There Are Indeed Many Valuable Initiatives Supported by the UK Government Seeking to Address

ECOSOC High Level Segment Annual Ministerial Review Statement by Maria Arce Moreira Co-chair Development and Environment Group/Practical Action United Kingdom 2 July 2008

Mr Chairman, Ambassadors, Delegates,

Similar to Nicholas Stern’s influence now, back in 1973 during the energy crisis and the emergence of globalization Fritz Schumacher, another economist, published a very influential book called “Small is beautiful. Economics as if people mattered” that has powerful connotations for the context in which we operate and live today. Wherever there are imbalanced power relations and inequality preventing democratic choices that could benefit the majority then ‘environment, ‘development’, ‘food’ ‘politics’, ‘technology’ should be dealt with as if poor people mattered’

At this particular juncture the scale of the challenges we face are enormous, progress is still limited and we need to continue challenging the orthodoxies about development as Schumacher did in his time. NGO networks such as the UK BOND’s Development and Environment Group, have been closely following up initiatives and processes led by the UK government in order to promote that these are designed and implemented “as if poor people and the environment matter”. Some reflections emerging from that interaction on the impact of climate change in development are:

 Climate change is the result of unsustainable patterns of production and consumption and the most obvious example of environmental degradation. The poor who depend directly on natural resources and ecosystem services for their livelihoods and to ensure their basic needs are directly affected by environmental degradation. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment has already warned that 15 out of 24 essential services provided by ecosystems are being used unsustainably. In this context it is often implied that addressing climate change would deal with existing environmental sustainability challenges as well. However, fundamental environmental concerns such as ecosystem services, biodiversity loss, natural resources degradation, desertification are not well addressed in the current debates and rather subsumed into the “climate change box”. There is a risk that the support for existing environmental agreements will take a second place in the priorities and will not be used strategically to address the impacts of climate change.

 In view of climate change we require a fundamental different approach to development. The unquestioned faith on the macro economic growth paradigm does not match well with increasing unsustainable consumption, unsustainable exploitation of natural resources and the fact that there is an environmental limit to growth. Emphasizing economic growth without addressing serious issues of social and environmental justice will not have a substantial impact on poverty eradication or on environmental sustainability. The UK knows from own experience how challenging social mobility is and in Latin America inequality is still a big problem. We need to think outside the box and engage in a serious dialogue and support more sustainable and equitable development models.

 The urgency to address climate change should not prevent us from internalizing key lessons learned from decades of development practice that will ensure sustainability and impact. Inclusiveness, participation of the poor, gender responsiveness, appropriateness of solutions, accountability and time -essential to ensure the development of sustainable processes- should not be sacrificed in favour of fast technological fixes, often without proper assessment of all the social and environmental impacts involved, especially on the poor and their livelihoods. Biofuels have proved to be a questionable “green option” that depicts well that short term thinking and uncomprehensive approaches miss the complexity and trade offs involved. At any scale, technologies and alternatives proposed should be socially and environmentally accountable and not only a good business opportunity.

 Nobody can deny that new sources of financing are needed and we were keen to engage from early stages when the Environmental Transformation Fund was launched by the UK. At the core of our proactive engagement laid our interest that this financial flow contributes to transform global environmental governance. Environmental transformation should capture more of our thinking and efforts in the near future. There is still a lot of work to do to ensure that powerful actors such as the World Bank/IFIs transform radically to meet the existing challenges of poverty and environment but also to ensure that developing countries play a stronger role and have a saying in the early design of any such initiative.

 Not surprisingly climate change is also slowly but surely “rebranding” development without much questioning involved. These days we are all carbonized, being “low carbon” seems to provide a more desirable situation than being sustainable.

For us the clear challenge is how to construct a global future with justice for all through sustainable development pathways in a climate constrained world addressing the urgent needs of the billions of poor women and men living without water, sanitation, energy, land and rights while simultaneously transforming the essence of an unequal development model that has resulted in climate change. Schumacher was called a crank by his critics; however a crank can generate great changes from small movements. The small movements of Schumacher’s ‘crank’, have grown to highly articulated global demands for change that we need to listen to and learn more from. Thanks for your attention