WRF message to COP20: Resource policies essential for climate change

Resource policies are essential for climate change. Governments must move rapidly to combine resource and energy policies, since neither can be successfully achieve its objectives without close coordination with the other.


This message to the President of COP20, Minister of Environment of Peru, Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, was today sent by the co-chairs of the World Resources Forum 2014 conference, Vice Minister of Environment of Peru, Manuelo Castro, and Xaver Edelmann, President of the WRF. WRF 2014 was held in Arequipa, Peru, on 20-22 October 2014.

WRF 2014 chairman’s summary states that «emissions causing climate change are mostly associated with the use of fossil fuels. Yet, little attention is paid to the contribution of the use of nonenergetic resources (e.g. metals and minerals) towards climate change, although those resources are coupled to energy use throughout their life cycle.»

«Renewable energy technologies (e.g. photovoltaic, solar, electrified mobility) need to address related material resource supply risks (e.g. lithium), through resource efficiency, diversification of materials used and by improving global resource governance.» A “ping-pong” between resource productivity and resource prices, which is to be achieved through fiscal policy, is at the heart of a smart policy framework, based on systemic thinking.

The over 1,000 participants of WRF 2014 also concluded that «political and individual power need to be mobilised to push a wedge between economic growth, resource use and environmental and social impacts (decoupling).»

«Brilliant ideas originate from people who are dissatisfied, curious, hopeful and open for change», the statement says, «Connecting innovative ideas to people with power has a higher chance of success when not only rational approaches are used but also when emotions, in particular love, fun and laughter, are also taken into account.»

The full chairman’s summary can be downloaded here (PDF).

The 20th session of the Conference of the Parties and the 10th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol will be held from 1 to 12 December. COP 20/CMP 10 will be hosted by the Government of Peru, in Lima, Peru. Find more information on the website of the UNFCCC.

For more information about WRF 2014 and upcoming conferences write to: info@worldresourcesforum.org

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