Global warning

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Discussion: Climate change was top of the agenda at the recent WEF summit in Davos.

"Climate change is perhaps the largest challenge that as humankind we are facing today. We are on the verge of a full planetary environmental crisis, caused by the warming of the world."

His Excellency Jose Maria Figueres knows how to make a compelling point — yet for the former President of Costa Rica, this is a statement of grim fact. Figueres has been banging the green drum for over two decades, urgently insisting that the biggest threat we face comes not from conflict with our fellow man, but from environmental suicide.

“If climate change were to continue, then in Dubai you would be amongst the first to feel the effects,” he continues. “It only takes half of Greenland’s ice or half of Antarctica’s Western Slope ice to melt to raise sea levels 20 feet. Now think of sea levels raising 20 feet, in terms of the real estate that you have developed here in Dubai. It’s going to be a very nice snorkelling opportunity.”

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Figueres’ track record in the environmental field is impressive, perhaps unparalleled. He was chairman of Leadership And Environment Development (LEAD), and has also served as a director of the World Wildlife Fund, the Botanic Research Institute Texas, and the Stockholm Environment Institute. He presently serves on the board of the World Resources Institute, and the Earth Council Geneva. He was the first recipient of the Global Prize from the World Bank’s Global Environmental Fund for his leadership and efforts for the environment, and has also received a prestigious award from the Climate Institute in Washington DC, and the Sustainability Award in Switzerland. Such experience has fuelled an infectious passion, and his powerful rhetoric is peppered with sobering statistics gleaned from many years’ commitment to the climate change cause.

In town for the UAE’s inaugural ‘Climate Change Conference', Figueres is armed with a presentation adapted from Al Gore’s Earth-shattering documentary, ‘An Inconvenient Truth'. They are close friends, and Figueres is in no doubt as to the positive impact of Gore’s film.

“Al Gore has done more for the environment than any other person or any other institution to date,” he says. “The film has moved more people, it has created awareness, it has interested governments around the world, and it is creating the necessary critical mass, hopefully, for the world to move on these issues.

And that is very important because we only have a 10 to 15-year window of opportunity to mitigate the effects of climate change.”

Figueres insists that the Middle East cannot afford to miss this window. Moreover, he argues that the region’s “fascinating” potential provides an outstanding opportunity to tackle the global climate change problem.

“Here you have a very interesting combination of three elements, which I admire,” he explains. “One is a clear vision of where the region wants to go and how it wants to position itself in the world. Second is that it has first-class leadership that follows on the vision. Then you have action, which delivers on the vision. Combinations of vision, leadership and action are very scarce commodities in the world of today.”

Such ambition, Figueres insists, means that cities such as Dubai could play a crucial role in the shaping of the environment of the future.

“I would love the same vision, leadership and action that has taken Dubai to where it is today, to also move on to another challenge, which is the environmental one,” he says. “The truth is that we are going to be consuming hydrocarbons for the next 20 to 30 years, there’s no getting away from that. We just have to find a way to do it in a much more efficient way, and to mitigate their consequences. In that the region can have an extraordinary leadership role.”

This responsibility, Figueres argues, should be to bring about a positive convergence of public and private interests. “Governments should be very responsive in terms of enacting progressive environmental legislation,” he continues. “This not only allows countries to preserve their habitat and their environment, but also creates the opportunities for new technologies to be deployed, and for businesses to create a viable market opportunity out of mitigating climate change.

“That is a chance for businesses to see the environment not as a cost but as an opportunity, and for governments to create the frameworks and the regulatory environments that are conducive to move business in that direction.”

Of course, a key element of the Middle East’s prominence on the global stage is the strength of the region’s burgeoning business sector. Rather than insisting on the introduction of legislation that might hamper big business, Figueres argues that the fight against climate change instead may present some of the most significant business opportunities of the 21st century.

“Businesses, within those frameworks created by governments, have a tremendous growth potential,” he says. “Look at your global leaders, corporate global leaders, and how they’re looking at the environment.

“At General Electric, for example, Jeffrey Immelt has just come out saying that the environment is a tremendous business opportunity,” continues Figueres. “At DuPont, Charles Holliday has been at the forefront of what companies are doing in the environment. CH2M Hill, a global construction and architectural engineering company, is today designing and constructing along the lines of sustainable development criteria — without this becoming a hindrance in terms of the bottom line.”

Such hard-nosed financial considerations have already been studied at the highest level. Last October, for example, a review by UK economist Sir Nicholas Stern — reporting directly to Prime Minister Tony Blair — concluded that by 2050, markets for low-carbon technologies could be worth at least US$500bn. Yet the ripple effect of increased concern over climate change is being felt across the entire business world.

“Companies that are even in the consumer and retail end like Wal-Mart, for example, are also joining the bandwagon of companies that are becoming responsible in environmental terms,” says Figueres. “And why is that? Because as people around the world increase their knowledge with respect to the environment, they want to buy products that are produced in environmentally sound ways.”

As such retailers attract greater and greater customer numbers, so they also attract increased interest from investors.

“Look at the capitalisation of a company like GM or Ford, that has just posted the worst yearly financial results in its 106-year history, and look at the market capitalisation of Toyota and Honda — companies that have taken the hybrid route and have moved in terms of the environment,” says Figueres.

