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Kenya: Biodiversity Key to Sustaining Green Growth
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Business Daily (Nairobi)
OPINION
5 May 2008
Posted to the web 5 May 2008
Achim Steiner
In December, last year, governments set aside- in quite dramatic ways-to narrow national differences in agreeing the Bali Road Map.
This is the two- year negotiation to realise a deep and decisive climate regime by the climate convention meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009.
There are many milestones on this route. The meeting in Singapore last month was one of them.
For while a path has been laid out for emissions reductions, we know that even our best efforts will still lead to some measure of climate impacts which will fall hardest on the most vulnerable economies and communities.
The ultimate goal and prize is delivering Green Growth and Green Economies; ones that fundamentally shift the way we all produce and consume the Earth's natural resources from a wasteful path to one that is sustainable.
The greening of growth that is now emerging is being propelled by the existing climate agreement and by the prospect of even tighter rules and regulations on carbon-based pollution.
Take the case of IBM and its plans for cooling computer servers announced at the recent CeBIT electronics exhibition in Germany last month. It may come as a surprise to some but data centres world-wide consume about 120 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually.
Collectively they produce around two per cent of global C02 emissions, equal to those from aviation. Many data centres are also intolerable places to work.
The solution being proposed are micro filaments that will run water through computer chips, pass the liquid through a heat exchanger and use the harvested heat to for local homes.
And what abut cement, a ubiquitous substance in the modern world which few of us even think about despite living in buildings and driving on roads made out of the stuff.
Engineers and scientists are now looking how to produce concrete differently-one might say more intelligently.
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Meanwhile, research centres in Kenya and in the United States are trying to isolate the enzyme that termites produce to dissolve woody wastes into sugars. It could become the basis of a new and perhaps less controversial second generation biofuels industry.
Indeed, if we had a breakthrough in Bali then we also need a breakthrough in Bonn, Germany, this month at the Convention on Biological Diversity meeting. For while we may be turning the corner on climate change the same cannot be said for biodiversity and the economically important ecosystems of which it is an integral part.
Steiner is the UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director.
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