S2.5 It’s time to launch an Ecological Impact Fund

It’s time to launch an Ecological Impact FundBy Thomas PoggeThe virus of national selfishness is degrading international relations towards distrust, hostility and confrontation. In response, we need a highly visible multilateral initiative that clearly promotes justice and the common good of humankind rather than merely the self-interest of those who launch it.One promising area for such an initiative is the health sector. With pandemics, drug resistance, pollution and global warming all increasingly threatening human health around the globe, collaborative efforts can protect health worldwide. Suppressing disease in one country can reduce health risks in others; therapeutics and diagnostics developed for use in one country can (and should) benefit all people around the world.Another auspicious area is our shared planetary environment, which is increasingly threatened and degraded by human pollution. Here too, the potential benefits of international collaboration are exceptionally large as polluting activities – and efforts to reduce and contain pollution – affect all life on our planet, now and far into the future.Seemingly separate at first glance, these two areas actually overlap. The ecological crisis damages human health, destroys biodiversity and spoils the environment and climate for future life on our planet. That’s why an initiative placed firmly within this overlap would make a lot of sense.One such initiative is the creation of an Ecological Impact Fund (EIF), which would incentivise and reward the development of green technologies for, and their deployment in, a defined set of lower-income countries (‘the EIF-Zone’). The EIF would make preannounced annual disbursements, to be divided among registered new green technologies. This division would be based on how much pollution-based harm was averted with each of these technologies in the EIF-Zone during the preceding year — with harm assessed as a weighted sum of greenhouse gas emissions (CO2eq) and lost quality-adjusted life years (QALYs).Watch more here Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.