Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Showcase, don’t shun, economics of climate at G20
– Dr. David Suzuki is a Canadian scientist, broadcaster, author, and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Any views expressed here are his own. –
For the past two years, the global economy has been at the top of peoples’ minds. And so has the environment.
Indeed, most people probably care about both. The fact is these two issues are inextricably linked. As we’ve seen after the economic meltdown, we tend to focus on them as if they are separate.
On the heels of the U.N. Conference on Climate Change last December in Copenhagen, climate change remains a major concern and now often dominates meetings of international heads of state, including the G8 and G20 summits.
Fold sustainability into economies, G20 urged
Consensus among sustainability experts at a Toronto conference this week was that world leaders in the Group of 20 nations face a fecund opportunity to make gains integrating environmental concerns with all other levels of economic development.
“Finance ministers are the real environment ministers. Environment ministers have weak, minor voices at the table at which economic decisions are made,” said chair Maurice Strong, President of the Council of the United Nations University for Peace, former Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, and former president of Power Corporation, head of Petro Canada and Ontario Hydro.
