UN: $750bn could finance "Global Green New Deal", COP 15
Release Date: 2009-03-20
The UN Environment Program suggests that world leaders invest the equivalent of one percent of the global gross domestic product to revive world economy and put a brake on global warming.
Five environmental sectors should be the goals of immense investments in a global attempt to revive world economy and fight global warming. This call for action will be sounded by UNEP, the UN Environment Program, when leaders of the world's greatest economies (G20) meet in London on April 2.
"The opportunity must not be lost," Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment Program (UNEP), tells Reuters.
According to UNEP, investments of one percent of global gross domestic product, about 750 billion dollar, could finance a "Global Green New Deal" inspired by the "New Deal" that US President Franklin D. Roosevelt put forward to end the economic crisis of the 1930s.
The five environmental sectors mentioned in the UNEP report are: energy efficient buildings, renewable energies, better transport, improved agriculture and measures to safeguard nature.
Achim Steiner says to Reuters that the world urgently needs funds to jump start an agreement on a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December. Part of the financing could maybe come from a tax on oil, Achim Steiner says.
"If, for argument's sake, you were to put a five-year levy in OECD countries of five dollar a barrel, you would generate 100 billion dollar per annum. It translates into roughly three cents per liter… It would be almost, if not totally, unnoticed by the consumer," he says according to Reuters.
Oil is a fossil fuel contributing to the greenhouse effect that creates global warming.
| Type: | NORMAL |
| Company: | COP 15 |
| Country: | Denmark |
| Url: | http://en.cop15.dk/news/view+news?newsid=903 |