World must learn to ‘manage the planet’: UNEP chief

DURBAN, South Africa — The Rio+20 summit next year should focus on reshaping the world economy to better “manage the planet,” the UN’s top environment official told AFP at climate talks in Durban.

“Rio will help the world look at climate change in the broader context of the changes we need to bring about in our global economy,” United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner told AFP on the sidelines of the 12-day negotiations, which end Friday.

“We are moving toward a world of nine billion people that will face food and climate insecurity, economic shock, unemployment.”

The June 20-22 event in Rio de Janeiro is taking place 20 years after the landmark 1992 Earth Summit that set down UN conventions for protecting biodiversity and tackling global warming.

Steiner called on leaders to rethink the way they define economic growth because, he said, the current approach is straining the planet’s coping capacity to the breaking point.

“We need a new indicator of wealth. GDP growth is too crude, even misleading,” Steiner said in an interview.

“It served us well as long as the world was full of resources. But the world has reached the point where it has to optimise the way it manages the planet.”

One way to visualise the problem is this: beginning in the 1970s, humankind demanded more than the planet could provide.

“Rio will help the world look at climate change in the broader context of the changes we need to bring about in our global economy,” United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner told AFP on the sidelines of the 12-day negotiations, which end Friday.

“We are moving toward a world of nine billion people that will face food and climate insecurity, economic shock, unemployment.”

Original article published at www.ucsd2012.org

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