A seminar report on the topic sustainable development and climatic change was conducted in your school nss volunteers prepare a seminar report on the programme
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Seminar on “Sustainable Development and Climate Change: International and National Perspectives”
Keynote Speech by Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General
Oslo, Norway, 6 March 2008
Ministers, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen;
I am honoured to be with you today. It is a timely occasion as we have just released our 2008 OECD Environmental Outlook and can therefore share some of the findings with you. Although our analysis addressed all environmental challenges, such as water, biodiversity and health impacts, I will focus on climate change.
Climate change involves all three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, the environmental and the social dimension. Addressing this challenge demands a long term perspective on how our actions today will affect the lives of our children, and it also demands a dialogue with all stakeholders involved in order to reach viable solutions.
Climate change has been rising on the political agenda. Knowledge and awareness about some of the most alarming trends have been enhanced by several assessments released recently, including those of the OECD. The 2008 OECD Environmental Outlook says, for example, that if we continue to do business as usual, global greenhouse gas emissions are expected to grow by over 50% by 2050 which will cause world temperatures to rise between 1.7º and 2.4º Celsius above pre-industrial levels in 2050, and more than 4-6 degrees Celsius over the very long-term. We will see more heat waves, droughts, storms and floods, severely damaging key infrastructure and crops, and threatening the lives of millions.
But having the information is not enough. We need to act now and the OECD Outlook points out how to do it. There are three main messages that emerge from our analysis.
First, doing nothing is not an option, because its costs and consequences are a multiple of the known costs of action.
Second, achieving ambitious climate stabilisation goals is possible provided we act immediately and we use the least-cost solutions that are already available. Additionally, increased investment by both the public and the private sector is crucial to achieve technological breakthroughs that will produce cheaper and faster solutions.
Third, an affordable solution to climate change is only possible if all major emitting countries and sectors participate.
Don’t get me wrong: This does not mean that action will be cheap or that it will be easy. It will require significant changes in how we consume and how we produce. We will need structural change to move our economies towards a low-carbon environment. This will require real political courage and perseverance.
In its most ambitious scenario, the 2008 OECD Environmental Outlook showed that stabilising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at about 450 ppm of CO2-equivalent could cost about 0.5% of GDP in 2030 and rise to 2.5% in 2050. This is not cheap, but it is affordable in light of the expected economic growth over this period and it is certainly less expensive than the cost of inaction. Adopting this option would require putting a global price on greenhouse gas emissions which would, for example, translate into an additional one-half a cent of a US dollar per litre of gasoline in 2010, increasing gradually to 12 cents in 2030 and to about 37 cents in 2050.
This scenario is based on the assumption that all countries participate and that they apply the least-cost policies available today. It involves a reduction of 39% of GHG in 2050 compared to 2000.
The most difficult task now is to translate these findings into policy action. The real issue is not how much it costs to fight climate change but rather who is going to pay for it. The distributional aspects are key to finding a workable solution.