G20 - are they new fat skis?

“Historic”; “a coming together of the world”; “a victory for global cooperation” and “a global plan for recovery on an unprecedented scale” just some of the quotes from London’s G20 agreement.
It is impossible to deny that reaching a comprehensive and viable global deal is essential for the world economy, and by association, our natural world and mountain regions. But has the deal agreed by our world’s most powerful countries put our economies on a sustainable path, where we start paying the true costs of using our worlds natural resources?
Put simply, our economic activity and the state of the environment are inherently linked. Although our natural world would survive perfectly well without economic activity and it associated pressures that is not the world we live.
For all of us our ultimate goal has to be to stop negative impacts, then restore and enhance the natural environment in conjunction with the human management activities and businesses that may currently threaten them.
Whether it’s right or wrong we can’t forget that many of the activities that keep our mountain regions viable depend almost on economic activity.
In today's setting, where consumption and production patterns rely on exploiting ecosystems around the world, citizens, businesses and governments can exert significant pressure – the Mont Blanc tunnel is one local example but what about all the ski or climbing equipment we buy, mostly made in far flung places with natural resources out of sight and mind. Changing our economic model to take better account of our natural world is therefore clearly a global task.
The G20, and the huge sums involved to stimulate the world economy, is the right place to consider these issues and must take into account the environment and the impact our consumption oriented lifestyles.
Through the final G20 communiqué world leaders pledged to ‘build an inclusive, green, and sustainable recovery’ with ‘a fair and sustainable recovery for all’ and reaffirmed their ‘commitment to address the threat of irreversible climate change…and to reach agreement at the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.’
Although we must welcome any G20 agreement that pays head to some of the pressures facing the natural world and in particular restores some of the essential elements of the Millennium Development Goals, most of the conclusions speak or more and more ‘growth’.
In reality most of the conclusions are still driven by the needs of today’s economy rather than the environment. Even though there is a clear mandate to reach an agreement on climate change in Copenhagen in 2009 - we cannot fail to notice that our natural resources; water, biodiversity, air, soil - all essential elements in a healthy mountain environment - are missing.
We cannot forget that the natural resources provided by the planet underpin local to global economic activity, and in many cases the very cohesion of our societies. When we consider the strategic challenges - and not just the current financial crisis - it becomes clear that fundamental changes are needed to the way we all live and to take into account the true cost of human activity on the environment, in that sense the G20 missed a golden opportunity.