Citola Blog
Emerging Environmental Markets
The global economy is transitioning towards renewable energy, sustainable development and ‘putting a price’ on pollution from the realisation that the ‘services’ provided by the environment are crucial to our way of life and that natural resources are finite. Furthermore, the overwhelming consensus amongst world leaders and the global scientific community is that the rate of climate change is accelerating as a direct result of increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This realisation is creating new environmental, carbon and renewable energy markets where Citola operates.
See Environmental Markets for more information.
Why Now?
- Large & Growing Commodity Markets: Carbon, Timber, Renewable Energy, Ecosystem Services
- A Fundamental Imbalance in the Timber market: The increasing demand for timber and forestry-related products and the decreasing sustainable supply from existing natural resources
- A Rapidly Growing Global Population: The United Nations estimates that by 2030 the global population will increase by 1.4 billion people which will increase demand on finite resources
- A Global Consensus about the importance of regulating the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere
- Action on climate change is a wise exercise in risk management and the earlier we act, the cheaper the cost of action will be
As Sir Nicholas Stern, Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics has said:
“Investment now will pay us back many times in the future, not just environmentally but economically as well... For every £1 invested now we can save £5, or possibly more, by acting now.”
However, one of the more interesting (if not politically correct) quotes can be attributed to Tom Friedman, American journalist, columnist and author (New York Times, The World is Flat. Hot, Flat and Crowded):
“[Green’s] opponents... named it liberal, tree-hugging, girly-man, sissy, unpatriotic, vaguely French… I’ve been trying to redefine green as the most capitalistic, patriotic, geostrategic, pro- American... green IS the new red, white and blue.”
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