. There is a ton of material on this website. You can take any part of the Booklets and build a lesson around it. The Lesson Plans and Games PCI prepared for Rio+20 issues at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/53436550/ include 18 activities covering areas from Trade and Human Rights to the Green Economy, Food Security, Green Jobs, Gender Equality, the Energy Olympics to basic lessons on the 3 Pillars of Sustainability. Other resources can be found at: www.eco-schools.org.uk/. or at: http://www.humanimpactsinstitute.org/mobilizeUSresources.php and, for older students, get them to review activist thinking by introducing them to some of the People’s Summit: http://rio20.net/en/documentos/mobilize-together-towards-rio20-and-beyond - and get them involved in developing their own Green Economy Transition Plans (See Page 31.)

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Lunchtime (90 mins) Bring sandwiches to the School Hall, and have a ‘Whole School Rio+20 Debate’

How to organize the Great Debate (Age: 16+) For guidance on debate formats: www.actdu.org.au/archives/actein_site/owndebate.html Rio+20 has two themes –

1) The Green Economy in the context of poverty eradication and sustainable development

2) Institutional Infrastructure: what types of governance can guarantee to deliver

sustainability and equity?

We suggest you focus your debate on the second theme – as there are more questions to consider. For example: Is Democracy the best system to deliver sustainability? – Is the UN equal to the task of leading the world towards a Green Economy that provides well-being for all? Any debate goes better if you have a bold, provocative motion that will stimulate argument. We recommend: “This House believes that governments and the United Nations, as currently constituted, cannot be trusted to deliver a sustainable future beyond the middle of the 21st Century.”

Afternoon Action Programme (120 mins) Rio+20 is not just about sitting in a classroom learning about issues. It is about taking action – and that can be as simple as planting some seeds in a school garden, planting trees, building a wind generator out of an old oil drum, cleaning up a park or water course, restoring an old building – or making a plan or a painting for a school Exhibition.

So take some time off to DO SOMETHING that produces concrete results.

Closing Messages (10 - 15 mins) At the end of the day, come back and reflect on what you have learned. Is Rio+20 Important? Why? What can you do about the challenges we face? Engage the students: invite them again to do their own Green Economy Transition Plans (See Page 31.) Do NOT just have another speech / lecture from a teacher or ‘expert.’

After School Activity: Invite parents, press, town/city officials for an Exhibition of student art about “Our World in 2050” or “What will our town look like when oil runs out? Or you can prepare a Performance of the inter-active musical: Peace Child for Rio+20 (90 mins).

Whatever you do, HAVE FUN !

Make it MEMORABLE !

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My City+20s – a new approach to a Model United Nations A Model United Nations (MUN) is an academic simulation of the United Nations that aims to educate participants about current international disputes and events along with the UN agenda and the diplomatic procedures by which it delivers it.

My City+20 was developed by Alexandre Florentin with a team at Sciences Po in Paris. You can see his Rules of Procedure at: http://mycityplus20.blogspot.com.

Here, we offer a simplified introduction to two different ways of hosting your own My City+20.

What is a Model United Nations? . http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/modelun/over.html . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_United_Nations The best MUNs have Model General Assemblies, Model Security Councils, Model ECOSOC Committees and sometimes Model UN Agency Governing Boards. My City+20 follows the same pattern but is nothing like as rigid: you can, like the MUN, get each participant to represent one of the 193 UN Member States, a UN Agency or one of the Nine Major Groups of the Rio+20 process. You can also include Regional groups like the European Union, MERCOSUR, SAARC, ASEAN and SIDS. Each representative has to find out the position of the country or body they are representing on the Rio+20 themes (very easy to do for Rio+20. Just go to: http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/ index.php?menu=32) Click on any country, and their Rio+20 position statement will come up. Major Group representatives go to: http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/index. php?menu=35 - click on your Major Group, then on ‘Input to the Compilation Document’ and their Rio+20 position statement will come up.) You then all meet and, following strict UN procedures, try negotiate a solution that fits the positions of all those represented.

My City+20s - Making a Real Impact!

In this version of My City+20, your starting point for any negotiation is the UN’s Zero Draft Document at: http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/index.php?menu=115. As new drafts are agreed by governments, they will become available on this site.

Because the Rio+20 process is a live negotiation, and because youth is a Major Group, your “My City+20” (a concept endorsed at the highest level by UNESCO and soon, we hope, other UN agencies) have a chance – a good chance – of influencing the final outcome text. See: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/rioplus20/ - to check out UNESCO’s radical plans for success at Rio+20. You should add a powerful Youth Lobby - an ‘Occupy Rio+20’ group to strengthen what YOUTH feel should be the outcome at Rio. Check out: http://mycityplus20.blogspot.com and look at the results of the Global Series of Youth Rio+20 Prepcoms hosted by PCI: http://www.roadtorioplus20.org/ youth-papers. Also look at the individual submissions by youth groups on the UN Website & Rio+20 Blogs: learn as much as you can about the issues – then slam the UN and the governments with your brilliant ideas for how to solve the problems that Rio+20 is addressing.

