David Foster, the Executive Director of the Blue Green Alliance, states in the foreward: "Two distinct crises threaten the fabric of our civilization: the economic challenges that threaten the working middle class and the changes to our climate and the impact to our environment and way of life. If we continue on this business-as-usual path, climate change will wreak havoc on our global ecosystem.
The predictions for 3 or 4 degree Celsius increase in global temperature are staggering enough, but 6 or 7 degrees — where we will arrive before the next century should we choose to ignore this historical crisis — poses disastrous threats to society. Floods, famine, disease. Beyond simple changes in our way of life, we will be faced with loss of species and whole ecosystems".
In this study, Jϋrgen Blazejczak and Dietmar Edler both from the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) document the state of research on the economic consequences of a stringent climate protection policy. Here, the main emphasis is placed on the transformation of the working world in light of the intensified and accelerated structural change expected as a result from rigorous decarbonisation measures. The authors draw a differentiated portrait of the costs, opportunities and uncertainties engendered by the ecological restructuring of modern industrialized societies. Their main finding is that a stringent climate policy will in fact have positive effects on employment rates. In the long run, the ecological transition will not cost jobs - on the contrary , it will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. This is good news. Click here to download the paper.
The Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food called for the post-2015 development agenda to be urgently refocused on equality, social protection and accountability, as the efforts of the UN Open Working Group on the Sustainable Development Goals to draft post-2015 targets to succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) entered a crucial phase.
The world’s leading retail labels commit to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh before the midnight deadline. The Accord now covers more than 1000 Bangladeshi garment factories. Implementation starts now!
Civil society groups attending the Rotterdam Convention conference in Geneva are expressing grave alarm that the Convention has been hijacked by the asbestos industry, which is determined to prevent the environmental and health protections of the Convention from being implemented.
Europe’s crisis is manifold: while newspapers focus on public deficits and debt, Austerity policies and wage cuts are boosting poverty and inequality in many parts of Europe
The decision was adopted in response to EU Commission consultation on unconventional fossil fuels in Europe
