Vital to sustainable development is sustainable energy. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is leading a push for universal access to electricity and clean cooking fuels, doubling the share of the world’s energy supplied by renewable sources from 15% to 30%, and doubling the rate of improvement in energy efficiency—all by 2030.
The World Bank Group is mobilizing its knowledge, financing, and innovative market-based solutions to help achieve these goals in an effort that would complement the emerging road map for Sustainable Development Goals. It also is actively engaged in the search for innovative public and private sector solutions that will advance the new global agenda and make all of us winners of tomorrow’s green industrial revolution.
At Rio +20, we would like to see serious commitments to an inclusive, green growth path to sustainable development. That includes:
- Incorporating natural capital accounting into national measures of wealth to ensure that all decisions made are properly valuing the tradeoffs in resources uses or destroyed.
- Embracing a holistic view that recognizes how urban development, agriculture, private sector development, ecosystems, natural resources, job creation, and social development are intertwined.
- Making a balanced management of ocean and forest environments and thinking carefully in how we will provide water and energy for all in sustainable ways that reduce poverty and improve lives.
