Green Economy - solution to the crisis

One of the main reasons of this financial crisis is that a bunch of few powerful businessmen tried to produce quick money using high risk, high interest investments. Golden Key - Sakvithi scenes are global phenomenon.

This excessive greediness creates a credit crunch and recession. The same phenomenon is happening when we tried to solve our economic woes by exploiting more and more natural resources in an unsustainable manner. The current global rate of extraction of natural resources is 25 per cent more than the replenishment rate.

Increasing production

Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka

That means that the humankind already possesses an ecological deficit, which would lead to an ecological credit crunch if we were to accelerate the exploitation to overcome the economic recession by producing more goods and services.

On the other hand, carbon budget for the whole century identified by the UN to avoid catastrophic environmental disasters to humankind is in the range 50:50 probability which will expire in 2032 if the present trend continues.

So we are in a very delicate situation. The normal solution to existing economic crisis may lead to irreversible ecological crisis that would be the end of the history of the humankind.

Creating A Green Economy

So the only way to resolve both economic and ecological problem is to create a Green Economy within a sustainable development paradigm.

Emphasis should be paid on few underline fundamentals if we were to shift towards green economy.

First of all, each and every policy maker who are in various political colours should reach a consensus about the long-term sustainability of the development and the present modern development model and the highly globalized economies could not be able to sustain its growth without causing irreparable damage to eco systems.

Therefore, they all should principally agree to explore new sustainable development and green economy as long-term solutions, both globally and nationally. That political consensus and strong political will should be the basic pillar of these fundamentals.

Secondly, having mindful of this final everlasting long term solution, policy makers should reach a consensus about the present context and conditions and how to transit from present to future.

Thirdly, there should be a serious commitment to convert existing economies to Green Economies by appreciating the full potentials of the environmental industries and green technologies as the new engine of sustainable growth . Fourthly, we should change our existing legal systems, financial regulations, social characters, cultural attitudes which are the basis of the Green Economy.

Fifthly, we should focus on existing social structures and economic conditions emphasizing eradication of extreme poverty and necessary sacrifices to be made by extreme affluency.

Structural Changes

There should be some new changes to existing administrative systems and political systems as well. National, cultural and political differences on these change in structure could be overcome. These might be the guiding fundamentals when we are exploring the Green Economy.

The priority economic sectors may be, - production of clean energy and focus on local and rural energy access, Bio diversely based business including organic agriculture commercial forestry, fishing and marine based industries, natural resources based other industries, nature based tourism and social services.

Cultural structures include

*Low carbon emitting green cities, common facilities, housing and transport

*Ecological infrastructure including conservation and restoration of nature reserves, protected areas, watersheds and waterways.

*Waste management including toxic and electronic waste management through reduction, recycling and reuse.

A Green Economy would not lay emphasis on final products in valuating pricing and measuring efficiency of this product. Instead it creates a new wholistic evaluation methodology based on cyclic process from extraction to waste. Both present free market system and autocratic government controlled system would not be able to do such holistic valuation. Green market and governance are different from what we experienced.

Equal Opportunities

The social base of the Green Economy is very vital. Both extreme poverty and affluancy have to be eradicated. All should enjoy equal opportunities without having any social discriminations based on gender, wealthiness, ethnicity, extent of urbanization. Meritocracy over bureaucracy should be adopted.

It should be emphasized that cultural diversity, cultural and knowledge system diversity like bio diversity are necessary condition to continue the Green Economics in sustainable future.

Important Steps

In Sri Lanka, we have already taken a few important steps in achieving a Green Economy. We are the pioneers in this regard when we introduced the environment conservation levy to discourage environmentally unhealthy products.

On the other hand UNEP forums are always talking how to convince Heads of States and Financial Ministers in introducing green economic policies and collaboration between various sectoral ministries.

Sri Lanka is the very first country which introduced the ‘Green Lanka’ program which activates a pro Green Economy and a national platform headed by head of state cum finance minister to monitor the national policies and action plan.

Now in this context it is of paramount importance to create green jobs to face the economic recession and resulting job cuts. What we lack is the political consensus and bureaucratic commitments.

If we were to follow the strong government-private sector leadership in providing macro economic policy support for the transition, Green would be the new big deal in Sri Lanka.