Trends: A third world planet

2009/11/11

RUPA DAMODARAN

RUPA DAMODARAN hears what world environmentalist Professor Adil Najam has to say about climate change and environmental degradation. EARTH now resembles the Third World. How else can you describe it looking at the state of things, said a climate change issues expert in Kuala Lumpur recently.

Divided, degraded, poorly governed and insecure — all the ingredients of an undeveloped nation, concludes Professor Adil Najam, from Boston University.

Najam’s snapshot points to why climate change needs to be viewed as a development issue.

“The challenge is now in managing this ‘third world’ which is degraded in the environment sense with water not worth drinking, sea levels rising, climates changing,” he said, when presenting a keynote address during the recent Seventh Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

Najam was lead author of the third and fourth assessment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for which the IPCC was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore and other scientists .

Professor Adil Najam

Environment issues are forcing the world to look at other areas, including development and poverty in order to respond.

The expert on issues related to developing country environmental policy, especially climate change said that while pressure is building up ahead of the Copenhagen meeting in December, the impact will only be felt by the decisions made by people and organisations devoted to sustainability.

There is no one climate policy solution to tackle climate change, he argued.

“The only way you can solve climate change in the long term is through the development policy. What we eat, how we live, what we buy, where we buy are also important considerations.”

Climate concerns do not only centre on carbon emission problems but also on other elements as such as the floods now ravaging countries in this part of the world.

“That is the impact the climate has — water (and) food stress, energy stress and disease stress.”

To mitigate or adapt is the question but for Najam it is important to focus on both parts of the dichotomy.

“There is no single solution of this, it has to have multiple solutions and which was why the RSPO experiment was too important to fail.”

No longer should the environment be left to the environmentalists alone, said Najam.

“Climate policy is already triggering a massive investment shift as new opportunities are seen with the carbon economy that is in the making.”

The financial crisis, he pointed out, has started changing things in a dramatic fashion in the past one year.

Comparing the various stimulus packages rolled out by governments to activate their economies, he felt China has the greenest package, so does South Korea.

“This is not because they are environment-sensitive but because they are countries which want to shift to a higher order in the economic system. They realise that the moment of change is the moment they can restructure their economies.”

Climate change patterns will more likely hit the poorest first considering most of them live along shores.

To Najam, industries and developers and policy-makers must carry out objectives responsibly.

With the politics of climate “fractured internationally”, he said, in reference to the Kyoto Protocol which ends in 2012, it is important that developing nations, led by China and India form part of the solution.

China already has in its midst the world’s first “green billionaire”, the owner of Suntech with his solar cells business.

One of the propositions which Najam suggested is getting people together.

“It is not just government and international negotiators which need to come up with the solution... you need larger stakeholder groups to do this.”