In 2009, the United Nations called for a “Global Green New Deal” to interrupt dependence on fossil fuels and create sustainable jobs after the economic crisis ravaged the planet economy.
Under the plan, UN Environment urged massive investments in energy efficiency for buildings, a lift for solar and wind power energy, cuts in fossil fuel subsidies along with a host of other measures. It reckoned the balance would amount to 1% of global GDP, or about $750 billion.
But the global economy rebounded, still dependent on fossil fuels, despite efforts to diversify. Carbon dioxide emissions grew with a huge 5.8% in 2010, after a 1.4% dip in 2009, and have risen most years since.
Will the coronavirus pandemic, that has killed more than 10,000 people worldwide, provide a new opportunity to shape a greener, more sustainable world once the economy revives?
Read Chloé Farand’s insightful interview with Fatih Birol, the top of the International Energy Agency, in which he states governments possess a “historic opportunity” to herald a period of climate action once they design long-term stimulus packages.
“Well put @IEABirol,” Christiana Figueres, the former head of UN Climate Change and an architect of the Paris Agreement, commented about the article inside a tweet. “There exists a massive crisis = opportunity on our hands. We cannot manage to waste it. Recovery must be green.”
In recent years, the thought of green new deals – which echo US President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal following the Great Depression – have caught on in many nations in an effort to combat the climate crisis.
And the planet presently has a lesson to understand in the failings about ten years ago.
“We have a responsibility to recover better” than following the financial crisis, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Thursday, saying the worldwide health crisis was unlike any within the 75-year history of the UN.
“There exists a framework for action – the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and also the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. We should keep our promises for people and planet,” he added.
The task is daunting. The UN says global cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of seven.6% annually are needed within the next decade to obtain on track to limit climatic change to 1.5C above pre-industrial times.
But the Covid-19 emergency has opened a brand new window for a clean energy transition for the world economy.
Slow burn
The pandemic is slowing developing nations’ efforts to sort out more ambitious climate plans, that are because of be submitted before talks in Glasgow, still scheduled for November, at the first five-year milestone of the Paris Agreement.
“We are getting into unknown territory,” said Jahan Chowdhury, in-country engagement director for that NDC Partnership, which supports about 75 developing countries design and deliver their climate plans.
The coronavirus can also be disrupting Brussels’ legislative process, now unable to work at full capacity. This might delay the EU’s work on its Green Deal, under which the EU Commission wants Europe to become the world’s first carbon-neutral continent, Frédéric Simon at Euractiv writes.
Side effect
The economic slowdown in China brought on by herpes has at least one positive side-effect that is also now visible by satellites over Italy: less deadly air pollution.
The World Health Organisation says air pollution causes seven million deaths worldwide every year, by triggering cancers, lung and heart diseases.
In China alone, reduced polluting of the environment could avert between 50,000 and 100,000 premature deaths if levels stay low for a whole year, according to researchers at the Center for International Climate Research in Norway. They estimate which more than a million people die every year in China from air pollution.
Contaminated
Illustrating the risks of international travel and face-to-face meetings, the first coronavirus case in Liberia was recorded after an observer returned from a Green Climate Fund meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.
The meeting went ahead after being moved like a precaution from the GCF headquarters in Songdo, Columbia, at a time when the nation became among the world's hotspots for the virus.
This week's top stories
- Coronavirus slows developing nations' intends to step up climate action in 2023
- Coronavirus enters Liberia after observer returns from Green Climate Fund meeting
- Coronavirus reaction to delay EU Green Deal by weeks
- Governments have 'historic opportunity' to accelerate clean energy transition, IEA says
- Coronavirus: China's economic slowdown curbs deadly air pollution
