New World Body May Help Cut CO2 Emissions, UN Told
Date: 19-Feb-07
Country: INTERNATIONAL
Author: Daniel Trotta
Britain's Nicholas Stern and American Jeffrey Sachs both advocate urgent global action to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that many scientists believe trap heat in the atmosphere with potentially catastrophic consequences.
They addressed a forum at the United Nations where diplomats and environmental advocates asked them how to translate knowledge about global warming into action.
Earlier this month, French President Jacques Chirac called for the creation of a UN environment body that would have more clout than the existing UN Environment Program, known as UNEP, a plan backed by 45 other nations but not the United States, China or Russia.
"We probably will need some kind of organization," said Stern, a former World Bank economist who published an influential study on the cost efficiency of reducing carbon emissions for the British government last year.
"But we can't wait for such an organization. We have to get on with it now," said Stern, whose report contends the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be about 1 percent of world economic output if steps were taken now but would increase drastically if they were delayed.
Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute and a UN anti-poverty adviser, said he favored creating a World Environment Organization, but "I don't believe it's necessary for solving this problem."
Instead, the United Nations and existing agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gas emissions could do the job if world leaders took them seriously enough, Sachs said.
"The problem with international agreements is that people think they are made to be ignored," Sachs said. "It's an ethos for this building that needs to be at the very center of how this place operates. The goals need to be taken seriously."
On Thursday, a World Bank-sponsored forum on climate change said the human causes of climate change were beyond doubt and expressed an international obligation to combat the problem.
The meeting in Washington was attended by the G-8 industrialized nations plus China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico and a representative of the European Union.
(Additional reporting by Deborah Zabarenko in Washington)