Renewable energy should be shared with LCDs, UNCTAD
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By Derrick Sinjela Wednesday, December 14, 2011
RAISING living standards in poor countries can and should be done at the same time as the world shifts to “green” energy use, and such a feat is possible if global efforts are well-designed and implemented.
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Secretary-General Supachai Panitchpakdi said Green growth should be inclusive.
Supachai said that the shift to renewable and sustainable energy provides a great opportunity in the developing world to “stimulate economic diversification, generate employment for the poor, and increase access of the poor to basic services such as energy, water, housing, education, communications, electricity, and transport.
UNCTAD Secretary-General Supachai Panitchpakdi
He said this during in a statement made available to the New Vision.
“It is hoped that a greening economy will continue to promote a race to the top for environmental performance rather than a race to the bottom, which was feared would arise from competitive cost reductions in a globalized economy,” he said.
He stressed that technological advances allowing affordable renewable energy use must be shared with developing nations and that such nations’ exports, economic growth, and industrialization must not, and do not have to be, hindered by future environmentally based restrictions on energy use – so-called “green protectionism.”
“For example, developing countries have proved adept at manufacturing such renewable-energy products as solar panels, wind turbines, and energy-efficient light bulbs, and in 2008 accounted for 50 per cent of world exports of those goods,” Supachai said.
Meanwhile Minister for the Environment and Land Planning of Algeria, reading out a message from the President of Algeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Cherif Rahmani said recent experience has shown that economic growth and renewable energy use are mutually reinforcing.
Rahmani said Algeria is taking green economic growth so seriously that it has plans to invest US$80 billion by 2030 in renewable energy generation, including construction of a zero-emission “green city.”
Cherif Rahmani of Algeria
Rahmani, who also is chief of the African Group of negotiators on climate-change issues, promised that Africa will take a unified, active approach to renewable energy use and to combating climate change.
He said that globally, efforts to these ends must respect the development aspirations of Africans and other poor regions of the world, he said, and the International Convention on Climate Change must be upheld and strengthened.
