The Rothschild banking dynasty in Europe has agreed to help the Maldives towards its goal of carbon neutrality, following a meeting between President Mohamed Nasheed and Baron Benjamin and Baroness Ariane de Rothschild in their Genevan chateau.
In the first phase of the agreement signed on Monday, the family’s financial services arm La Compagnie Benjamin de Rothschild (CTBR) will secure international financing to fund a carbon audit of the Maldives.
CTBR is one of the arms of the US$137 billion Edmond de Rothschild Group, one of the world’s oldest banking dynasties and an early investor in the Shell Oil Company and the De Beers diamond firm.
The Rothschild’s website describes the banking family as “brokers and financers, as bankers to royal houses and governments, as railway magnates, personalities, patrons and philantopists, the Rothschilds have never forgotten how to walk with Kings – nor lost the common touch.”
In the second phase of the agreement, the company’s environmental and sustainability wing, BeCitizen, will spend two months assessing the report and analysing emissions from all sectors of the country’s economy, including transport, housing ,tourism, energy and waste management.
The final report, expected at the end of 2010, will contain a detailed plan of how the Maldives can reach carbon neutrality by 2020. In the third phase, CTBR will then help the government secure international financing to build the wind farms, waste recycling plants and sustainable transport solutions suggested in the report.
Benjamin and Ariane de Rothschild said in a statement that the agreement between the family and the Maldivies “is not only important for reasons of moral leadership in tackling climate change – the greatest challenge facing the world today – but also because it places the Maldives at the head of the pack in the transition to a low-carbon world.
“The Edmond de Rothschild Group is convinced that, as well as helping Maldives becoming carbon neutral, the partnership will spur domestic economic growth and new revenue-generating business opportunities for the country,” the family said.
Presdient Mohamed Nasheed said the partnership would allow the Maldives to “make rapid inroads into our national carbon footprint”, and set an example for other developing countries.
“The Maldives wants to set an example, by demonstrating that a country can develop without having to pollute the planet. After all, it is not carbon we want but development, it is not coal we want but electricity, it is not oil we want but transport. The Maldives aims to grow but we want our growth to be green.”
Spokesman for the President Mohamed Zuhair said the project was a “win-win” and “won’t cost the Maldives money.”
“[Rothschilds] have financed other industrial revolutions, and for them the Maldives is an ideal partner for the green revolution,” he said.
Ali Rilwan, director of environmental NGO Bluepeace, meanwhile acknowledged the country’s need for a “carbon master plan” and said he did not believe the agreement with Rothschilds had strings attached.
Instead, the support of the banking dynasty could allow the Maldives to become a ‘proof-of-concept’ for carbon neutrality and alternate energy, he suggested.
“Carbon neutrality is very fashionable in Europe at the moment, along with corporate responsibility,” he said, “and the Maldives is the first to initiate [carbon neutrality] with such a short target. And as the country is small, the targets are achievable. The push to move main electricity from power stations to windmills is also encouraging.”
Rilwan explained that while the Maldives’ carbon emissions “are small on a global scale, we can set an example.”
“We won’t change the world’s climate but upmarket resorts are increasingly attracting toursists looking for green holidays. This will also help them,” he said.
(0)Dislikes
(0)