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In this episode, we discuss:
Guest | Dr. Saad Uakkas
Dr Saad Uakkas is an expert in youth and organisational empowerment and engagement in climate and health. He holds a Master’s degree in public health from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), with a Chevening scholarship. With over 9 years of experience in leadership positions across global youth NGOs and networks, such as the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations, the World Healthcare Students’ Alliance, and the African Youth Initiative for Climate Change (AYICC), he is an expert in events organisation, project management, organisational development, partnerships and fundraising, advocacy, and youth leadership. He is also a TEDx speaker, a Diana awardee, a One Young World Ambassador, a Gates Foundation Goalkeeper, and a Global Shaper. He has organised 10 global campaigns, and led over 30 global events and conferences, including the COP27 and COP28 Children and Youth Pavilions. He is currently the AYICC Executive Chair, leading youth climate engagement across Africa.
Interviewer | Dr. Rosa Rantanen
Dr Rosa Rantanen is the founder of the Safer Climate network (Initiative for a Safer Climate), that brings together research, civil society and the arts. She currently works as a Research Coordinator at the Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She wrote her Doctoral thesis on the ethical desirability of human life extension, at the University of Turku, in Finland as well. Rantanen has also worked on various interdisciplinary projects across several civil society organizations, including the Finnish Red Cross. Currently, she specialises in working not only on civil society engagement, but also themes such as climate security, climate and death, and war and its effects on climate and the environment. Her work is part of the Atmosphere and Climate Competence Center (ACCC) program.
Episode notes and references:
Music by: Ritesh Prasanna
Podcast website: https://atmospherictales.com
Transcript: https://atmospherictales.medium.com/watering-our-community-youth-health-and-climate-resilience-f6b64d100c14
In this episode, we discuss:
Guest | Prof. Rebecca Garland
Our guest, Prof. Rebecca Garland, is a seasoned expert in atmospheric sciences, specialising in air quality and climate change, with a strong focus on science-policy linkages. Her research endeavours are dedicated to improving the understanding of air quality and atmospheric science in southern Africa, through the integration of multiple data streams; this includes developing emissions inventories, conducting air quality modelling, utilising ground-based and remote sensing measurements, formulating evidence-based air quality management strategies, and exploring the connections between air quality and climate change at regional and urban scales. Dr Garland has held a significant role as a Principal Researcher at the Climate and Air Quality Modeling Group within the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa. She obtained her PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder, concentrating on atmospheric science with a specific focus on aerosol particles. Additionally, she served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, and as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
Interviewer | Cynthia Sitati
Our interviewer, Cynthia Sitati is a Research Associate at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), Africa Centre. She holds an MSc in Climate Change Adaptation from the University of Nairobi and is currently pursuing a PhD at the same institution, where she wants to explore the intricate relationship between air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions by leveraging advanced technologies and synthesising data from diverse sources. At the Stockholm Environment Institute, Cynthia works under the Sustainable Urbanization Programme, supporting projects on air pollution, climate change, and urban development. Her goal is to use research to inform policy, help humanity fight Air Pollution and climate change in her capacity as a researcher, and make a significant contribution towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Episode notes and references:
Music by: Ritesh Prasanna
Podcast website: https://atmospherictales.com
Transcript: https://atmospherictales.medium.com/exploring-the-nexus-of-air-pollution-and-climate-change-in-africa-af6e390ef5eb
In this episode, we discuss:
Guest | Dr Ritodhi Chakraborty
Our guest, Dr Ritodhi Chakraborty, is a political ecologist and interdisciplinary social scientist who collaborates with indigenous and agrarian communities to explore pathways of environmental and social justice. For the past 15 years, he has worked with various universities, think-tanks, public and civil society institutions in United States, India, Bhutan, China and Aotearoa/New Zealand on issues of plural knowledges, environmental and social justice, rural transformation, youth subjectivities, climate change and agriculture.
Interviewer | Uma Pal
Our interviewer, Uma Pal, is a Senior Analyst at the Climate Policy Initiative, India. Her work focuses on adaptation, resilience and sustainable finance. With over 8 years of experience in the climate and development space, her expertise lies in climate change policy and institutional analysis, physical climate risk assessments and mainstreaming climate risk in plans, policies, and actions of governments and the private sector. Uma holds a Master’s degree in Climate Change and Sustainability Studies from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India, and a Bachelor’s degree in Literature from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University.
