Reducing pollution in transport is key to sustainability. A street in Mérida, a city in southeast Mexico. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jul 3 2013 (IPS)

A year after endorsing the principles of the green economy at the Río +20 summit, Latin America is making little progress towards sustainable development models, according to experts.

The region “is generally in a precarious situation; although there have been efforts in public policy-making to integrate natural capital as an element in economic sustainability, there have been few cases,” Isabel Studer, director of the Global Institute for Sustainability (IGS) at the private Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, told IPS. “There is no comprehensive, cross-cutting approach.

“Countries have based their economic growth on the exploitation of natural resources, and this has aggravated a situation that was not particularly promising. Environmental sustainability has not been integrated in economic policy,” she said.

The IGS is taking part in a study led by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) on successful experiences in the green economy in developed and developing nations, set to be completed by the end of the year.
But what does “green economy” refer to?

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the green economy is “one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities. In its simplest expression, a green economy can be thought of as one which is low carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive.”

UNEP says green investment can contribute to reducing demand for energy and water while reducing the carbon footprint of production of goods and services, besides contributing to the fight against poverty and social inequality.

¨We have to understand the conditions in the economy, and later which measures can be applied,” said UNEP representative in Mexico Dolores Barrientos. “First there has to be an analysis of the methods and priority sectors for moving towards a green economy.

“The main step forward is the recognition of failures in the economic system, which can eventually be overcome by means of better public policies, and that can include the main issues of the green economy,” she said.

“The future we want”, the outcome document adopted in June 2012 by Río +20 (the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development) in Rio de Janeiro, considers the green economy one of the most important instruments for achieving sustainability, which can offer alternatives when it comes to policy-making.

At the same time, it recognises different approaches, visions and models, based on the specific circumstances and national priorities.
Governments, universities, NGOs and companies registered 741 voluntary initiatives in sectors like energy, transport, agriculture and health with the secretariat of the conference. Brazil registered 72, Mexico 47 and Peru 25.

By 2030, Mexico will require 64 billion dollars in investment in electricity, oil and gas, agriculture and forestry, energy consumption and transport to generate fewer polluting emissions, according to World Bank estimates.

The World Bank prefers to talk about “inclusive green growth” and puts the accent on experiences that are already being applied in many countries in the region.

But some governments, academics, and civil society organisations, especially in the developing world, argue that the green economy is turning nature into merchandise, without addressing deeper problems like poverty and inequality.

In the study “Development strategies of selected Latin American and Caribbean countries and the green economy approach: A comparative analysis”, UNEP studies the cases of Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela, whose governments “have expressed major concerns about the concept of green economy.”

The report says that “Although most of the countries analysed have integrated into their development strategies certain elements that govern the relationship of humans and communities with the environment and the pathways for achieving sustainability, there is a gap between the position of the countries, often very innovative, which is expressed in the international arena, and their current development policies.”

“The challenge is to bring about substantial changes in the national economy, in an integral manner,” Studer said. “Public policies involve macroeconomic, financial, fiscal and innovation policies. The green economy can be a motor for redressing inequalities.”

The academic said “the green economy is not optional, because today´s problems are only getting worse. It offers opportunities for development of new industries, renewable energy, recycling of materials; but it requires a gigantic effort to include externalities in prices and evaluate opportunity costs.”

Experts agree on the urgent need to adopt measures for more efficient use of energy and water, more efficient transportation, and more efficient handling of waste.

Mexico is completing a study on agriculture, natural capital, transport, water and green jobs, which could serve as input for policy-makers.
Other countries in the region are also beginning to study and analyse different sectors, from the point of view of the green economy.

“The key is for countries to accept the recommendations on the green economy and then carry out an important analysis on where the opportunities are for applying them, and do so,” Barrientos said.

The UNEP study says “it is necessary to establish international mechanisms that guarantee that a green economy will: contribute to poverty eradication, respect the sovereignty of nations, facilitate the conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity, and allow an equitable distribution of wealth”.

In 2007 Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, sponsored the Yasuni Initiative to end oil prospecting in the vast Yasuni National Park, thereby preventing some 400 million tonnes of carbon emissions, if the international community or the United Nations would compensate Ecuador for half of the unrealised oil revenues (an estimated 13 billion dollars over 13 years).