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The Other Way

If you are very courageous, you can forget about the global issues and do a Rio+20 / Green Economy Transition summit just about your city: instead of getting country representatives, get youth, business, sport, local government, women, the elderly – representatives of EVERY sector of your community, and model a summit about how you are all going to live sustainably together in the post-carbon future.

Steps to a Great Satellite+20

So – you’ve got your participants; you’ve done all the research; you’ve got individuals representing the UN Member States and the 9 Major Groups. What are the next steps?

STEP ONE : Agree your Youth Position: what is the best possible outcome that

governments could – should! – agree at Rio+20? Write it down. Make it the most passionate, aspirational document you can! Flesh it out with SMART Targets: a Schedule of Actions that must be taken by a certain date. And get every one to agree it – by consensus if possible. If not, by a vote.

STEP TWO : Review the UN Draft Outcome Document + Government & Other Major

Group Positions: Hopefully, your Youth Position Paper corresponds to some of the content of these. (If it doesn’t – skip this step and go on to the next!) You can then do TWO things : 1.

Go through the UN Draft Outcome, inserting your ideas at appropriate points in the text; 2.

Go through your revised UN Draft Outcome, supporting your ideas with quotes from different Country or Major Group Submissions that support your Youth Position.

Clear? – this is how UN negotiations are done: you have the base text, produced by the UN officers – then governments and other official bodies introduce amendments. If a majority of governments and official bodies agree the amendment, the revised text is ‘adopted’ – ie. agreed!

STEP THREE : TAKE ACTION! Look through the Schedule of Actions – see which ones

you can do at little or no cost. For example, everyone should prepare their own Personal Green Economy Transition Plan. Working with Transition Towns (see: http://www.transitionnetwork. org) – anyone can prepare their own Local Green Economy Transition Plan. You can even have a shot at preparing a National Green Economy Transition Plan, or a National Green Economy/ Sustainability School Curriculum Plan (see next Page). These are things that youth groups can prepare in draft form, and then pressurise governments to comment and deliver upon.

STEP FOUR : MEDIA Mobilisation! The Main Purpose of hosting a Satellite+20 is to draw the public’s attention to the fact that Rio+20 is happening and that it is INCREDIBLY important to young people. So plan a media campaign. You can hold a simple Press Conference – but it would be smart to do something a little more eye-catching: the media are very turned on by the whole ‘Occupy’ movement – so have a demonstration: ‘Occupy’ your school or college or Town Hall. Do a special School / College / Town Hall Presentation with the Principal / Vice Chancellor / Mayor there. Whatever you do, you will have to write a Press Release – so do take the time to learn how to do a good one. (Check: http://www.publicityinsider.com/release.asp) STEP FIVE : UPLOAD everything on to the Website! We mean EVERYTHING! – your

Youth Position Paper, your amended UN Draft Text ; stories and photographs of your Actions ; your Press Release – and any press comment you managed to secure about your action.

Upload it as you go along on http://mycityplus20.blogspot.com/.

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Do-it-yourself Green Economy Transition Plans Start with your Personal Green Economy Transition plan. Then persuade your family to agree a Household Green Economy Transition plan. Thereafter, it gets complicated. Agreeing a School or Community Green Economy Transition plan will be tough. But it can be fun! – and you should try before moving on to your National Green Economy Transition plan which is easier, as you know you can only advocate for it!

We propose five Principal components of a Green Economy Transition Plan:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Zero-carbon Energy Infrastructure.

Disciplines that reward sustainable, and punish unsustainable, behaviour.

Equity.

Education and Training on Sustainability, Equity and the Green Economy.

Green Growth.

There are many other components you will want to add: you should make each Transition Plan as comprehensive as possible. Government bureaucrats are bound to come up with a document several volumes long. That’s their job!

Your’s is to begin to understand what a Green Economy will look like and how to start to build it – starting with you!

ONE -

A zero-carbon Energy Infrastructure:

Do the math: how much energy do you actually use in a day, a week, a month, a year?

How you are going to generate that energy without fossil fuel?  Personal: Think bicycles, walking, fewer overseas holidays, using public transport  Household: As above + think about a more eco-friendly family car, retrofitting the house with more insulation, solar water heating, ground source heat pumps, solar PV, wind turbines and feed-in tariffs etc. And think about what you eat, reducing meat intake etc.  Community: Think community procurement – ground source heat pumps for public buildings, electric municipal vehicles; wind driven public lighting etc.  National: This is a huge deal: Sweden, Iceland and one or two other places are thinking about zero carbon national energy infrastructures – driven by bio-fuels, wave and wind energy, ground source heat pumps etc. Again – start with the math….

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TWO -

Disciplines that reward sustainable behaviour:

At a National level, this is Taxes and Subsidies that reward sustainable consumption and production and punishes UN-sustainable consumption and production. But how do you achieve that at the other levels?  Personal: Set disciplines for yourself – related to your spending. Budget everything!  Household: Again, discipline: if you want a foreign holiday, sell the car. Want to have a more powerful car, become a vegetarian. Budget and use the Carbon footprint calculator.  Community: Local taxes can drive sustainable consumption, just as national ones can.

