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Green Notes - 05 May 09

By Chinthana ⋅ May 5, 2009 ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

• Asia must do more to cut poverty and take the lead in fighting global warming, the Asian Development Bank president said Monday, as the region emerges from the economic crisis with more clout on the world stage. The global turmoil suggests the era of rich Western nations having unlimited appetite for Asia’s exports “has passed,” Haruhiko Kuroda told the bank’s annual meeting in Bali, Indonesia. That puts the onus on the region’s governments to boost their own domestic economies, he said. “Climate change impacts threaten to reverse decades of progress in poverty reduction in Asia and the Pacific,” said Ursula Schaefer-Preuss, ADB Vice-President for Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development. With greenhouse gas emissions growing at twice the average global rate in recent years, studies warn that the Asia and Pacific region is particularly vulnerable to the environmental and economic impacts of climate change. These impacts include sea level rises that threaten millions of people in low lying areas, dramatic declines in crop yields, and extreme weather events such as tropical storms, severe droughts and floods.
• The European Union and Japan decided to join forces in the battle against climate change and invited large countries to follow suit at a summit meeting in Prague on Monday. “Japan and the EU are aiming at building a low-carbon society. We believe that it is necessary for the United States, China, Russia to participate in a responsible manner,” Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso told reporters. The agreement was announced by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso and Czech President Vaclav Klaus, whose country holds the current EU presidency, at the EU-Japan summit. Japan has not set its mid-term target yet, but it has pledged to reduce carbon emissions by up to 80 percent by 2050. The two entities said in a joint statement that they recognized the importance of a UN agency’s report recommending a 25-40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for industrialized countries by 2020.
• Australia’s government has postponed its proposal to tax polluting industries until 2011, a delay of one year because of the economic slowdown and concerns the measure would hurt business, the prime minister said Monday. In a bid for support from the opposition Greens party, however, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he would seek more significant emissions cuts when his proposal is presented to the Senate for a vote in June. But the reactions from both industry and the Greens on Monday showed Rudd was no closer to securing the political support required to push the carbon laws through the upper house Senate. In the end, Rudd pleased neither business nor green groups. “Our concern is about the impact on investment. Whether or not you have a financial crisis, the same questions apply regarding the difficult choices that we make. We’re trying to alter the structure of the economy. The sooner you start the process the easier it is to invest with confidence in the future” said Sean Lucy, Head of Carbon Solutions Group.