Hazel Henderson

Spain donated 1.4 million dollars, Italy cancelled 51 million dollars of Ecuador’s debt, following Norway’s 20 million-dollar cancellation. Germany and France contributed token amounts along with Chile, Colombia, Georgia and Turkey. U.S. and European NGOs added their support.

Sadly, however, this innovative effort is faltering because of the ongoing world financial crisis. The deeper reason lies in the murky secrets of money-creation and how this financial sleight-of-hand enabled financial players to take control of politicians even in democracies.

Saving Yasuni and averting further social, financial, and environmental crises now urgently requires unmasking the mysteries of money.

Worldwide, we see thousands of sensible proposals ­ for re-vitalising communities, investing in new infrastructure, re-training, and green jobs, preventive health, public education, restoring ecosystems, protecting public parks ­ all blocked by politicians, economists, and financiers with the same cry: Where’s the money going to come from?

Even worse, we see central banks printing money to bailout past mistakes of financiers instead of directing it to the real economy while politicians crush taxpayers with budget and job cuts demanded by bond vigilantes and their rating agency allies.

Saving Yasuni can help us finally connect all the dots by revealing the truth: money is not wealth and only has value if we believe and trust it. Currencies are simply information systems that track and keep score of human priorities and interactions with each other and with nature’s riches.

Yet this money symbol system has morphed from a useful accounting tool into a fetish that dominates our minds, our communities, and national decision-making while hampering sustainable forms of development and more realistic global policies ­including protecting Yasuni and other ecological treasures for our common future.

The United Nations Rio+20 Earth Summit of July, 2012, helped its 193 country members and many city and provincial governments to connect many of the dots needed to overcome faulty economics and its money-based paradigm. Its outcome document, “The Future We Want”, articulated their vision for people-centred, just, green economies based on ecological sustainability and renewable energy and resources and on the protection of the biodiversity on which all humanity relies.

However, the conference did not illuminate the money paradigm standing in the way of these goals.

Once we clearly affirm that while money is a useful tool it is not real wealth, we can see how it can be re-directed away from all the mal-investments in fossil fuels, nuclear weapons, and subsidising such destructive technologies of the past. As the Green Transition Scoreboard shows, some 3.3 trillion dollars has already been re-directed by private investors worldwide since 2007 into renewable solar, wind, geothermal, water energies and far greater efficiencies, as well as green buildings, public transport, and smarter cities and land-use, proving how humans can change their minds and redirect their money towards a cleaner, greener, more equitable future.

To similarly change the minds of our politicians requires directly confronting financial centres, economists, and business schools and re-training asset managers that still control our pensions, public and private.

The Occupy movement and the Arab Spring demanded that we create true democracies and end the dictatorship of money and finance. We are changing our scorecards of progress from money-based gross domestic product (GDP) and stock markets to broader indicators of health, education, infrastructure, poverty gaps, and the environment such as the Integrated Wealth Index (IWI) released at Rio+20, the Better Life Index of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Canada’s Index of Wellbeing, Bhutan’s gross national happiness index (suitable mainly for small Buddhist countries), and the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators.

We are auditing the U.S. Federal Reserve and calling central bankers and their allies in finance to account, confronting the errors in their core business models and metrics.

Many challengers see beyond the money-game rigged by insiders and the powerful, based on scarcity, fear, and competition and instead point to the unpaid Love economies, gifting, and the new open source movements, all based on sharing, cooperation, creating community wealth and abundance powered by the sun. These unpaid sectors of the global economy are now larger than the paid economies officially measured by GDP. We can think beyond the paradigms of the Washington Consensus, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (all based on money measures like GDP). We can shift to Life’s Principles and Ethical Biomimicry Finance and invest in all such companies waiting for our re-directed focus on holistic, healthy investing.

We can envision a Gaian League of small countries that have rejected the Washington Consensus and are transitioning to healthier forms of local development, opting out of the global casino, such as Iceland, Bhutan and Ecuador, where they already value their Yasuni National treasure.

We and many NGOs support this kind of alternative, also promoted by the World Social Forum: Another World Is Possible. The breakdown of the corrupt, malfunctioning global casino is driving these new breakthroughs! Come join us!
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* Hazel Henderson is president of Ethical Markets Media (U.S. and Brazil), publisher of the Green Transition Scoreboard and author of “Building a Win-Win World” and other books.

This column is available for visitors to the IPS website only for reading. Reproduction in print or electronic media is prohibited. Media interested in republishing may contact romacol@ips.org