We are living in a world where climate extremities are increasing, from fires in Canada and Greece to flooding in Delhi. Is the global response to this adequate?
For the last 33 years — since 1990, when the negotiations began on climate change —my feeling has been that all the countries are waiting for others to take action and as a consequence, there’s been a continuous delay in action. In the beginning, the developing countries were really keen that the developed countries take action. At that time, the US claimed it was not easy for them to do so if developing countries in the long term did not take action. As a consequence, there is a situation where no one is willing to break that trend and take leadership. The EU was doing a relatively good job till the war on Ukraine broke out. Nowadays, countries are claiming they will work towards net zero, that they will compensate their emissions by ensuring these are absorbed by trees or through carbon capture and storage, which involves putting greenhouse gas emissions underground. But this net zero story can be a fig leaf.
What about the approach of the Global South?
In the Global South, in theory, if you are not as dependent on fossil fuels as the Global North, it’s easier to invest in renewables. But what has happened in many of the developing countries is, they are following in the footsteps of the north. The other challenge, of course, is the design of cities. We know that in the Global South, they are going to be constructing a large number of new cities. These cities need to be compact because if you make the cities sprawling, you’ll need massive amounts of public transport and will have to convert forest land into urban land.
You mentioned that net zero can be a fig leaf. But we have countries, including India, and companies announcing net zero targets. How should that be viewed?
I understand that it’s impossible for every individual, every company, every government to get to zero. But when you say you will achieve net zero, there must be a clear-cut plan on how you are getting there. It should not be an excuse for not getting off fossil fuels. Suppose I’m reasonably well off and say that every time I’m using fossil fuel, I’ll plant a tree somewhere in the world. But if people in different parts of the world say this, where is the land and where is the water to plant all these trees? What may also happen is, you may get a lot of plantations coming up, which is not what we want. Even putting CO2 underground has been on the agenda for 40 years. It didn’t take off because it’s expensive. Now it is often used by fossil fuel companies as an excuse for business as usual. You need to have a really strong accounting mechanism.
India has been increasing its investments in renewables. What more should it be doing (to reduce dependence on fossil fuels)?
In 1972, when I was in school in India, we were taken to these science exhibitions on renewable energy. India was the first country in the world to have a non-conventional energy ministry. So we actually had a head start over other countries. But it slowed down. Now, we are doing a lot but it’s going to be a little complicated. We should look at reducing pollution from transport by promoting public transport that will be so good that people will use it. We should look at how we can make public transport more electric. The solution is not a lot of private electric cars because then you have the problem of too many batteries, etc. Along with the supply side, you have to address the demand side. Since the time I was in Delhi when I was younger, the city has gotten hotter and wealthier. So you end up having more air conditioners. How do you construct buildings in a way that these are cooler? It’s not about any single thing but about how you get the balance back to cities. You have spoken about how you are opposed to measuring growth in terms of an increase in the gross domestic product (GDP). Why is that so? Let’s take the example of drinking water — if a community does not provide clean water, everyone will buy a water purifier, which is the case in Delhi where I am now. This will look like it’s actually increasing the GDP since there’s a whole industry around water purifiers. But you just needed a municipality that gave you clean water. So your GDP is looking at how you are substituting for nature. But you are actually using many more resources, more energy and polluting much more as a consequence of the waste that comes out. Or, take sickness. Suppose you have people falling sick due to polluted water or air. If they go to a hospital and pay bills, that too will look like the GDP is going up. But, in fact, you are getting sick people. GDP does not value the health of people. That’s the social and environmental cost of inaction. How do we organise our societies in such a way that the GDP also captures the damage to nature and the value of being healthy?
Your recent research, published in Nature, was on the importance of earth system boundaries in mitigating climate change. Could you explain?
In 2009, a paper was published in Nature on “Planetary Boundaries”. It said if you lose a certain degree of integrity in the systems that support life on earth, life would become impossible. For example, if the way we produce food means the bees or other pollinators die, then you’ll have a problem with your food system. The idea was, we would try to create boundaries to how we can use nature as well as things like plastics. In earth system boundaries, we go further — we quantify boundaries not just at the global level because a global number makes no sense to the man on the street. We identify boundaries from local to global level, and we are not only looking at what is safe, we also look at what is just. In water, for instance, we looked at how much water you need in your rivers to keep that system functioning and how much water can you take from groundwater systems to keep that functioning. With surface water, we said that it should not vary more than 20% in relation to a baseline year around 1850. These boundaries can be used to generate ambient and emission standards. If you create these standards, you might be able to move towards a legal system where rules require producers and consumers to minimise their use of resources and their wastes and you end up protecting nature.
In the Global South, what gives you hope and what fills you with dread?
I’m seeing a lot of social movements emerge in certain parts of the world in the Global South. These social movements are really pushing the agenda about respecting nature and reducing energy use and moving away from fossil fuels. Court cases, too, give me hope. On the opposite side, and this is not just in the Global South but worldwide — you are seeing a shrinking of civic space. Protests are being radically suppressed. In the south, activists are also being killed. I’m seeing a lot of reprisals. That fills me with dread.