“The Toyota company is consuming 30% less energy than it was in the year 2000, and markets and investors are recognising the changes they’ve made,” he argues. “They are investing in Toyota and Honda instead of GM and Ford strictly on the basis of the environment.”

That he has named two prominent American manufacturers is no coincidence. Figueres is scathing when asked about the Bush administration’s refusal to sign the Kyoto Treaty, and insists that the country would be even more irresponsible were it not for the actions of individual states.

“I am not happy with the very slow way in which we are moving, and of course among the laggards, one would have to point out the lack of leadership from the federal government in the US,” he sighs. “The US contributes over 30% of global carbon emissions, and they’re not using their clout in the world to move the agenda on climate. Fortunately however, some of the slack is being picked up by the fact that you have some very proactive states within the US — California, for example — that are moving ahead in terms of mitigating climate change, through their policies with respect to transportation and recycling and energy use.”

So what direct steps might the Middle East take to arrest the decline of our ailing environment?

“Here, you have a tremendous amount of sun that could be heating up water, and that could be used with systems that could be generating part of your energy,” Figueres insists enthusiastically.

“There is also a tremendous amount of recycling that could be done within the region, which would lower the carbon emissions, and there are standards with respect to the fuel consumption of vehicles that could be tightened and increased that would make this a market for fuel-efficient vehicles,” he continues. “So there are a myriad of different examples through which we could have very proactive governmental policies that would move the private sector, in terms of being a decisive player to mitigate climate change.”

Handily, the issue of climate change was at the top of the agenda at the recent World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos — a summit that is essentially designed to sit governmental policymakers alongside private sector bigwigs.

Figueres is no stranger to Davos. In 2003 he was appointed as the first CEO of the WEF, and his responsibilities included coordinating the prestigious annual meeting.

Although he left the WEF towards the end of 2004, he is widely credited with having used his time in charge to strengthen the bonds between the corporate world and governmental and social sectors, in order to identify common long-term interests and visions. Predictably, he strongly rejects criticism that this year’s summit was less about economic debate, and more about politicians appearing to tackle the media’s latest ‘hot topic’ — in this case climate change. “The environment is very much linked today to the economic equation, just like the social issues are linked to the economic equation,” he insists. “If you don’t invest strongly in health, if you don’t invest strongly in education, you are not going to be a competitive nation. Likewise, if you don’t invest strongly in the environment, you are not going to be looked at as a place where foreign investment should go.

“The Stern Review says that if we don’t begin to mitigate climate change, it is going to cost us five points of global growth each year,” he continues. “It’s all linked, it’s all interdependent, and I’m very happy that climate change is where it’s beginning to be in terms of global awareness.”

Figueres’ time as President of Costa Rica was spent marshalling similar interdependencies, and his adherence to sustainable development did much to salvage his country from the economic torpor of the early 1990s.

“Sustainable development was my mantra, and it was my main strategy with respect to development in Costa Rica,” recalls Figueres.

“When I say sustainable development, I mean an articulate combination of economic factors together with strategic investment in social issues, mainly health and education, and at the same time, being environmentally proactive.

“If you’re really going to achieve sustainability in your development and your economic growth, you need to combine the good solid macro-economic factors with the social factors, with the environmental factors,” he continues. “The environment has come to the forefront, and that is undoubtedly a good thing for all of us.”

The battle against climate change

Figueres dismisses the 'debate'

"My impression is that climate change just hasn’t been on the radar screens of governments or of humankind, for that matter. It hasn’t been there because, on the one hand, we have a doubtful attitude as individuals as to whether it can be occurring or not.

There is a lot of misinformation that has been put out there, mainly by the global oil corporations, with respect to whether climate change is a reality, or it is not.

It’s the same fight that cigarette companies made many years ago after it was determined that there were many, many links between smoking and cancer. If you look at the scientific evidence with respect to climate change you will find that in all serious periodicals where articles are peer reviewed, out of all articles published in the last ten years, 928 articles concurred that we are facing climate change, and zero argued that we were not facing climate change. Your insurance companies are already worrying about that. In the last three decades, the cost of environmental disasters has increased 15 times as paid out by insurance companies all over the world.

So they are already aware that there is something going on here in terms of climate change.

The debate can be: Are we contributing to that climate change or not? Clearly, we are contributing to climate change, and that’s down to three key drivers.

The first is the increase in our population. It took humankind 10,000 generations to reach the two billion inhabitant level, which we did at the end of World War II. Between then and now, in only 50 years, we went from two billion to six billion.

In the next 50 years we will go from six billion to nine billion. Think of the impact of that on the planet. Couple this with the fact that we now have new technologies that we are still using with old practices. For example, we have been using water to irrigate our lands for centuries, but when our irrigation becomes so much that we have depleted all the water in our rivers to irrigate more land, then we begin to create numerous environmental problems.

The third driver is our attitude. As individuals, we continue to consume as if the world had unlimited supplies of natural resources — which it doesn’t.

So when you put all those elements together, there can be no doubt that we are having an impact on climate change.

The next problem is that, even when we are finally convinced that climate change is occurring, we are so daunted that we say ‘well yes, it is happening, but what can I contribute?’"

"Climate change is perhaps the largest challenge that as humankind we are facing today. We are on the verge of a full planetary environmental crisis, caused by the warming of the world" — Jose Maria Figueres.

"If climate change were to continue, then in Dubai you would be among the first to feel the effects."

"I’m very happy that climate change is where it’s beginning to be in terms of global awareness."

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