Episode notes and references:
Music by: Ritesh Prasanna
Podcast website: https://atmospherictales.com
Transcript: https://atmospherictales.medium.com/decolonizing-climate-discourse-embracing-plurality-in-knowledges-676e6e6b681a
In this episode, we discuss:
Guest | Azjargal Tsogtsaikhan
Our guest, Azjargal Tsogtsaikhan, leads Business Development at ORDA Wealth Tech from Silicon Valley, California, USA. Azjargal is also passionate about solving public health, sustainability, and social problems, and has founded Breathe Mongolia – Clean Air Coalition, a non-profit with a mission to eradicate air pollution in Mongolia. She holds a BA in Finance and Marketing from the University of Technology Sydney, and an MBA from Birmingham Young University, with extensive experience in finance, nonprofit and technology sectors, including 9 years at IBM. She’s also a board member of other human rights and climate change nonprofits and a co-author of “Clean Air Adventures” children’s book.
Interviewer | Gereltuya Bayanmunkh
Our interviewer, Gereltuya Bayanmunkh, is a start-up founder pursuing an MSc in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science at St. Petersburg University, having previously earned her BSc in Mathematics from the National University of Mongolia. She specializes in using AI and big data techniques in fields requiring interdisciplinary innovation in action, such as climate tech and public health. With previous experience as a web developer and engineer, in 2020, Gereltuya founded her start-up, Green Dot Climate, to create science-backed climate change content, develop climate tech solutions, build youth-led communities and campaigns, and form partnerships to push Mongolia towards a net-zero future.
Episode notes and references:
Music by: Ritesh Prasanna
Podcast website: https://atmospherictales.com
Transcript: https://medium.com/@atmospherictales/innovations-against-air-pollution-in-mongolia-982ec82d2187
In this episode, we discuss:
Guest | Ayesha Tandon
Our guest, Ayesha Tandon, is a science journalist at Carbon Brief. She previously worked at the United Kingdom Met Office as a Climate Science Communicator. She holds an MSci in Natural Sciences, specialising in Climate Science, from The University of Exeter. Find her on X and LinkedIn.
Interviewer | Pallavi Pant
Our interviewer, Dr Pallavi Pant, is an air quality researcher, and has worked on issues related to air quality and health in low- and middle-income countries for nearly 15 years. She leads global initiatives at the Health Effects Institute. She holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Health from University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Find her on X and LinkedIn.
Episode notes and references:
Music by: Ritesh Prasanna
Podcast website: https://atmospherictales.com
Transcript: https://atmospherictales.medium.com/amplifying-global-south-voices-in-climate-communication-041ec20e7fa1
In this episode, we discuss:
Guest | Marcia Barbosa
Prof. Marcia Barbosa is a Professor of Physics at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and the World Academy of Sciences. Since 2023, she has been Secretary of Strategic Policy and Programs (SEPPE) at the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI). She has been awarded several academic awards, including the Loreal-Unesco Women in Physical Sciences in 2013 for her scientific research using water anomalies under confinement and nanoscience to create new ideas for desalination and produce drinkable water. She also studies gender inequality in the academy and how equity is an instrument of efficiency.
Interviewer | Beatriz Araújo
Beatriz Azevedo de Araújo, is a climate expert, lawyer and consultant, holding a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of Oxford. She started her journey in the climate field as a researcher and activist back in 2013 when she coordinated the first Brazilian youth delegation to attend the UNFCCC COP, with the NGO Engajamundo. She then co-founded a social environmental protection NGO named Instituto Verdeluz, aimed at bridging the international climate change agenda with local issues, working alongside indigenous peoples and traditional communities. Currently, Beatriz acts as an independent consultant, developing projects with governments, businesses and civil society on subjects such as climate finance, just transitions and innovation. She also serves as the President of the Environmental Law Commission of the Bar Association of the state of Ceara and as a counselor of the State of Ceara Environmental Council.
Music by: Ritesh Prasanna
Podcast website: https://atmospherictales.com
Transcript: https://atmospherictales.medium.com/indigenous-wisdom-and-scientific-innovation-in-brazil-for-global-sustainability-94015bd45d57
In this episode we discuss the role of palm oil politics and other agricultural practices, politics, and diplomacy on transboundary haze in Southeast Asia.
Our guest Dr Helena Varkkey is an Associate Professor of Environmental Politics at the Department of International and Strategic Studies, Universiti Malaya. Her areas of expertise include transboundary haze governance in Southeast Asia and global palm oil politics. She has almost two decades of experience in qualitative research,conducting fieldwork, interviews, and focus groups among various government and non-government stakeholders, and has built up extensive research networks in countries across ASEAN. She has published, edited and produced several books and reports for international agencies.
