Deputy Director of Maldives Energy Authority, Mr. Ajwad Musthafa is participating in the two day forum for “Low Carbon Green Growth Roadmap for Asia and the Pacific – Turning Resource Constraints, the Climate Crisis into Economic Growth Opportunities”, being held in South Korea, Seoul, 25th -26th April 2012.

This Roadmap is developed to help policymakers turn the trade-off between the ecological crisis and economic growth into a synergy in which resource constraints and climate crisis become opportunities for the growth necessary to reduce poverty in the region.

It was announced that by 2030 the world will need 45 per cent more energy. It is estimated that in 2011 alone, 42 million people in the Asia-Pacific region were pushed back into poverty due to rising energy prices putting achievements related to the Millennium Development Goals, in particular poverty reduction in jeopardy.

This Roadmap is developed to address this problem and bridge the gaps by providing five tracks for an economic system change to pursue green growth as a new economic development path. The Roadmap draws upon innovative approaches and experiences in promoting low carbon green growth in the region, and in particular from the Republic of Korea. This roadmap provides detailed overview of challenges and policy options supported by relevant case studies to provide countries with actionable policy options to go green.

The Roadmap presented recognizes that realizing the promise of green growth will require a bold and ambitious transformation of the economic system. The “visible structure” of the economy, comprising such physical infrastructure as transport, buildings and energy systems, together with the “invisible structure”, which encompasses market prices, governance, regulations and lifestyles, have to be re-oriented to resource efficiency. This Roadmap explains how to begin such a transformation. Therefore, this Roadmap will be an invaluable policy tool for Maldives in developing its Carbon Neutral Strategy by turning its geographical and resource constraints into economic growth opportunity.