13 June 2006

Achim Steiner, GPPi advisory board member, comments on public-private partnerships

Achim Steiner, the new executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and a GPPi advisory board member, called for a "new era" in which environmental concerns are integrated fully into the market economy. In a June 13 Financial Times article, Steiner cites the example of public-private partnership schemes as a useful mechanism for this integration, Steiner asserts that governments, businesses, and environmental groups should recognize that the market is not incompatible with sustainable production and consumption.

 

"We must focus more on how markets can be made to work, how markets can [incorporate environmental aspects to] make informed decisions," Steiner said. "The current difficulty is that environmental issues are marginalised in economic decision-making…economic issues that touch on the environment are pushed out of environmental conventions, and environmental issues are not really allowed to make an impact on economic and trade negotiations."

 

Steiner cited Unilever’s partnership with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to create the Marine Stewardship Council for promoting sustainable fishing practices as a good example of how to address sustainability issues in the marketplace. In today’s climate of increasing energy costs and consumption, similar public-private partnerships should be developed in order to integrate environmental concerns into economic practices.

 

"Western Europe is seriously confronted with [tackling] its increasingly unsustainable energy future," Steiner said. "Yet the recent discussion [in Europe], only driven by the prospect of Russia turning the gas off, is not a healthy framework for thinking about [Europe's] long-term energy mix."

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