Can Rudd Do For The World What He Failed To Do At Home?

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has this week appointed former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to the “mother of all panels” on Global Sustainability, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres told the Climate Change & Business conference on Tuesday night. She expects December’s UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico would take the world “one more firm step along the road toward climate control”.

CE Daily (11 August 2010):

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has this week appointed ousted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to the “mother of all panels”, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres told a Sydney conference on Tuesday night. 

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday launched the high-level panel on global sustainability, with members including Rudd, EU Commissioner for Climate Action, Connie Hedegaard, and former South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-soo, now director of the Global Green Growth Institute. 

“It is a very broad-looking panel that looks at the relationship between climate, health, development, poverty, energy security … you name it,” Figueres said in a live videolink address to the climate and business conference in Sydney. 

“It is the – if you will – the ‘mother’ of all panels,” she said. 

“Because what the Secretary-General is trying to do with this panel is to – in his words – ‘connect the dots’. 

“So he is encouraging members of this panel to take a look at all the different aspects of sustainable growth which are currently being dealt with in an isolated fashion by different venues and different entities and begin to put forward a more integrative view,” she said. 

The panel will look at “how all of these aspects connect to each other, how there may be synergies among them and how the UN might take them forward in an integrative manner,” she said. 

‘Forget the ‘big bang’ theory of climate action’

Figueres told the Climate Change and Business conference that a successful outcome from this December’s UN climate talks in Cancun would comprise a series of decisions that would take the world “one more firm step along the road toward climate control”. 

“I think we all made a mistake by expecting last year at Copenhagen that there would be one magic bullet that would solve the climate crisis. 

“This does not exist,” she said. 

“This is what I call the ‘big bang theory’ of climate. That there would be last year, this year, next year – whatever – one big agreement that would solve both adaptation and mitigation issues of climate in a definitive way,” she said. 

Figueres said the problem had arisen over time and it would take time to deal with it. 
“The only way we can address it is in an incremental gradual manner.”

Source: www.cedaily.com.au