Covid-19 revives focus on green growth

Covid-19 has not only brought to the fore the challenges to public health worldwide, it has also given impetus to sustainable development that has failed to take off nearly three decades since the birth of the idea. This is because rapid development has led to the neglect of other key pillars, including the environment.

Although several countries are still encountering sporadic disease outbreaks, the idea to revive the ailing economy because of the disease has been seriously discussed with the revived idea of sustainable development, plus some new discourses.

Besides being sustainable, the world needs to be more resilient, they all agree. And to do so, several more ideas and buzz words have been introduced, such as Build Back Better, Build Back Greener, Green Recovery, and the latest addition from the G7 recent meeting -- "Build Back Better World" or B3W -- tossed by US President Joe Biden.

Critical environmental challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss have since become the center of the talks, and the world’s leaders agree that it is time to work hard to address these issues.

The US under Biden’s leadership, for instance, has stepped up to put more efforts to address climate change than the previous president. Aside from returning to the flock under the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rise under 1.5 degrees Celsius by the turn of this century, the US president declared a new target for his country to achieve a 50-52 percent reduction of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) from 2005 levels in 2030 and netzero emissions economy-wide by no later than 2050.

The EU, on the other hand, had approved one of its major recovery budgets with the concept "Green Recovery'' last July. The budget, dubbed as the "Next Generation EU" and worth 750 billion euros, aims to cut GHGs up to 30 percent under the Paris Agreement in the next 10 years.

At the G7 summit, which ended on June 13, the grouping of the world’s major economic powers -- the UK, the US, Canada, Japan, France, Germany and Italy -- in their communique committed to a "green revolution" that would limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C. They also promised to halve emissions by 2030, reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and to conserve or protect at least 30 percent of land and oceans by 2030, the BBC reported.

The BBC analysed that the grouping’s commitment to phase out coal at home and stop financing coal overseas was significant as this is seen to heap pressure on China to follow. Although the details were still lacking, there were also potentially important developments focusing finance on renewable energy and railways in developing nations to counterbalance China's Belt and Road mega-project, the BBC noted.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who hosted the three-day meeting, was quoted by the BBC as saying; "We were clear this weekend that action needs to start with us."

More synergies of solutions

More recently, the world’s leading scientists have agreed that to address the future challenges brought about by pandemics, integration of solutions or more synergies of solutions are desperately needed.

Besides the One Health approach, which is aimed at integrating the state of public health into the economic development path, scientists agree that the most critical environmental challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss must be addressed alongside because they have learned about their mutual reinforcement, and solutions for one affects the other, and also the economy.

In their latest workshop and report, "Biodiversity and Climate Change", sponsored by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the two issues mutually reinforce each other and they are both driven by human economic activities. The report noted that unprecedented changes in climate and biodiversity have combined and are increasingly a threat to nature and humans, their livelihoods and well-being around the world. The report underlined that neither would be successfully resolved unless both are tackled together.

Professor Hans-Otto Pörtner, co-chair of the Scientific Steering Committee at the IPBES, said human-caused climate change is increasingly threatening nature and people, including its ability to help mitigate climate change.

"The warmer the world gets, the less food, drinking water and other key contributions nature can make to our lives, in many regions. Changes in biodiversity, in turn, affect climate, especially through impacts on nitrogen, carbon, and water cycles," he said.

Prof. Pörtner said a sustainable global future for people and nature is still achievable, but it requires “transformative change” with rapid and far-reaching actions never before attempted on ambitious emissions reduction.

In addition, a profound collective shift of individual and shared values concerning nature is required, he said. He suggested that moving away from economic progress based solely on GDP growth, to one that balances human development with multiple values of nature for a good quality of life could help lessen impacts from unavoidable trade-offs between climate and biodiversity.

“It may be impossible to achieve win-win synergies, or even manage the trade-offs between climate and biodiversity actions in every single patch of a landscape or seascape.

“But achieving sustainable outcomes becomes progressively easier when integrating a mix of actions at larger spatial scales, through cross-border collaboration and joint consultative spatial planning. That is why it is important to also address the lack of effective governance systems and mechanisms to improve integration between solutions to climate change and biodiversity,” the professor pointed out.

The scientists suggested that addressing the synergies between mitigating biodiversity loss and climate change while considering their social impacts would offer the opportunity to maximise benefits and meet global development goals.

Among the concrete actions recommended, for instance, is increasing sustainable agricultural and forestry practices. These include measures, such as diversification of planted crops and forest species, agroforestry, and agro-ecology. Improved management of cropland and grazing systems, such as soil conservation and the reduction of fertilizer use, is estimated by the report to offer annual climate change mitigation potential of 3-6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Thailand’s BCG

Thailand too has felt the pinch of the pandemic. Early this year, the government materialised the idea of pushing a new economic concept called Bio-Circular-Green Economy, or BCG Model.

In the first meeting of the government-appointed committee, chaired by Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha, in January, the PM made it clear that he wished to see the model as a key driver in the coming budget year. He said it should be the country’s economic strategy for the next five years to lift the country’s status from a middle-income country to a high-income one, while being more sustainable and resilient against the next pandemic.

The BCG has since been adopted as the government’s agenda to be pursued by state agencies. The government has also come up with a five-year strategy to support the agenda, running from this year to 2025 with four key strategies to be pursued.

They are sustainability of natural resources and biodiversity and the balance between conservation and utilization, local economy with social and natural capitals in localities, sustainable competitiveness with environmentally friendly technology and innovation, and resilient society.

Five areas would be in focus: food and agriculture, public health and healthcare, energy, tourism and creative economy, according to the committee.

The PM announced the agenda at the 2nd Partnering for Green Growth and Global Goals 2030 Summit hosted by South Korea in late May, underlining that recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic needs to go in tandem with sustainable development goals.

Thailand has set its goals towards the recovery with a sustainable, resilient and inclusive economy through the BCG model.