subscribeUN Commission on Monetary Transformation and the Climate Crisis
Post By gaia1 in United NationsINTRODUCTION
During these carbon-constrained times scant attention is being paid to the challenges of the climate crisis in monetary conferences and in academic articles dealing with monetary and financial affairs. Each area of human endeavor seems to exist in supreme isolation. It is time that the dynamic interaction and the synergies between the international monetary system and the climate crisis social system be explored and be used to rejuvenate both systems.
To that effect I am proposing that both the climate crisis, the global economic development, the climate justice and the monetary communities begin laying the groundwork for a UN Commission on Monetary Transformation and the Climate Crisis, to be established by the Cancun COP 16 of the UNFCCC in December 2010 or at COP 17 in 2011, so that its results can become part of the political process of the Rio 2012 Earth Summit. It is further suggested that UNDESA’s World Economic and Social Survey (WESS) continues focusing into greater depth on international monetary system reform than it did in its Geneva workshop in early February in preparation of WESS 2010.
Expressed in terms of global financial imbalances—the bane of our present economic malaise—and of global ecological imbalances—the bane of poor climate negotiations—the challenge becomes to find ways to resolve those two types of global imbalances creatively.
Important for this daunting challenge is to find agreement on a value-based framework such as the Earth Charter that make all participants look into the same direction.
OJBECTIVES
· To explore how a reformed or transformed international monetary system can be used as a means to strengthen solutions to the climate crisis and to promote global economic development
· To explore how the recommendations of the June 2009 Report of the UN Commission of Monetary and Financial Experts can be integrated with reformed or transformed international monetary system
· To evaluate the various proposals made for international monetary reform, particularly in respect to global reserve system
· To evaluate various proposals that integrate the monetary system with social system dealing with the climate crisis, particularly the Tierra Fee & Dividend system which is based upon a de-carbonization monetary standard
· To explore the contents and process of climate negotiations and how they can be strengthened by a transformed international monetary system that uses present monetary reforms as basis for its transformation
· Develop a Plan of Action
PROGRAM OF WORK
· Determine the value-based framework that will guide the Commission
· Review the fact of ecological indebtedness and its future role in climate change negotiations, using, among others, findings of the Cochabamba Conference of April 2010
· Review the contents and process of the climate crisis negotiations and explore ways how they can be strengthened by their dynamic interaction with the international monetary system; Review the 2009 Commission recommendations in light of its potential for reducing the climate crisis
· Review the present proposals for the reform of global reserve system as discussed in the WESS work shop’s background paper by professors D’Arista and Erturk and the UN-DESA Policy Brief #27 of January 2010 in light of reducing the climate crisis
· Survey the present climate funding facilities, including the recent High Level Advisory Group, and the efficacy of pledging conferences and compare them with the needed budgetary transfers to fund climate mitigation and adaptation measures and development.
MEMBERSHIP OF THE COMMISSION
· several members of the 2009 UN Commission of Experts
· several staff members of the UNFCCC, UN/DESA, UNCTAD
· monetary economists from academe and business
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CONCLUSION
We live in a complex world where the role of governments of regulators and drivers is not to be decreased, but to be increased. This dual role cannot be accomplished without striving for policy coherence and international cooperation. A UN Commission on Monetary Transformation and the Climate Crisis has at least to explore the possibility and feasibility of having both rejuvenate one another and of bringing a coherent climate funding system into existence .
“Without vision, people perish” Proverbs 28:19
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, do it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
Johann Goethe