A UN panel, made up of former ministers and world leaders, which was convened to examine the issues to be discussed at June’s Rio+20 climate summit has reached the conclusion that pure economic growth is unsustainable and the world can no longer afford to ignore the environmental cost of damaging industries. The panel has said that leaders meeting in June must redefine the concept of national wealth itself.

The 22 strong high-level panel, which met on Monday, called on world leaders to recognise that "current global development is unsustainable" and released a report which outlines over 50 policy recommendations. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stated, "We need to chart a new, more sustainable course for the future, one that strengthens equality and economic growth while protecting our planet."

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The high-level panel recommended on Monday that governments take immediate action to ensure the world meets the challenges presented by climate change, suggesting the need for an ’ever-green revolution’ for the 21st century. This radical new approach would see food, water and energy being dealt with in an integrated fashion; "All three need to be fully integrated, not treated separately, if we are to deal with the global food security crisis," the panel said.

Echoing calls by Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on biodiversity, who this week called for immediate action to reverse the rapid biodiversity loss which is threatening parts of the globe, the UN panel recommended that, in order to move human values away from purely economic growth, the environmental cost of certain measures is factored into prices going forward.

It also recommended increasing spending on agricultural research, conserving land and water resources, reducing pollution and stepping up action to conserve plant and animal species whose loss could cost humanity millions financially, without factoring in their cultural and ecological significance. It recommends facilitating research’s move from the laboratory to the field.

Recommendations for agriculture

In its report, the panel advocates an “Immediate push on sustainable agriculture [which] would yield enormous social, economic and environmental dividends,” as 75 per cent of the world’s poor live in rural areas, with many working as subsistence farmers. The panel recommended agricultural aspects of its recommendations should be co-ordinated by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The panel subscribed to the idea of ‘sustainable intensification’, which, whilst it initially signified finding ways increase production “while drastically reducing resource use and avoiding further loss of biodiversity, topsoil loss and water depletion and contamination,” using scientific methods such as agroecology to achieve this, has been co-opted to an extent by industry to mean ‘scaling up with the addition of an anaerobic digester’.

Although voices from all quarters appear to call for a paradigm shift, with statements declaring the end of “business as usual” fast becoming clichéd, having been adopted by Defra chief scientists Bob Watson and European Union Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard in the last week alone, on the ground, little appears to be changing; around the world, government support for the fossil fuel industry remains around seven times higher than for renewable energy.

Writing in the Huffington Post, Kelly Rigg, director of the Global Campaign for Climate Action, said of the report, “Like any such document negotiated by representatives from diverse and competing national interests (a microcosm of the UN itself) it reflects the art of compromise and nuanced language.”

However, the need for meaningful change is undeniably more pressing than ever and the report does acknowledge that, until now, political will for change has not been present; looking forward to June’s summit in Brazil, Brazilian Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said, "Twenty years ago, the focus was on the future. Now we have the urgency of the present."

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