U.N. Climate Chief: We're 'Intentionally' Transforming The World Economy

Bradford Thomas

The United Nation’s top climate change official Christiana Figueres announced this week that the group is actively working to "intentionally transform" the world's economic development model, a task she called the "most difficult" one the group has ever undertaken.

"This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history," UNFCCC Executive Secretary Figueres stated at a press conference in Brussels Tuesday."

The "intentional" reordering of the global economy, she told reporters, "will not happen overnight" due to the "depth of the transformation":

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution. That will not happen overnight and it will not happen at a single conference on climate change, be it COP15, 21, 41 – you choose the number. It just doesn’t not occur like that. It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation."

Figueres is optimistic that a new international treaty, the so-called "Lima draft"—which she hopes will be adopted at climate change conference in Paris at the end of the year—will be yet another step to the "transformation" of the world's economic model. The new treaty, she pointed out, was one of four parts of the process of economic reordering. UNRIC reports:

In addition to the treaty, there are the current climate change actions from now and until 21020, the financing packages and the so-called intended national determined contributions (INDCS) these are the actions that countries intend to take under a global agreement from 2020 and have to be publically outlined before the start of the conference. It is expected that all major economies will deliver their plans in time: The U.S, China, and the European Union have already shown their cards. "We need to get to the maximum level of ambition of collective INDCs because what we are going to have to do all of the time is to close the gap between what science tells us where we have to be and where we actually are…." said Figueres. "But the point is will we be at the end destination? I would argue, yes." .....This appeared here.......