FX.co ★ Economic crisis gives way to eco-crisis

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, the alliance including the World Bank, Deutsche Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development that was led by the former Mexican President, Felipe Calderon, presented the Green Investment Report. The report is focused on the ways and means for unlocking private finance for green growth; its message is the need for additional $14 trillion to develop green technologies.
The alliance called for fostering sustainable growth and welfare and drew attention to the issue of satisfying the needs of increasing world population which is seen to amount to 9 billion in 2050. Another point to work upon is reducing greenhouse gas emissions and making use of the Earth's natural resources more efficient. Unless the world upgrades its system of natural resource management, environmental disasters will become increasingly costly to deal with. For example, economic costs inflicted by Hurricane Sandy were estimated at $50 billion.
According to experts, we now are facing fast-unfolding environmental crisis which is potentially detrimental to the global economy. They also stressed that economic growth is inseparable from environmental sustainability, so investment-grade green infrastructure is “a precondition for sustainable growth”.
However, most forecasts of the World Economic Forum do not come true. In 2011, France’s former finance minister said the Eurozone economy was recovering, whereas in 2008, eight months before Lehman Brothers bankrupted and the global economic crisis broke out, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics Fred Bergsten insisted that “a global recession is inconceivable”.