Living Planet: Environment Matters Around the Globe

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DATE : Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:30:00 GMT
Entered in Database : 2009-11-19 16:30:00
length : 14573898
Link to the Show / Show Notes

This week on Living Planet: the German chancellor announces plans to attend the climate conference in Copenhagen, Ecuador calls on the international community to pay it not to drill for oil, and bridging the social and ecological divide between the German majority and Turkish minority.
Merkel announces plans to attend Copenhagen

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be joining her French and British counterparts at the global climate summit in Copenhagen. Many have applauded the move, but some environmentalists are skeptical.

The announcement comes only days after leaders at the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Singapore said they did not expect a major breakthrough at the talks. According to Merkel’s spokesman, these low expectations are partly why the chancellor has decided to attend.

A former environment minister, she wants to play an active role in ensuring that the participating countries reach more ambitious agreements. Merkel isn't the first European leader to announce plans to personally travel to the Danish capital.

But as Europe's largest economy and one of the greenest countries on the planet, Germany is certain to play a major role in the negotiations. However, some politicians and experts are skeptical about the chancellor's plans.

Industrialized nations are expected to pay out hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 40 years to help their developing counterparts combat the effects of climate change. Ecuador has proposed one way that money could be put to use.

The small South American nation of Ecuador is one of the planet's 17 megadiverse countries, a group of nations that harbor the majority of the Earth's species. It's also one of world's poorest nations, with 40 percent of citizens living below the poverty line. All this despite the massive stores of oil tucked away beneath the ground.

Since the 1970s, the government in Quito has allowed companies to pump oil out of the country, with little thought to the effects this would have on the environment. Ecuador has profited little from its natural resources and it's now realizing the environmental mistakes that have been made.

Which is why they have come up with an offer to take with them to Copenhagen this December. They want money from the international community to invest in infrastructure and biotechnology, and in return they'll leave half of the available oil in the ground. It's one alternative, and if it works, other developing nations home to both immense biodiversity and oil – like Venezuela and Nigeria – might follow suit.

Most migrants leave there homes in search of someplace better with more resources. Their ecological knowledge is often limited and most governments have no way to address that.

In Germany, Turks make up the largest immigrant group. They were invited here following the Second World War as guest workers, and many of them never left. Many have also never fully integrated into German society, and blame for that has been passed around for decades.

Turgut Altug is trying to change that while also building up ecological knowledge among immigrants. In the Berlin neighborhood of Kreuzberg he has founded a German-Turkish environment center to help with that mission – the first of its kind in Germany.

Report: Richard Fuchs

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