Addressing the Sustainable Development and Climate Change Challenges Together: Applying the Sustainomics Framework

Abstract

Excellencies, Eminent Colleagues, Honored Guests and Friends, I thank the Beijing Forum for inviting me to address this distinguished audience, representing the cream of the intellectual community and their special guests. I am indeed very privileged and pleased to be here today. Both the topic and timing are most appropriate. The intellectual community has a key role to play in effectively addressing the two major challenges of the 21 century-sustainable development and climate change. Climate change is an emerging issue of major worldwide concern to everyone on the planet. It threatens to exacerbate the formidable problems of development we already face-like poverty, food security, sickness, and water and energy scarcities. How can we re-energize and re-organize ourselves to plan, coordinate and implement the necessary responses on a global scale? Global warming is a reality. In Darfur, where several hundred thousand people have died in recent years, climate change has already exacerbated water and land shortages (due to growing desertification), undermined agriculture, and fueled conflict for these scarce resources among the poor. On the opposite side of the globe, many Pacific islands (and the Maldives)—often only centimeters above sea level—are threatened with inundation by rising seas. In the distant north, melting of the sea ice is affecting polar wildlife, and undermining the already precarious livelihoods of native peoples. These grim warnings of climate change underline the need to better understand the phenomenon and address the consequences. The latest Fourth Assessment Report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that global warming is unequivocal and almost certainly caused by recent human activities that have increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It also indicates that climate change will continue into the foreseeable future and likely intensify, with potentially disastrous consequences for the planet earth and its inhabitants.