Kumi Naidoo was appointed executive director of the environmental campaign group Greenpeace International this month after two decades leading civil society groups in Africa and internationally. Mr. Naidoo, 44, who is from South Africa, takes over the role at a time when environmentalism increasingly enjoys mainstream status, although the agenda of groups like Greenpeace remains at odds with those of many governments in critical areas like nuclear power and biotechnology. Mr. Naidoo, who is based in Amsterdam, answered questions on energy and climate policy in an e-mail exchange with Green Inc.
Q.
What are your top priorities as the new executive director of Greenpeace International when it comes to climate and energy issues?
A.
The first priority is securing a fair, ambitious and binding deal in Copenhagen. From there we have to move to implementation. On the energy side, that means winning the argument that we can have a clean, sustainable power supply if we embrace existing technologies like wind and solar power. It is a priority to engage more people in this debate. Change on the scale needed will require popular support. People understand that coal and oil are dirty and nuclear power is dangerous. However the coal, oil and nuclear industries have spent years building their political connections. It will take sustained public pressure to cut through that and get real change.
Q.
Greenpeace has staunchly opposed nuclear power on a variety of grounds. But a number of former opponents of nuclear have come around to accepting this form of energy and now say that it may have a role to play in the future low-carbon power mix. Do you see any room for nuclear power — including the extension of licenses on existing nuclear power plants — in an era when governments and citizens are searching for low-carbon energy sources?
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No. Nuclear power is a dangerous distraction to real solutions. When you extend a nuclear plant’s life beyond what it was designed for, you make an unsafe technology even more dangerous, create even more waste, and put off decisions on adopting real solutions.
Q.
Greenpeace has long favored decentralizing our energy systems in the industrialized world to make room for renewable sources of power like geothermal, solar and wind. There now is much talk of smart grids that could manage these various technologies. What, or who, are the main obstacles to this transition in your view? Is this campaign a winnable one?
A.
The shift to a more intelligent grid is coming, consumers will benefit, industry will benefit and the planet will benefit. The obstacles are the fossil fuel lobby and the nuclear industry who would face increased competition. In the U.K. we’ve seen coal and nuclear companies — E.ON and EDF — asking the government to protect them from the growth of renewable energy. That tells us all we need to know about how winnable the campaign is, and who the obstacles are.
Q.
Fast-emerging economies like China, India and Brazil are seeking to lift their citizens out of poverty. At the same time they are under pressure from the international community to reduce the emissions associated with industrialization. What energy technologies do you think these countries should adopt? How should they be paid for?
A.
The fastest way to take a community out of energy poverty is to give it community-scale power. In Bangladesh, the Grameen Bank has financed hundreds of thousands of solar installations using micro-credit. Farmers in China are turning agricultural waste product into biogas. These kinds of initiatives can be rolled out right across the developing world. Greenpeace has been working with a community foundation in Kenya that does just this. With community power, communities don’t have to wait years for a grid connection, and you don’t get a coal plant that pollutes the atmosphere and ends up sending all its power to industrial customers. At the macro scale, developing economies should move to bring in the cleanest, most efficient technology they can. That’s why it’s so good to see India announcing the world’s biggest solar project, or to see that this year China is on track to build a new wind turbine every hour.
Q.
Are all renewable forms of energy positive? What is Greenpeace’s view of hydropower, concentrating solar power and tidal barrages?
A.
We support any clean technology that can be implemented sustainably. If the correct measures are followed, this can include tidal and ocean power. It doesn’t include large-scale hydro, where we follow the recommendations of the world commission on dams. C.S.P. is a technology we expect to take off in the coming years, and we welcome that.
Q.
The arguments against the first generation biofuels included the need for large amounts of energy to turn them into vehicle fuel and their role in raising the price of food. To what degree have these problems and others been solved in the second generation of biofuels?
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Second generation biofuels face similar problems. The impact of their production on greenhouse gas emissions is unclear and can vary a great deal. Biofuels should be used only when their production does not have negative social and ecological impacts and where there is a clear and substantial benefit for the climate.
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Many researchers say that greater use of genetically modified crops could help fight poverty and bolster food security in coming years, particularly in countries suffering from grinding poverty that face reduced levels of rainfall and even desertification. Do you see any scope for G.M.O.s to play a helpful role?
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Most starving people live in countries with food surpluses, and worldwide we have more than enough food to go round. The solution to hunger does not lie in genetic manipulation. It lies in resolving the social, political and economic issues that prevent food from reaching hungry people. As the U.N. said in their agriculture assessment, sustainable, ecological farming techniques can do far more to address poverty and food security than G.M.O.s.
Q.
Many political leaders and financiers want to create incentives to preserve carbon sinks by rewarding heavily forested countries and communities with internationally exchangeable carbon credits under a deal agreed at the U.N. conference in Copenhagen. How does Greenpeace view this model?
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There are three key conditions that have to be met here. The first is that we have to do this in a way that doesn’t just shift the logging elsewhere. So, while you need a global initiative, it needs to operate at a national level. Otherwise
you’re not addressing the issue. Secondly, you need to protect the rights of the people whose lives and livelihoods depend on the forest, and the biodiversity that’s there. You can’t have people driving out the residents, clear-cutting a rainforest, starting a plantation and then asking for a payout. Finally, you have to keep the market for forest protection separate from the market for carbon credits. The cuts we need are so big that we have to clean up industrial pollution and save the forests – not use forest protection as an excuse to keep polluting at home. It’s just an accounting trick – but you can’t cheat the atmosphere.
Q.
What are the easiest ways consumers in the developed West play in helping preserve forests and encourage a greener, cleaner planet? Are we shopping smart yet when it comes to our furniture, our food and our electronics goods?
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I think it is safe to say that some people are shopping smart and many people are shopping a bit smarter. Those doing best think hard about whether they need to consume a particular good at all, take the train instead of the plane – really questioning whether they need a car. Eating less meat is good for the climate because vegetables cost less energy per calorie to produce. Choosing products that last a long time avoids production of replacements down the line. Looking for sustainability marks like the F.S.C logo for timber allows you to do the right thing, and send a message to the market about what you want. And when people do this, it gets results. We’ve seen the I.T. industry clean up its act when customers told it they didn’t want toxic chemicals in their computers. We’ve seen consumer action bring real results in the Amazon, where leather, beef and soy companies have changed their behavior. That’s important because it’s time to have a fundamental rethink about the western lifestyle. We know that if everyone consumed at the same rate as an American we’d need eight planets just to support ourselves. But this isn’t just an issue about rich countries — the middle classes in China and India can make the same choices as their Western counterparts. So we need to make sure they get smart as well.
Source: The New York TImes
The liveeco team
