Making progress within and beyond borders

摘要

First, there is another unfinished global policy agenda – the eradication of poverty and global inequality – whose only widely accepted solution – economic growth – conflicts directly with climate stabilization. Second, climate change has emerged as part of a complex mosaic of challenges, some of which are closely related to it. A short list of these challenges includes trans-national epidemics (such as HIV/AIDS, SARS, and Avian Flu), environmental degradation and biodiversity loss, accelerating water stress, increased frequency and/or intensity of various catastrophic events (floods, droughts, hurricanes, cyclones, tsunamis, and earthquakes), and threats to global security (especially from terrorism). Moreover, economic globalization has revived the spectre of runaway financial epidemics as manifested in the recent global financial crisis and subsequent economic recession. The current global economic crisis is not only the deepest since the 1930s, it occurs simultaneously with global climate change and ecological crises, all of which are closely interwoven; with unsustainable, excessive consumption and production patterns humanity has applied the logic of sub-prime lending not only to the housing sector but also to the global ecosystem. At the same time, economic globalization has eroded the capacity of states to cope with financial or other epidemics, or more broadly to protect social welfare and environmental resources by regulating financial and corporate capital.