Our interviewer Maggie Chel Gee Ooi is a research fellow from the Institute of Climate Change from the National University of Malaysia, also known as UKM. Her field of expertise includes weather prediction and air quality modelling using numerical methods. She has worked closely with the government bodies to fill in the weather and air quality science gaps in tropical Malaysia. She has actively published peer-reviewed papers and featured in magazines and newspapers.
Episode notes and references:
Music by: Ritesh Prasanna
Audio editing and transcripts by: Paras Singh and Raag Sethi
Podcast website: https://atmospherictales.com
Transcript:
HV: Helena Varkkey (Guest)
MCGO: Maggie Chel Gee Ooi (Interviewer)
SG: Shahzad Gani (Host)
SG: I’m your host, Shahzad Gani, and welcome to another episode of Atmospheric Tales. Our guest today is an Associate Professor of Environmental Politics at the Department of International and Strategic Studies, Universiti Malaya. Her areas of expertise include transboundary haze governance in Southeast Asia and global palm oil politics. She has almost two decades of experience in qualitative research, conducting fieldwork, interviews, and focus groups among various government and non-government stakeholders, and has built up extensive research networks in countries across ASEAN. She has published, edited and produced several books and reports for international agencies. I’m excited to have our guest, Dr Helena Varkkey. Our interviewer today is Maggie Chel Gee Ooi; she is a research fellow from the Institute of Climate Change from the National University of Malaysia, also known as UKM. Her field of expertise includes weather prediction and air quality modelling using numerical methods. She has worked closely with government bodies to fill in the weather and air quality science gaps in tropical Malaysia. She has actively published peer-reviewed papers and featured in magazines and newspapers. Welcome to the show, Helena and Maggie!
MCGO: Thank you, Shahzad, and I would like to welcome Dr Helena. Transboundary haze has been a recurring problem in Southeast Asia especially during the months of August to October, when the region is relatively dry. In the case of strong hot and dry weather anomalies—El-Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO)—the burning becomes more intense and sustains much longer, emitting a large amount of haze. For instance, according to MetMalaysia, in mid-June, the probability of ENSO conditions to strengthen by the end of the year is over 90%. Singapore Institute of International Affairs has also issued their first-ever red alert for transboundary haze in 2023, on 20 June, which means this year, there’s a high possibility that it will be a burning year for South Asia. And, quoting from them, “heatwaves this year will be a stress test for cooperation between governments and the private sector”. In a past episode, we had a discussion with Professor Puji Lestari about transboundary haze in Southeast Asia, addressing especially the role of peat fires as an important source of regional air pollution. We understand transboundary haze is a complex and multi-faceted issue as well as it is not new; this burning problem has been around for quite some time, since the 1990s. What are the main challenges of combating this transboundary haze, as we understand the countries affected by the haze are not the main contributors of the haze?
HV: Yes, so definitely, there’s a lot more than just the physical or the biological problem of haze. One reason why we still have transboundary haze in this region—it started to become an issue about 1980s and we’re still facing it today—is because of that transboundary factor that you’ve highlighted. So the fact that countries like Indonesia, which is the main source of the haze, of course, Indonesians are the ones who suffer the most because those who are closest to the fires will be the one who are suffering the most, in terms of health and other effects. But the issue is then when the haze crosses over borders, so it reaches usually countries like Singapore and Malaysia in the region, and sometimes even Brunei and beyond Thailand. And this is where it gets a bit complicated, because if we look at the drivers of haze, which I believe Professor Puji would have touched on, has a lot to do with land use change in Indonesia, and to a certain extent in Malaysia as well. And if you look at Indonesia, a lot of this land use change is linked to sectors like palm oil, and pulp and paper; and when we look even more closely, the companies which are involved in this are not only Indonesian companies, they are international companies, international investors, and often from places like Malaysia or Singapore. So it becomes a very sensitive diplomatic issue, where the source of haze is coming from one country, but the actual drivers are multi-dimensional, multi-sectoral, as well as multinational as well. So, what we always see when there’s haze, is first of all, that will be the sort of question of whose fault is it; it becomes sort of a finger pointing issue, when countries complain about the haze or when countries say that, you know, something should be done. Indonesia, for example, will find it sometimes a bit, you know, being made a victim, when countries like Malaysia or Singapore say that, you know Indonesia, why don’t you do something about the haze? And this is when it starts like, oh, why are you getting angry at us, you know, because it’s your companies which are also involved on the ground in Indonesia. So, this makes it a very difficult diplomatic situation to resolve before you can actually reach the stage where you’re actually doing something about the haze, the stage where assistance is offered, the stage where capacity improvements are done, co-operation on a regional level. So, the very first stage of actually talking about the problem is already a very sensitive diplomatic issue; so I think this has been part of it. Every, every year, when we have haze, these diplomatic sensitivities come to the fore, and this very much complicates the actual action and mitigation activities, which are surrounding haze. And the other thing that’s also related to this, the fact that haze is multinational in that sense, where sometimes you would have companies which are headquartered in Singapore or in Malaysia, identify, as you know, having a hand in on the ground, the on the ground situation, it becomes a question of who is accountable for monitoring, and who is accountable for enforcing. Perhaps headquarters which are in a country far away, it is very difficult for them to know what’s going on, on the ground, or very difficult for them to actually have a good handle on what’s going on. Of course, they are responsible for their subsidiaries, but how does that work in actuality; this is something that is not so easy. And when you have Indonesian authorities, for example, to what extent are they able to enforce, you know, regulations on foreign companies? Of course, it may be straightforward, but not always. So all these kind of challenges do come up when we face such a trans-boundary issue. So, I think I’ll pause there for now.
