Green Colour The Thickness Of Paint?
Posted 12th January 2001
Photo shows UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer

Accelerating the introduction of environmentally friendly energy such as solar, wind and wave power is one of the most pressing issues of the new millennium, the head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) will tell a meeting of the G-8 countries on renewable energy today. Its also an issue pressing down on Oil Corporate profit lines and there perhaps is the real motivator for animation in the UNEP. BP and Shell are not coincidentally both engaged in massive PR campaigns to convince car drivers that they are saving the world by producing this or that `green' fuel. One has to look with a jaundiced eye at such campaigns and anybody who makes a living out of promoting the pro-profit concept of `sustainable development'. Who and what is being sustained by UNEP, by Royal Dutch Shell, by BP and by the close coordination of the UN and global corporates? I would think they are sustaining themselves and the smaller, local businesses and people who are dependent on them would do well to develop their own regional, national and international networks, not to oppose the moves at the top, but to underpin them by moves from the bottom and up through the middle.

Meanwhile, we need to keep a close on on each other. Where trust is lacking information is the backing. Klaus Toepfer, executive director of UNEP, will be attending a private meeting of the G-8 Task Force on Renewable Energy at the French Ministry of the Environment to hear at first hand how their work is progressing. Green energy must be put at the heart of sustainable development if the threats of climate change and the need to tackle poverty and ill health in the developing world are to be truly addressed, Toepfer will tell the G-8 Task Force. ³Sustainable development, or not cheating on your children, means things like ensuring our ever growing cities function as stimulating and vibrant places to live and work; to ensuring that the poorest people in the world are not forced to chop down forests full of precious wildlife for wood to cook or keep warm,² he says. ³I cannot frankly see how these problems can be overcome without the widespread introduction of non or lesser polluting forms of energy which conserve the planet¹s finite resources of coal, oil and other fossil fuels,² Toepfer says. Renewable energy will be discussed in detail as UNEP and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs host an African High-level Regional Meeting on Energy and Sustainable Development from today through Saturday in Nairobi.

This topic will take center stage as ministers from 10 African countries meet on Friday at UNEP¹s headquarters in Nairobi to agree on a common position on sustainable energy use. The ministers, who include Kenya¹s Minister for Energy, Dr. Y.F.O. Masakhalia, will submit their conclusions to the 9th session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development taking place in April. Toepfer¹s exhortations come in the run-up to UNEP¹s 21st session of its Governing Council in which ministers from around the world will meet in Nairobi from February 5 to 9. Renewable and sustainable energy will be among the key issues on the Council¹s agenda. An invitation has been extended to Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, group managing director of the Royal Dutch Shell Group of Companies to address the Governing Council on how far the G-8 Task Force has come in formulating a strategy on delivery of sustainable energy to the developing world.

UNEP believes that turning the promise of green and less polluting energy plans into installed facilities, able to bring heat and light to rural communities or help pump water to rural communities and rapidly expanding cities, may hinge on developing a pioneering network of advice centers across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Such centers will be able to act as brokers, helping to bring together governments, communities, development banks, other loan agencies and technical experts, to overcome financial and other hurdles which can slow down the introduction of renewable energy projects. John Christensen, head of the UNEP Collaborating Centre on Energy and Environment based at the Riso National Laboratory in Roskilde, Denmark, says an informal network with two centers in each of the three key regions has been established and is already helping countries such as Tanzania develop less polluting forms of energy. ³We have identified regional centers of expertise and now wish to formalize these relationships. We have found that working this way, we can move rapidly and more flexibly to deliver sustainable energy schemes in some of the places where they can make a real difference to people¹s lives.² Christensen says. .