Centre ED Johan Rockström together with the other panel participants during the visions meeting. Moderator was Margot Wallström, Vice President of the European Commission.
- Current crisis can create new opportunities
- But time is short, says Rockström, Clinton, Blair and Maathai during visions meeting.
Centre Executive Director Johan Rockström joined Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Wangari Maathai on the panel discussion Visions of a Low-Carbon World - Moving Forward in the Face of Financial Crisis, organised by the Swedish lottery company Postkodlotteriet. The meeting, which was held in Stockholm on 1 April 2009, discussed the challenges of getting out of the global financial crisis without compromising the need to curb increasingly imminent climate threats. Confronting financial crisis and climate change together, not apart Both former President Bill Clinton and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair urged world leaders and opinion makers to see the two challenges as coupled rather than as two separate issues. - There are huge economic as well as environmental opportunities in taking action, Blair said. Through various initiatives, the former statesmen have dedicated time to focus on issues related to climate change. President Clinton is the founder of Clinton Climate Initiative while Prime Minister Tony Blair runs the project Breaking the Climate Deadlock.
- Our opportunity is now Johan Rockström, who joined Clinton, Blair and Maathai for a concluding panel discussion, stressed the importance of building resilience in a time of substantial financial and environmental changes. - We seem to have underestimated the pace of climate change, which requires us to consider deep-rooted social, economic and ecological changes. This is compounded by the growing risk of critical threshold effects in the world´s ecosystems such as glaciers, forests, soils and seas, which can exacerbate the climate effect. We really need to strengthen the resilience of the world´s societies and ecosystems. Our opportunity is now, he said.
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2009-04-21 | Sturle Hauge Simonsen |
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