Cities seen as key to curbing climate change

With urban areas using a large share of the world's energy, urban policy makers need to concentrate on saving energy and cutting carbon emissions, according to Dr Shobhakar Dhakal of the Global Carbon Project, an initiative to grow and share research in the field of urban energy and carbon management.

"We estimate that urban areas contribute between 70 to 80 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions, and yet they are not the focus of the climate debate," Dr Dhakal said.

"By 2030, 1.8 billion people will move to cities and 1.1 billion of those will be in Asia alone," said Dr Dhakal. "The scale of population is so huge that efficiency alone is not going to solve our problem.

"There needs to be better understanding and coordination from science and policy to re-orient cities towards low carbon pathways."

Dr Dhakal was speaking at the recent International Symposium on Urban Energy and Carbon Management, a meeting of global researchers of urban energy and carbon modelling to discuss findings and share policy development trends.

Balancing environmental care with economic growth was particularly complicated in Asia, according to the director of the United Nations' Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), Rae Kwon-Chung.

"The Asia Pacific has the most limited ecological carrying capacity, but we have to grow larger because we have a large population," Kwon-Chung said.

"We can't repeat the old paradigms - grow first, clean up later," he said. "We have to change to quality of growth based on ecological efficiency."

Ecological efficiency, he said, meant internalising ecological costs (for example through environmental taxation), maximising efficient resource use and minimising pollution.

Kwon-Chung said to make Asian cities more efficient, governments had to focus on controlling consumer demands, which could be done through ecological tax reforms.

Under this policy, which has been implemented in countries like Sweden and the United Kingdom, the amount of tax burden and revenue remains the same but consumers pay less income tax and more pollution tax.

"This tax model has a double dividend - economic growth and environmental care," he said.

"Many people think if we have enough money, we can solve the problem. I disagree. It's not a matter of money - it's a matter of concept, of paradigm."

AIT Professor Ram M Shrestha highlighted concrete options for optimising urban carbon use through using emerging transport technology and managing transport demand.

"Tax incentives need to be given to people for buying environmentally-friendly vehicles, like hybrid cars, and for moving from private to public transport," said Prof Shrestha, an expert in the fields of energy and climate change.

He said while Thailand's public transport system was a good start, it needed to be expanded.

"In Bangkok we need to encourage people to use public transport, because now they can only take public transport part of the way and have to switch to taxis," he said.

"It took so long to construct the MRT. I'm glad we have it, but commuters need to be able to use it."

Prof Shrestha said while reducing carbon was an important goal, other environmental impacts of cars powered by alternative fuels, such as sulphur emissions, needed to be considered.

Other areas discussed included the need to shift responsibility for carbon management to multi-level rather than municipal governments, and ways to optimise city design.

Danielle Kirk

The Nation