An increasing number of people have been taking on green initiatives, including companies.
But what about cities?
The World Bank has just launched its Eco2 Cities programme which proposes a set of guidelines that will help cities and governments move in the right direction. The programme is aimed at encouraging cities to think of longer term, sustainable options.
The World Bank said if developing economies continue to expand at the pace of developed cities, it will take the equivalent of four planet earths to sustain the growth.
But if every city adopt sustainable practices such as economical travel options, water resource management and quality public housing, they can potentially save billions of dollars each.
Arish Dastur, co-team leader, Eco2 Cities, The World Bank, said: “What we hope to achieve, I guess, is that 30 or 40 years down the line, when we look back at the urbanisation that’s happening in the cities of developing countries, we would see that these followed models and followed examples, are more sustainable and that these cities are now benefiting because they took this action. In a nutshell, we would really like cities to be ecologically and economically sustainable.
Over in China, experts said now is an opportune time to invest in sustainable development.
A number of Singapore consortiums have come together to develop more sustainable cities in one of the world’s most rapidly developing countries. Among them are the Tianjin Eco city, and the US$50.5 billion Singapore-Nanjing Eco High-Tech Island project.
Globally, countries are continuing to push for more sustainable options. The US has just approved a legislation to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 17 per cent by 2020.
This is slightly higher than the 15 per cent proposed by President Obama, but lower than the initial target of 20 per cent.
The legislation has also set longer term target of pollution reduction goals of 42 per cent by 2030 and 83 per cent by 2050.
Source : Channel NewsAsia – 2 Jul 2009