MCGO: Yeah. Then, from your sharing, transboundary haze in its nature, it is a bit tricky, because it’s a regional issue. What do you think such regional cooperative entities such as like, ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, can help to mitigate this condition, Dr Helena?
HV: Yeah, so ASEAN has played a very big role, actually, on haze. ASEAN since the 1980s, has already identified haze as a regional issue, not a national issue, because it does affect quite a big chunk of ASEAN countries. So, there have been a lot of activities, a lot of agreements that ASEAN has put together, which is impressive in itself, because ASEAN, you know, is very much known for its ASEAN way approach, which is a bit like hands, arm’s length approach, non-confrontational, non-interference policies. But for haze, they’ve kind of tried to move beyond that. So, we have technically legally binding agreement with the ASEAN Transboundary Haze Pollution Agreement. But however, of course, at the early stage, we did realise that the agreement is not that strong. It’s been identified as toothless by quite a few scholars in the region. But what ASEAN has done is that they’ve tried to operationalize this agreement further over the years. So for example, there was the roadmap that was enforced in the last decade, and that roadmap was meant to operationalize certain things in the agreement. And there has been some successes, but some areas are not fully operationalized yet, and I think these are the opportunity areas that ASEAN can really focus on as they are moving forward. So in the past, or up to date, ASEAN has been really helpful in sharing information about the haze. So you know, we have the ASEAN Specialised Metrological Centre based in Singapore, which is a very important body for coordinating information, sharing alerts on haze; all this has been very helpful across the region, so that at least countries are more prepared to face the haze. However, there are certain things that ASEAN is still working on. So, things like there was supposed to be a Transboundary Haze Pollution Centre, a dedicated centre to coordinate haze co-operation, which was supposed to be in Indonesia; but currently, it has not been put to fruition yet and currently, it’s still housed under the Environment Division of ASEAN, which also deals with a lot of other things, so it’s not ideal. So, these are some of the directions that you know, further regional co-operation can do well with. Another thing that I think is really, potentially very useful for ASEAN to look into is the importance of standardised indicators. So as we know, haze is a regional multi-country issue, and when you have multiple countries, you also have multiple ways of measuring haze or reporting haze, so this is what is faced with in ASEAN right now. So for example, for air quality indicators, we don’t have a standard indicator yet; the air quality figure in Johor Bahru, which is in Malaysia, can differ from what is in Singapore, which is just very nearby, because of the different ways of calculating air quality. And this will affect, of course, the way information is processed, the way that the problem is understood, and various other things as well. So, this is something that can be standardised at the ASEAN level, and this hopefully, will be able to translate to more accurate monitoring, more accurate accountability, and also enforcement at the international, or at the regional level, at least. So, this is what ASEAN has been doing, and I think this is, perhaps, a few directions that ASEAN can move forward on this issue.
MCGO: It is; quite glad to hear about some of this effort that has been done through ASEAN, and also I hope that the Transboundary Haze Pollution Centre could really bring some light on this haze issue. It is commonly known that this slash-and-burn practice in the agricultural sector is one of the main causes of this transboundary haze problem; and, the palm oil industry is one of the main followers of such practice, and it has also received enormous international pressure on the sustainability of its production. Looking at the bright side, is this pressure changing how the palm oil industry in Malaysia and Indonesia operate for now, Dr?
