Youth Perspectives on Green Economy: From South and Central Asia Regional Virtual Consultation on Rio+20, 9-29 May 2011

-By Jeeban Panthi
Green Economy: An introduction

Poster Concept : Jeeban Panthi

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP, 2011) defines a green economy to be “one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities.” In other words, Greening the economy refers to the process of re-configuring businesses and infrastructure to deliver better returns on natural, human and economic capital investments, while at the same time reducing greenhouse gas emissions, extracting and using less natural resources, creating less waste and reducing social disparities.
There is no unique definition of the green economy, but the term itself underscores the economic dimensions of sustainability or, in terms of the recent UNEP report on the Green Economy, it responds to the “growing recognition that achieving sustainability rests almost entirely on getting the economy right”. It also emphasizes the crucial point that economic growth and environmental stewardship can be complementary strategies, challenging the still common view that there are significant trade offs between these two objectives – in other words, that the synergies prevail over the trade offs. Mankind enjoying the luxury of nature in several forms of services has been posing great threat to the environment and never realized the extinction of species, disappearance of resources and is presently responsible for climate change.

Benefits of Green Economy

Green economy is the best solution to food crisis and so to alleviate poverty. Green economy is the stair-case to achieve sustainable development. Green economy aims to profit the people and the planet. It acts as a fulcrum to maintain a balance between the sustainable development of mankind and GDP growth. Due to expanse of urbanization the demand and supply curve of availability of resources has shown an abnormal growth, with more demand of resources (natural and man-made) and less availability with increasing span of time. Green economy is the best option to bridge the gap between scarcity of resources and growth and thus eliminating social inequity.

“Green Economy” incorporates many sectors and issues in the Earth’s system; it is a “Green Umbrella” that provides shelter to the inhabitants of the Earth. Path towards Green Economy is strongly recommended by experts to achieve sustainable development and poverty eradication on an unprecedented scale and speed or magnitude. The new concept “Green Economy” is still in an incubation stage in the region of south and central Asia; therefore, its comprehensive analysis is necessary before moving forwards. Assuming the green economy a guitar of poverty alleviation, improved livelihoods, peace and security, and equitable distribution of resources are its strings. we just need to adjust the strings and fine tuning to play soft and eternal music of sustainable development .

A green economy substitutes clean energy and low carbon technologies for fossil fuels, addressing climate change but also creating decent jobs and reducing import dependencies. New technologies promoting energy and resource efficiency provide growth opportunity in new directions, offsetting “brown economy” job losses. Resource efficiency becomes a driving proposition – both energy and materials use – be it in better waste management, more public transportation, green buildings or less waste along the food chain.

In 1992, United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) also known as Earth Summit had developed a way to establish a strong and sustainable bond between man and nature. It gave rise to Agenda 21, a blue print for sustainable development, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Forest Principle and Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Tragedy, however, is even after 20 years of the Rio Summit, no improvements are seen on the situation of our planet as anticipated and desired and the situation still remains grim and faceless. Larger ecological footprints of richer people have become a matter of serious concern. The earth is under pressure due to population growth demanding more resources, unsustainable production and consumption mechanisms that hint prophetic warnings to the existence of this living system. The principle of distributive justice demands equal distributions of resources and opportunities. Implication of the same principle in the context of sustainable development, therefore, requires everyone to be endowed with eqitable distribution of resources and opportunities with the adoption of sustainable and low carbon lifestyles to make sure that we hand over the Earth to the coming generation in the same condition that our parents inherited us and maintain inter-generational equity. Energy is the driver of a green economy and agriculture, forestry, renewable energy and tourism are the wheels of the economy in South Asia. These sectors should be “Green” to ensure the green economy is fine tuned. However, there is a large gap in research for their proper harnessing towards benefiting the community. This is the right time for leaving no stone unturned for action oriented research. However,unstable economy and political instability are bigger challenges for sustainable development in South Asia. 

Implementing mechanisms of the Green Economy

Strengthening private sectors, Public Private Partnership (PPP) along with the linkage of client, companies and financing institutions are needed to achieve long term sustainability in development sectors. Therefore, institutional mechanisms should also be strengthened for regional cooperation towards sustainable development. At the outset of growing economy of developing countries there remains the challenge they have in capacity to develop and use new and advanced cleaner technology. Moreover, donor’s interest does not lie in a long term development. As sustainable development should come from the grass-root level, there should be “an exit strategy” to reduce dependency on foreign fund in development sectors. If the communities are motivated properly and structured with adequate guidance and support, sustainability becomes no longer a problem but an opportunity instead. 

Production of ethanol substitutes the use of fossil fuels as it can easily be produced from the waste straw of rice and wheat which are abundant in this region. Also, the region consists of many barren areas where medicinal herbs can be planted to enhance the livelihood of communities. Tourism is a major industry in this region but escalating problems related to pollution and poor sanitation are faced by the majority of tourism locations. Tourism Impact Assessment (TIA), thus, could be a substantial step for sustainable tourism development. An option in shifting towards village level tourism where the waste can easily be managed and the livelihoods of the local people be enhanced is viable enough. Our stake at technology transfer mechanism from developed to developing nations should always be assertive which is also a way for re-uniting them but developing nations’ strive for exploring such technologies and their alternatives within themselves should be more stronger.

Sadly enough, technologies available are currently confined to laboratories and research outputs thus do not have much impact on society directly and scientists have been migrating to developed countries for better opportunities. 

Unemployment is a major problem among youth in the region and migration for earning bread is increasing day by day which is not sustainable. Green jobs are the byproducts of the Green Economy so the practitioners should be trained for their transition by providing on-the-job or off-the –job training.

Youth and Green Economy

Youth are seeds, they do not turn themselves into plants unless they are sowed in soil, nourished with water and other required minerals. Youth require skills to function, but skill is not an alien thing, it has to be developed since it is rightly said leaders are not born but are made. However, there are few circumstances that limit the ability of youth to explore their skills and capabilities within themselves which is the very essential phase to be boosted up. The voice of youth should be raised and heard in every decision making process as those decisions made today will eventually affect to the youth in the future that have direct impacts on sustainable development. Old schools of thought do not have proper implementations and practices over the power and skill of the youth to change and have clear objectives for their own future. As even alone but innovative voice has a greater impact numbers of innovative minds together certainly play vital role to bring the greatest influence. So it is high time for the youth not only to sit together and build a pyramid of novel ideas to save the Planet Earth for us and for the future generation but to ACT here and now. We must also move to the ground and be the real players to substantiate the idea ‘green economy’ in sustainable development. Let’s join our hands to protect our mother earth and pool our knowledge and skills to bring about a Green Change instead of climate change. Therefore, a discussion and sharing platform among the youth of this region seems essential for regional cooperation that unites and strengthens us to have a greater stake at as negotiation table.