|
New Scientific Panel on Sustainable
Resource Management set up
Assessing the environmental
risks of biofuel production and metal recycling are two of the issues
likely to top the agenda of a newly formed global think tank on resource
efficiency.
Launched here today at the
World Science Forum, the new "International Panel for Sustainable Resource
Management" will provide scientific assessments and expert advice on the
use intensity, the security of supplies and the environmental impacts of
selected products and services on a global level.
"Climate change rightly tops
the environmental agenda at the moment, but the world faces more
inconvenient truths that must be addressed," said Achim Steiner, UN
Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP), which has established the panel.
"Economic growth in our
modern times cannot be achieved with old consumption and production
patterns - a point brought into sharp relief by our new Global Environment
Outlook-4 which shows that collectively humans are over-utilizing the
Earth's nature-based resources at a rate that is outstripping nature's
ability to renew and replenish them," he said.
"We need to provide a boost
to resource-efficient growth and innovation. We need to break the links
between economic growth and environmental degradation, and finding ways to
achieve this "decoupling" is what the new resource panel is all about."
Established by UNEP, with the
support of a wide range of governments, the European Commission and
representatives from civil society, the new scientific panel is part of an
international partnership on resource management. It will look at the
impacts on resources and materials used in all phases of their life cycle.
"Quadrupling
resource-productivity worldwide (doubling wealth while halving resource
use) is the smoothest avenue to sustainable development," according to
Ernst Ulrich von Weizsaecker, Dean of the Donald Bren School of
Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, and
Co-chair of the Panel.
"We all agree that a lot more
economic wealth is needed for six and a half billion people let alone nine
billion people that we expect to live on earth by the middle of this
century. On the other hand, we are already now overexploiting the earth.
It is fair to say that we should reduce the consumption of carbon energy
and other natural resources by roughly a factor of two. It is high time
for the UN System to address the global resource challenges, and I feel
honoured being invited to help on this exciting agenda", he said.
"Humanity is facing its most
serious challenge in how to interact with the ecosystems that support us
and all forms of life," said Ismail Serageldin, the other Panel Co-chair
and Director of the Library of Alexandria. "We must find new and
innovative ways to meet the needs of an expanding population, richer
diets, and the appetite for energy. We must redesign the international and
national policy environment so that it nurtures the development and
promotes the introduction of these new ways world-wide."
The new International Panel
for Sustainable Resource Management is expected to provide hard scientific
and empirical assessments, written in a clear language about complex
issues and reports which can be read by those who can take action.
It is hoped that the Panel
will assess the situation at the global level and will advise which
priority issues to address, for instance metal recycling (should we 'mine
or recycle', and what are the environmental risks), or the complex issue
of bio-based products (are we tackling climate change, or are we 'burning
our food' as some say).
The Panel is supported by a
Secretariat, hosted by the Sustainable Consumption and Production Branch
of UNEP's Division of
Technology, Industry and Economics, based in Paris
Source:
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
Return to:
Environmental News Page
|
