The Seoul G20 summit ended on 12 November, 2010. On November 9, Achim Steiner, the UN Undersecretary General and Executive Director of UNEP, wrote about the important role the G20 can play ’embedding a fundamental transition to a more sustainable global economy that looks beyond the current, narrow definition of wealth and GDP.’
The G20 has acted to stabilize banks and to counter the financial and economic crisis. Steiner hoped that the G20 meeting in Seoul could have been ‘a watershed in international financial and economic affairs, where the pledge, made at the G20 in London, toward a green and more sustainable recovery moves from communique to concrete commitment.’
The G20 must deal with the important issues of averting economic crises similar to the recent recession and ‘the even bigger and more complex ones emerging as a result of climate change, environmental degradation and unsustainable overexploitation of the planet’s natural assets.’
As Steiner pointed out, there are some very promising signs that more and more countries are understanding the urgency of the climate change crisis. Korea has earmarked close to 90 percent of its funds to a short- and long-term vision of green growth. The country’s leaders have also made the indivisible link between the leadership role of public policy making in terms of unleashing private sector investment into clean tech and other green sectors.
The costs associated with climate change are being factored into the thinking of an increasing number of banks and pension funds who are beginning to see rising risks to their investments from the loss of ecosystems. Increasingly people understand that the disruption to food supplies, supply chains and other challenges linked with natural resource losses are a much bigger threat than international terrorism.
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