Peace, poverty + environmental sustainability

A thought with which to begin the week, and which I have been mulling over during the past few days:

One could argue that the three trascendental challenges for the world in the 21st Century are:

1. To ensure world peace + peace between nations (i.e. nuclear disarmament; peace in Israel/Palestine; peace in the Middle East; avoidance of war between India and China; avoidance of conflict over resource shortages; tolerance between societies, cultures and religions);

2. To reduce and eliminate world poverty + inequality;

3. To ensure environmental sustainability (climate change mitigation + adaptation; biodiversity + ecosystem services conservation; food security; low carbon growth + the green economy);

Applying the same logic, one could argue that the three trascendental challenges for Colombia in the 21st Century are:

1. To arrive at and to maintain the peace; to end the tragic conflict of the past fifty or more years;

2. To reduce and hopefully to eliminate poverty + inequality in the country (Colombia being Latin America's most unequal country, and LA the world's most unequal continent);

3. To ensure environmental sustainability (climate change adaptation; low carbon growth; forests + biodiversity conservation; a healthy urban and rural environment in which Colombians can live safely, happily and healthily).

Assuming this schematic equation holds some truth, then one can proceed to argue how these three issues -- peace, poverty + the environment -- are powerfully interlinked, both globally and in the case of Colombia.  

By way of a few further hypotheses to show the linkages:

1. The possibility of global conflict in some hotspots is immeasurably heightened by key resource shortages, most obviously water, both current and foreseen.

2. Economic growth, while leading to poverty reduction, has hitherto meant an increase in resource scarcity and/or environmental damage.  The current economic growth model is likely to reduce poverty but to increase environmental degradation.

3. Poverty itself often exacerbates negative environmental impacts (e.g. deforestation in watersheds by poor farmers), even though it is important to acknowledge that the collective ecological footprint of the poor is much lighter than that of the rich and of global industry.

4. The effects of environmental scarcity and environmental degradation have a disproportionately negative impact on the poor, who are most vulnerable - for example - to the impacts of climate change, including flooding, droughts and air pollution, as the recent floods in Colombia demonstrated powerfully.

5. Local conflicts in Colombia, and internationally, can often be attributed to the search for control of environmentally important and/or strategic resources.

Assuming one also agrees with this cursory summary of some of the causal links which exist between peace, poverty and environment, then I would be glad to know what readers make of the following conclusions:

1. Peace in the world - and peace in Colombia - cannot be achieved without procuring both poverty reduction and environmental sustainability.

2. Poverty reduction at the expense of environmental sustainability - the current model - will imply short- to medium-term benefits for a significant percentage of the population but will not guarantee long-term prosperity for all.

3. The environmental sector in Colombia (and internationally) would do well to argue that environmental sustainability is a fundamental requisite for peace and for poverty reduction, in order to gain more space and leverage in the public debate: i.e. not environment for environment's sake (although intrinsic value arguments are valid and important too), but as the essential prerequisite for peace and for poverty reduction.

4. Those who care for global peace; for peace in Colombia; for the elimination of world poverty and inequality; and for the elimination of world poverty and inequality in Colombia: their thinking is not complete if it it does not grapple with the most difficult challenge of all to resolve, the challenge of how to ensure environmental sustainability.

As always, all thoughts welcome.  Greetings to all and a happy week!

What does it take to be a good Minister of Environment?

I have been reflecting of late on what the key qualities of a good Minister of Environment are, whether in Colombia or anywhere in the world.  To share some quick thoughts, here are the five key qualities that I have identified:

1. Outstanding moral, intellectual and personal commitment to the issue of sustainable development, sustainability and the environment.  (This of course would seem to go without saying, but it's worth stressing...the stronger the commitment, I would posit, the more the Minister will seek to promote their cause - especially when the going gets tough...)..

2. A capacity to make strong, clear arguments to other Government ministries and to the private sector on environmental issues: arguments based strongly on economics, wherever possible, but also on ethics.  A good Minister should have the arguments, for example, of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, or the TEEB Study on the Economics of Biodiversity, at their finger tips.  In the Colombian case, the Minister should be able to rattle off statistics about the economic impact of the flooding over the past year; or on the value of the country's national parks to water provision in the big cities...
3. The ability to be a good, clear and strong negotiator with the other sectors and the Executive on the environmental cause: to cede on some points, not to cede on others, the capacity to come to binding agreements and to generate trust in a given negotiation.

4. A clear communicator in the media, public debates and with civil society: someone who is able to make the case for the environment in a clear, objective but charismatic way in the public domain and who, by doing this, wins the overwhelming support of civil society in the support of the environmental cause.  I say this because I believe that civil society in the UK and elsewhere is what holds politicians to account and what generates at least some progressive legislation on the environment from time to time.

5. Someone with an international projection: i.e. a person who is aware, experienced, involved in and who excels in international debates and negotiations, and in the international discussion surrounding sustainable development.  In practical terms, I refer to someone who speaks good English and who is capable to project what is being done nationally at the international level.

In summary, five qualities: commitment, argument, negotiation, communication and the international dimension.

I believe the best Environment Ministers in the world at the moment, past or present, have demonstrated a powerful combination of these factors: I am thinking of Marina Silva, the former Brazilian Environment Minister, or Jairam Ramesh, the current, charismatic Indian Minister, about whom a good profile was written recently in Newsweek.

It would be interesting to evaluate the performance of the current British Minister, Caroline Spelman, on the basis of these criteria; my instinct is that she would get a 2 out of 5 in a first analysis.

And I would also welcome reflections from Colombian friends on how these criteria would apply to our current situation here....