“We must rise above our short-term short-sightedness”

by Loretta Tóth

AS LONG AS WE TREAT CARBON AS FREE GOODS, WE WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO ACHIEVE NET ZERO EMISSIONS BY 2050, RAEKWON CHUNG, BOARD DIRECTOR OF BAN KI-MOON FOUNDATION FOR A BETTER FUTURE, FOUNDING DIRECTOR OF THE NEW CLIMATE INNOVATION CENTRE AT TASHKENT STATE UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS IN UZBEKISTAN, TOLD EURASIA MAGAZINE.

– You have been dealing with climate change for more than three decades: as South Korea’s first ambassador responsible for climate change and principal advisor to former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, you have been participating in international negotiations on climate change since 1991. Additionally, you contributed to the IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) special report on technology transfer and received a personal copy of the Nobel Peace Prize 2007 awarded to the IPCC. How did it feel to receive this recognition for your persistent and effective work?

– I was one of the lead authors of the report for which the IPCC won the Nobel Peace Prize; the majority of the leading authors were researchers, professors or scientists, while I was a diplomat, so contributing to this kind of report was not part of my routine work at all. I was invited, not because I was a diplomat, but because I came up with a new idea that would significantly facilitate technology transfer between developed and developing countries.

– Today you are known to be one of the most prominent thinkers on climate change, having pioneered the concept of green growth. You argue that the green economy is not just about fighting for the climate and the planet, but also about economic growth, profitable exports, and new jobs at the same time. If it has so many advantages, why isn’t the concept more widely supported?

– A very good question. I pioneered the idea of Green Growth as a new paradigm in 2005 to present the mitigation of CO₂ as an opportunity for economic growth and job creation. Since then Green Growth has been gradually accepted by many countries and institutions around the world.

Unfortunately, however, the concept of green growth remained largely on the planning table. The reason for this is that, although the results of measures supporting green growth become tangible in the long term, the investments and measures that serve this need have to be made in the short term.

– Why are policy innovations such as green growth and new climate economy becoming important components of your strategic thinking?

– The global debate on climate change action is mainly focused on the energy transition and technological innovations. We therefore leave the root cause of climate change untouched. The root of the climate crisis lies in the free market system, which treats carbon as a free good. Therefore, internalising the carbon price into the market price has to be the core of our climate action. Over the past three decades, we have focused on promoting green energy transition and technological innovations, but no tangible results have been achieved in internalising the carbon price into our market price. This is because there is a fear that pricing carbon will cause huge damages to economic growth, and this fear has prevented us from seriously tackling the problem. This is why I have focused on promoting green growth and the new climate economy: to diffuse the fear and spread the positive, encouraging message that carbon pricing can open up new opportunities for economic growth and job creation.

The author is an editor of Eurasia Magazine