 Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), says that as climate change has become a real problem, wetland storing water is becoming more important. |
By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
Development and environment preservation are the last things people think of as coming together. Construction and development are words one would never expect to hear positively about from environment experts.
Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in an interview with The Korea Times Tuesday stressed flexibility in this regard, focusing on sustainable development that is slower and less damaging to the environment.
He said that the environment should be seen as an economic infrastructure.
Preserving wetlands from his point of view was not just for the environment but also a way to save money. The wetlands serve a variety of functions such as storage and purification of water, increasing the diversity of eco-systems and peatlands, and storing carbon.
He criticized that half of the wetlands in the world were destroyed in the past century. ``Now that climate change has become a real problem wetland storing water is becoming more important. Also, while once can store carbon in the peatlands for free, some countries are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in developing techniques to artificially capture the carbon,'' he said.
Steiner called for a global New Deal policy to overcome the current financial difficulties through renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and environment preservation.
``The urban part of the world is using up nature. The GDP of the world has doubled between 1981 and 2005, but over 60 percent of ecosystems were overused or destroyed. We need to invest in such natural infrastructure,'' he said.
He said green growth ― the President Lee Myung-bak's pledged key growth engine for the next four years ― is an example of the rising necessity of long-term development.
``Korea has undergone fundamental economic reformation. It used to have environmental issues in the past ― 1980s ― but now the forestation was a rare success and the pollution has improved since them. Nowadays large construction or development project requires severe environment screening which shows that discussion on such issues is active and dynamic,'' he said. ``Hosting the Ramsar Convention to show the willingness for environmental preservation is also encouraging,'' he added.
The executive director stressed that the environment and humans are related to each other and green growth would contribute to human welfare in another way.
``What is important is the green economy to create jobs for people. There are 1.3 billion people living under the poverty line and the use of hydropower dams, or forest management could create jobs for them to certain level. I am not talking about mass destruction,'' he said, again stressing flexibility.
Still, the so-called sustainable development may have a long way to go. Biofuel energy, ethanol and others to replace oil are been questioned as regards their efficiency and moreover some environmentalists have raised voices over their excessive cultivation required for such.
``Everything has two sides and biofuel is no exception. However, we should not judge the potential of those energy. In the future, we will be using enzyme-based fuels and then we will be able to talk about the real renewable energy,'' he said.
UNEP has been releasing reports about the environment status of North Korea. With the Southern government, it was to hold an improvement campaign.
Despite the public perception that the two Koreas' relationship is turning sour, he affirmed that the project is still ongoing.
``We will be investing 4 million dollars for the next two years toward the project. It will not only help North Korea's environment, but also forge ties between the two countries,'' he said.
bjs@koreatimes.co.kr
