Chair,
ESCAP, the Regional Commission for Asia and the Pacific, released last week a
report titled the Economic and Social Survey which estimated that 42 million people
in Asia and the Pacific are expected to fall into poverty trap this year due to rising oil
and food price in addition to the 19 million people already pushed back to poverty
last year. If the price of oil and food continue to rise as it is now, it will seriously
jeopardize the achievement of MDG.
Thus greening of economy by improving energy/resource efficiency and shifting
towards Green Economy is not a conditionality to address challenges of climate
change, but it is rather a necessity for energy /food/resource security of developing
countries to prevent many more millions from continuously falling into poverty trap
due to rising energy and food price.
ESCAP has been pioneering Green Growth approach since 2005 in order to
harmonize rapid economic growth of the region with the limited ecological carrying
capacity. Since 2005, many countries in Asia and Pacific, such as Korea, China,
Cambodia, Kazakhstan, Indonesia and Thailand to name a few are already taking
meaningful domestic actions focusing on green economy. Ministerial Declaration
adopted September last year at the 6th Ministerial Conference on Environment and
Development clarified that green growth is one of the implementing strategies for
Sustainable Development rather than replacing SD. Ministers also adopted a
mechanism for inter-regional mechanism which is titled the Astana Green Bridge
Initiative to link Europe with Asia and the Pacific through green growth approach
thanks to the innovative initiative of the Government of Kazakhstan.
Mr. Chair,
Rio+20 has to be a valuable opportunity to mobilize political commitment necessary
to promote a system change towards green economy by agreeing on a global
roadmap that elaborates how developed and developing countries could work
together to make Green Economy a reality .
As for the idea of a UN Green Economy Roadmap proposed by EU, I would like to
report to the Conference that ESCAP is now in the process of preparing a Roadmap
for Green Growth by the end of this year. We hope that Green Growth Roadmap
prepared by ESCAP could be a useful input and reference material for the
preparation of Rio+20. Thank you.
