There is an urgent case for global greening, writes Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, Nairobi

Globalisation not only spreads the economic ups and the currently acute economic downs across the globe, it can spread transformational and compelling ideas. Faced with a global economic crisis, the world needs a Global Green New Deal – one that tackles the current economic crisis and also those to come, from climate change and food shortages to rising natural-resource scarcity.


The United Nations Environment Programme, in collaboration with more than 20 UN agencies, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), recently launched such a deal.


Five sectors have been pinpointed that offer, as the Americans say, the biggest bang for your buck. These are:


• Raising the energy efficiency of buildings


• Supporting renewable energies including wind, solar, geothermal and biomass 


•Providing sustainable transport, including hybrid vehicles and high-speed rapid-transit systems (rail and bus)

• Protecting the planet’s ecological infrastructure, including fresh water, forests, soils and coral reefs 


• Expanding sustainable agriculture, including organic production 


It also calls for a range of measures aimed at assisting poorer countries to green their economies and reach the Millennium Development Goals. These include an expansion of microcredit schemes for clean energy, the reform of subsidies from fossil fuels to fisheries, and the greening of overseas development aid.


The current size of the stimulus packages – some $3trn in countries from the US and Europe to South Korea and China – are sums unheard of only a year ago. Some specifically earmark environmental investments – South Korea’s $36bn ‘green deal’ represents 3% of its GDP. Several economies are directing part of their green stimulus packages towards developing countries, such as Japan’s new $5bn loan fund for renewable energy.


For Africa, certain key sectors offer a higher rate of return. Every dollar invested in clean water and sanitation in developing countries gives returns of between $5 and $11, and in some cases up to $28, for low-cost measures.


Indeed, the overall economic boost of halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water and sanitation by 2015 would be around $38bn annually. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, the stimulus would be worth $15bn annually, equivalent to around 60% of the continent’s current aid flows.



Another sector is organic agriculture. It is a subject that triggers sharply-polarised views, and yet a study by the UN of 114 cases of conversion to organic or near-organic production methods in Africa found that yields had risen by over 100% after farmers switched.


For many developing economies, raising the investments to join in a global Green New Deal remains challenging. One possible route is through removing energy subsidies. Currently, an estimated $300bn is spent on energy subsidies across developed and developing economies, the lion’s share on fossil fuel subsidies. By far the largest amount is spent by developing economies, with subsidies in 20 non-OECD countries totalling $220bn. Very little of this support helps the poor. Cancelling these subsidies would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions globally by as much as 6% and add 0.1% to global GDP.


The financial savings could also be redirected into investments in renewables and into project development for the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the UN climate treaty. To date, the main countries benefiting from the CDM have been rapidly-developing economies like China, Brazil and India.


In 2004, only two African countries were accessing the CDM – Morocco and South Africa. But over the past 18 months the first CDM projects have emerged in six more: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Mali and Senegal.


Perhaps the biggest green stimulus of them all would be if governments at the crucial UN climate convention meeting in December in Copenhagen sealed the deal on a new climate regime. This would power the reach and range of the multi-billion CDM further and faster into the developing world.