Dialogue touts green recovery
Job growth must not sacrifice our planet: Rwandan official
Government efforts to help economies recover from the coronavirus pandemic could also tackle inequality and climate change through investment in energy-smart buildings, electric vehicles and other green measures, officials and economists said on Monday.
As 30 nations joined a twoday virtual climate dialogue, cochaired by Germany and Britain, policymakers stressed that spending to head off a global depression due to COVID-19 shutdowns should not restart growth built on planet-heating fossil fuels.
“The climate crisis has not disappeared just because we are currently focusing on another acute crisis,” said German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze.
The coronavirus outbreak had helped many around the world understand what it was like to live through a major crisis, she told journalists.
“I believe that in the future people will be more willing to do something against the longterm environmental crisis that we will be faced with, if we don’t act,” she added.
The world may not yet have a vaccine for COVID-19 but it knows how to stave off climate change, she said.
Measures such as shifting to renewable, clean wind and solar power are “available, affordable and they make our lives better,” she noted.
The German government said the Petersberg Climate Dialogue would focus on how to organize a green economic recovery after the emergency phase of the coronavirus pandemic.
The dialogue would also look at how countries could push forward with climate change action despite the postponement of the COP26 UN conference until 2021, German officials said.
As the dialogue got underway on Monday, ministers from Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America emphasized in recorded video statements the need for cooperation between countries in dealing both with the coronavirus pandemic and a warming planet.
Some also stressed the need to support the most vulnerable countries and communities, whose poverty puts them most at risk from health and climate threats.
“The COVID-19 crisis has further exposed the unacceptable levels of inequality in our societies, and we need to work even harder to level the playing field,” said Rwandan Environment Minister Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya. “But we must resist the temptation to revert to or ramp up polluting industries as part of a plan to create jobs,” she added.
Eminent British economist Nicholas Stern said the first priority for governments should be to protect employment and prevent massive job losses as businesses large and small struggle to cope with weeks of closure.
But as economies begin to move towards recovery – perhaps through the summer and autumn – it would be time to shift to supporting the “jobs of the future,” while encouraging carbon-heavy energy and airline companies to adopt cleaner ways of operating, he said.
“There is so much we can do on energy efficiency, building electric road and rail programs and infrastructure, redesigning our cities, looking after ... our forests and our land,” said the London School of Economics professor. “There is so much we can do quickly.”
Businesses based on fossilfuel use will not provide secure or cost-effective jobs if governments stick to the Paris Agreement goal to cut carbon emissions to net-zero by midcentury, he added.