No Way To Fix Climate Without Private Sector -UNDP
HELSINKI - The private sector must
be encouraged to help developing countries combat climate change now,
before it becomes too severe to handle, the head of the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) said.
Kemal Dervis said that while
public transfers in form of official development assistance should be
used to assist in "adaptation", or protection against potential
catastrophes, the private sector should help finance long-term
solutions.
"The shared mitigation costs will have to go through
market mechanisms and will have to involve very strongly the private
sector," he said on Thursday evening after giving a lecture on climate
change.
"If there is no mitigation....then the impact on
developing countries 20-30 years from now will become much more severe
and the adaptation needs, climate proofing, building dams against
floods, changing agricultural crops...will become huge and impossible
to handle."
Developing countries such as India and China are already
trying to reduce their carbon emissions, mainly to save on energy, but
have baulked at doing more without technological and financial help
from Europe, Japan and the United States.
Dervis also said that while the private sector
involvement could come from the developing countries themselves, it
should be supported by international financing mechanisms.
"We must build incentives that if you come up with a
technology that does reduce emissions, you profit from it," he said,
adding that by doing so rich countries would win as well.
"If rich country companies can get some of the emission
reductions indirectly by investing in poor countries, you have a
solution whereby they continue to produce more profitably at home, but
also lead towards cleaner energy work."
(Reporting by Agnieszka Flak; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
Story Date: 10/3/2008
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