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CLIMATE CHANGE: UN Goes 'Climate Neutral'
By Ramesh Jaura
NUSA DUA, Bali, Dec 12 (IPS) - The United Nations announced Wednesday it is joining the growing worldwide effort to go "climate neutral", an acronym for reducing or offsetting any greenhouse gases.
The move covers some 20 agencies, funds and programmes of the world body, and also includes the Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, and his team.
The UN calculates that greenhouse gas emissions arising from travel to and from Nusa Dua on the tropical island of Bali in Indonesia - where the two-week-long UN climate change conference ends Friday - represent around 3,370 tonnes of carbon dioxide. The cost of offsetting that is approximately 100,000 dollars at current carbon prices.
"In order to show leadership and demonstrate practical action in support of developing countries and the urgent need to counter global warming, the UN bodies have jointly agreed to invest in credits accumulating in the adaptation fund of the Kyoto Protocol," Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) told IPS.
"Offsetting emissions by supporting the adaptation fund that is expected to become operational soon sends a clear signal that climate proofing vulnerable economies has - like the UN's action on climate change generally - risen to the top of the organisation's agenda in 2007," Steiner said.
Earlier he told journalists that "under the leadership of Ban Ki-Moon, the entire UN system has now pledged to work towards climate neutrality, not just in Bali but across offices and operations globally and forever. Indeed I can announce today that UNEP will be among the early movers and will become climate neutral next month."
Steiner told IPS the UN decision came "as Costa Rica, New Zealand and Norway fleshed out some of the pioneering plans and strategies" they are developing in order to achieve climate neutrality in their own countries.
Paulo Manso, chief of Costa Rica's delegation to the Bali conference, said Costa Rica had placed climate change at the very top of its agenda arguing that a climate neutral economy is also a competitive one.
The aim is to achieve the neutrality goal by 2021 to coincide with the country's 200th independence anniversary.
The strategy will build on Costa Rica's decision to tax fossil fuels in 1996, with 3.5 percent of the money raised allocated to the National Forestry Financing Fund, Manso told IPS.
This, along with other financial support such as loans and grants, is part of a payment for environmental services programme that pays landowners who manage forests for their carbon sequestration and storage alongside management for water production, biodiversity and scenic beauty.
Costa Rica's programme will include support for the Billion Tree Campaign established by UNEP and the World Agroforestry Centre. In 2007 Costa Rica planted more than five million trees - 1.25 per person - making it the highest per capita planting in the world.
Other elements of the strategy include increasing the percentage of renewable energy generation to well over 90 percent, and action on energy efficiency including energy saving appliances.
Biofuels and a switch to electric and hybrid buses and cars are also part of the plan alongside capture and use of methane from landfills and wastewater treatment plants as a fuel.
The decision to become climate neutral was taken by President Oscar Arias as part of a new initiative called Peace with Nature.
"The Peace with Nature initiative honours the ethical, human, social, environmental and economic approach which Costa Rica has towards the environment and sustainable development," Manso said.
Norway, that has also pledged to go climate neutral nationally, reconfirmed Wednesday that it is backing the UN system work towards climate neutrality with an initial investment of 820,000 dollars for the UNEP-hosted Environmental Management Group (EMG).
The group was established by the UN General Assembly in 1999, and is chaired by the Executive Director of UNEP. It aims at enhancing cooperation in the field of environment and human settlements within and beyond the UN system.
Erik Solheim, the Norwegian minister for environment and development, reaffirmed his country's commitment to become "climate neutral by 2050."
He said the Norwegian parliament was expected to approve a plan Dec. 14 for Norway to buy carbon credits worth around 500 million euros - or 735 million dollars - under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI) of the Kyoto Protocol.
CDM and JI are the two project-based mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol agreed in December 1997 that may be used by industrialised countries to fulfil their Kyoto targets.
Solheim told journalists that Norway would be pursuing vigorous energy savings and efficiency measures at home to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to contribute to evolution of the carbon markets established under the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Yet another country that plans to go climate neutral is New Zealand. Its deputy minister responsible for climate change issues, David Parker, said the country's plan to become climate neutral involves a goal of generating 90 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and halving per capita transport emissions by 2040 by introducing electric cars and a requirement to use bio fuels. (END/2007)
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