Spend an afternoon at your local tax office and see where you can place the disciplines.  National: This will require a massive amount of research but figures should be publicly available. Check out the Danish Green Growth Plan which is chiefly about Food, Agriculture and FisheriesFood, Agriculture and Fisheriesfood, fish and farming: http://fvm.dk/green_ growth.aspx?ID=44067. Read about Germany’s Green Growth Plans: http://e360.yale.edu/ feature/germanys_unlikely_champion_of_a_radical_green_energy_path/2401/. Finally, read about how the Private Sector is planning to go green: http://www.wbcsd.org/vision2050. aspx

THREE - Equity:

You must include a Poverty Eradication Plan that spells out how the profits of a Green Economy will be used to raise the poorest sectors of society into relative prosperity and comfort with more choices;  Personal: Not much to do at this level: just don’t beat yourself up too much;  Household: Practice democracy in the household – and make sure that every one is involved, is listened to, and has their needs, as far as possible, met.  Community: Focus on the most vulnerable members of the community – the elderly, the disabled, the sick, the unemployed, the very young: make sure their needs are met first by scaling back ‘luxury items’ like theatres, sports facilities, municipal salary scales etc.  National: As for the community – only on a national level: protect against scroungers but build a welfare safety net that ensures every member of society has enough to eat and a roof over their heads + health and education.

FOUR - Education and Training:

Nothing’s going to happen until people KNOW that there’s a problem – and the solutions to that problem.  Personal: Create a reading list for yourself – and task yourself to read about the issues at least one hour a week.  Household: Take the time to educate your family about the issues: pull up some of these videos on Youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI31a2L1Olw or www.rmi.org Sit them down and educate them about the solutions: how there are big wins – socially, environmentally and economically – from moving to Green Economy Living.  Community: Municipal councils can do much to inform their citizens by supporting the setting up of a Transition Network in their town or area – but distributing leaflets, holding Town Hall meetings, public education programmes etc.  National: Any national Green Transition Plan has to include an education plan that ensures every child, from the day they start primary school to their college graduation, has education about sustainable living at the heart of their schooling. That requires National legislation.

Australia has done it, see: http://www.environment.gov.au/education/publications/pubs/ curriculum-framework.pdf The International Schools Network has a useful and interesting approach: http://www.isaschools.org/ Higher Education has made considerable progress, see: http://www.secondnature.org/ or http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200909/coolschools/

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FIVE -

Green Growth:

As we have seen, a green economy can grow faster than a “business-as-usual brown economy.“ That is an imperative of any Green Economy Transition Plan – for, if a Green Economy cannot grow incomes, it’s not going to happen.

Check: www.greengrowth.org/ and www.oecd.org/document/10/0,3746,en_2649_37465_44076170_1_1_1_37465,00.html  Personal: Figure out how you can grow your income without increasing your carbon footprint. Maybe through working from home and ‘tele-commuting’?  Household: Again, think about enhancing your creature comforts in eco-friendly ways: a bicycle holiday, or investing in solar, or growing your own vegetables etc.  Community: Green Economies will increasingly attract inward investments – so figure out how your community can attract skilled green economy workers and green companies that can mark your community out as the green equivalent of Silicon Valley – a centre of expertise in the next big focus of economic growth and prosperity.  National: No question, countries pursuing green growth will, like communities, have a competitive edge as the century progresses. Figure out a plan for how to do this.

ONE:

Plan for a zero-carbon Energy Infrastructure: each country must do the math – and figure out how they are going to keep their lights on, and the wheels of industry and commerce turning without a drop of fossil fuel;

TWO: Plan for a Tax / Subsidy regime that encourages sustainable

consumption and production and punishes unsustainable consumption and production.

THREE:

National Education / Training Curriculum that places at its heart learning about the challenge of sustaining a global family of +/- 10 billion people to live in comfort and security within the means of a small, fragile planet.

FOUR: A Poverty Eradication Plan that spells out how the profits of a

Green Economy will be used to raise the poorest sectors of society into relative prosperity and comfort with more choices and opportunities for all;

FIVE: A Just Transition: a plan for minimizing the social upheaval of closing down unsustainable industries and activities and opening up sustainable industries and activities so that the workers and families are not left destitute.

This will involve massive training and information schemes...

The list could go on and on: we would like to see youth at the heart of all national plans – with support for youth-led SME start-ups and a focus on green jobs for youth. And there should be provision of social care – for the elderly, the sick, the disabled, and the unemployed. And, as we have argued since the original Rio Earth Summit – a sustainable society should be a peaceful, demilitarised society with shared armed forces, open borders and community policing. But those are additions that National Planners can make or not as they wish: all plans should address the key points outlined above – which could be 5 or 10 – or however many we think we can agree upon.

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Full Page illustration or page to stick a poster The

Usual Suspects The defenders of the Brown Economy.

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Notes on days of action

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Green Economy transition plans

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