‘Behind these professional, well organized UN charts are stories of humanity.’

     Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight international development goals that all United Nations member states and some international organizations have agreed to achieve by 2015. The goals encompass from eradicating poverty to forming global partnership for development. Promised due date is only four years away. 
On July 31st 2011, Ju Hun Kim (김주헌) former UNEP consultant and an author of 'Cross the World'(하루에 국경을 두번 넘는 사람들) reminded us the importance of MDGs. He lectured on “MDG Goal 7 and TEEB” at MIZY Center. He divided his lecture into two and emphasized the importance of ecosystem, MDGs, and TEEB. Overall, he tried to encourage our participation by keep asking questions. It was easy to understand, even though the content was quite challenging.

Part 1. MDGs and Environment
     

                             
      Ju Hun Kim especially discussed the 7th goal of MDGs. The 7th one is on environment. He began the lecture with his worries on the earth – despite people’s increasing interest on environment, people still lack understanding on global environmental issues. He stressed environmental issues are essential; they affect people, countries, and the earth.
      He explained different sectors of environment – forests, ozone layer, natural resources, and water – with statistics. The statistics revealed “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” reality.
      “2011 is International Year of Forests …” Forests alone absorb one sixth of world’s CO2 emission. In other words one sixth of CO2 emission is lingering in the atmosphere, left unabsorbed by no longer existing forest. Developed countries in Europe and Asia know this and try to form forests in their nations. And Asia and Europe are getting greener. However countries in Latin America and Africa which used to have rich forests are losing trees. It is because they need to export natural resources to sustain their lives. In short developing countries are more suffering from decreasing and lack of forests.
      Similar situation occurs with water. “The UN proposed that world is likely to surpass drinking water target by 2015 though more than one tenth of people would still be without access to clean water,” said Ju Hun Kim. Ironically the poor need to pay more to get drinkable water since clean water is rare. It is shown in statistics that poorer people are less opportunity there is to be accessible to clean, sanitized water: people in the city had more access to clean water while 32% of people in rural areas still used contaminated water.
      But there is also success story; it is about ozone layer. Montreal Protocol helped restore the ozone layer. It legally prohibited consumption of ozone depleting substances (ODSs) to 2%. This was possible because the protocol was legally binding.

Part 2. Ecology and Biodiversity
     

                             After a short break, the resumed lecture began with the introduction of the second phase: Ecology and Biodiversity. Two ecological terms were introduced: “ecological footprint” and “ecological capacity.” Ecological footprint shows how much environment is destroyed due to economic development. Ecological capacity is self explanatory – how big an ecosystem can stay balanced in a nation. When the footprint overwhelms the capacity, the nation is in a seriously environment deprived situation.
      Governments are used to abusing the environment for their convenience. Why are they not so hesitant to do so? Is it because environment is just everywhere and does not requires monetary exchanges. “Just because it is economically invisible, it does not mean that it is not economically valuable.” He suggested that environment must be valued to our currency. It should be visibly monetarily numerable so that they will be cautious of letting their money spill out.
      Nation’s economic strength has been measured by simple economic compass like GDP. However, for ‘sustainable’ development, natural capital must be taken into account when deciding national competence.
 “We may dismiss ecosystem service as only 10-20% of GDP, but they are actually 50-90% of the GDP of the POOR.” – Pavan Sukhdev, Head of the UNEP Green Economy Initiative TEEB.
      Poor class of the society is more dependent on environment for their economic activity since many work in primary industry. When climate change gets out of our hands, the first ones to be affected will be nations in archipelagos and poor, rural class. I was moved by this explanation. People seeing gray skies everyday in enormous headquarters will never learn the reality by heart, even though they may know all the statistics. Statistics may even be foamy and the reality could be quite different from the graph.
      RIO+20 2012 is coming up. There should be a 3 month experience of Maldives for high governmental executives and law makers without any help of the civil culture. Then, the world should be in much better shape.

                          

/ MIZY Youth Reporters Yeong-ran Ahn & Chorok Lee



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