Paul Hohnen Sustainability Strategies

This letter was published in Financial Times on December 20, 2006.

Get it wrong now and we will suffer for centuries to come

From Mr PAUL HOHNEN

Sir, Bravo on your end-of-year editorial "Time for global action on climate change" (December 29). Might I add three other reflections about climate change that make it both imperative and desirable that urgent global action is taken?

First, there is the inter-generational nature of the risk involved. The collapses of a government, a stock exchange or company, while disruptive and painful in the short term, are things we generally bounce back from within years. Recovery from even large scale natural disasters can often be seen within decades. Climate change, however, like nuclear war or asteroid strike, is something that could fundamentally change the ground rules for all our social, economic and political institutions, and the natural systems they rest on. If we get this wrong now, we will suffer the consequences for centuries, if not millennia, to come.

Second, climate change is set to exacerbate many other global problems. In a world already struggling to meet the challenges of deforestation, access to fresh water, or development, health and poverty in Africa and elsewhere, climate change will make things harder and more expensive.

Last - and here's the potentially good news - climate change and the wider sustainable development agenda are basically self-defence issues. The era of using resources at a faster rate than they can be replaced is coming to an end, like it or not. Either we change our practices or it will be done for us. At some point, self-protection will force a collective response, where wind turbines and not Trident missiles will be the answer.

At a macro level, our task this century is to adapt to the changes we have set in motion, minimise further adverse changes and restore natural systems where we can. If this assessment is correct, climate change and sustainable development will increasingly become not only the focus of a new global security imperative but also the new global economic locomotive.

Paul Hohnen, Sustainability Strategies, Amsterdam 1017 SL, The Netherlands