HV: This is an example of a very sensitive issue, actually, in this sector. So, actually, slash-and-burn is something that is very normal in this part of the world, as part of the agricultural landscape. And in the past, there was a lot of link between slash-and-burn and haze. But we have now understood a bit more that actually, slash-and-burn practices, if it happens outside of peatland areas, is not such a big problem. And actually, slash-and-burn practices, which are done by most of the small holders don’t very often occur in peatland areas. So this is actually perhaps, the significance of slash-and-burn has been amplified in the past, but now we are having a bit of a better understanding of how to understand things on the ground. So indeed, there has been a lot of link to palm oil industry, and one of the good things of this attention that has been put on the palm oil industry, because of haze, is that there definitely has been changes of practices on the ground. So in the past, definitely, there has been activity, I wouldn’t say slash-and-burn, so to speak, as slash-and-burn is usually related to sort of small scale agriculture, but it’s more about land clearing in preparation for plantations. So in the past, this has been quite common place, where if you are on peatlands, the land would be cleared, and perhaps the timber sold for, you know, as timber, and this would be used as start-up capital to start the plantation. And what would happen then is sometimes as a cheap and efficient and quick way to prepare the land, because you need clear land to plant, would be to burn, and this was the practice in the past. But because there’s been so much attention, the big players have definitely, you know, moved away from this practice because they know that it’s really hard to defend this practice; there are alternative ways that are more environmentally friendly, less risky. And definitely, we have seen a move away from these practices among the palm oil industry, and among the pulp and paper industry. Of course, I cannot say for sure that it completely does not happen anymore, but definitely, the regularity of this has reduced, and this is a good thing because of this attention. But, you know, the challenge still remains that peatlands are a very sensitive landscape, and the fact that these plantations are still on the peatlands; this makes it continuously a risk of fire. So plantations need to continuously take care of their water levels, have to continuously be aware if things are getting too dry, they need to have standby a fire brigades; so, it’s a constant challenge of managing the risk in this landscape. And you know, when you have communities living nearby, there might be some risk of fires that would occur and this would spread. You know, sometimes there would even be issues of land grabbing, where communities may use arson as a way to show their dissatisfaction for this land grab, which they feel that, you know, is violating their rights. So all of these risk factors still exist when you have palm oil plantations, or pulp and paper plantations on peatland. So, this is the challenge that still exists, and these kinds of things are the ones that are more likely to cause fires, disturb areas of peatlands, more so than the actual “lighting a match” and you know, causing a fire.
MCGO: I see. So resonating to that, there’s actually several certifications that were developed to assure the customer and consumer that the palm oil production is, after all, sustainable. For example, there are Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), and also the Indonesia Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) certifications; there are some similar certifications as well. But, can you comment on how helpful are such similar certifications, and actually, how effective are these certifications to really ensure the sustainability of the palm oil plantation and its production; and, after all, are these certifications cost effective?
HV: Yeah, so the certifications that you mentioned, of course, are really big deal in the industry right now. And I will say that RSPO, which kind of came first, was really helpful in sort of highlighting that palm oil can actually be produced sustainably, and these are what you have to do to produce it sustainably, you know, for the industry. This was really helpful in getting the industry to care about changing their practices, especially the high-profile companies, the large companies, the multinationals, because, they have become so visible because of the haze problem, because of deforestation and stuff like this; they are so visible, and there’s a need for them to show the public that they are making changes and they are becoming more sustainable. So, subscribing to things like RSPO has been a very useful way for companies to show that they are doing something and also for them to have the motivation to change their practices. So for example, under RSPO, they have regulations about, you know, zero burning about plantations on peat, so, this has been very helpful in sort of moving away from the more risky activities. Of course, RSPO, by nature, is a roundtable process where their principles and criteria are improved and refined over the years, so that is a continuous improvement process. So perhaps in the future, we will have even more principles and criteria that can address those kinds of other landscape problems or challenges that I mentioned earlier. For ISPO and MSPO, these are jurisdictional standards; so, they are introduced by the countries, by Malaysia, by Indonesia, and they are in accordance with law, so they are not really going above and beyond, and they are just trying to make sure that all the players are meeting the minimum requirements. So, these are useful for like small-holders, or the medium players who may not have as much visibility, so they don’t have that consumer pressure, like the large companies who you know, need to have the RSPO because consumers demand it, but they are those, and they are also those who may have less funds to pay lots of money to an auditor, for example, to come and certify them under RSPO; so, they can have this option of subscribing to ISPO and MSPO. And, this is sort of what we call lifting the floor, while RSPO is lifting the ceiling; so they have been able to help the small and medium players to at least improve basic practices. Of course, if you compare RSPO and ISPO or MSPO, ISPO’s and MSPO’s requirements are a bit lower, and they are a bit easier because they are aimed at, like I said, lifting the ceiling; over time, hopefully, this will improve as well. So for example, for MSPO, you know, how they deal with plantations on peat, currently is still a bit vague, but hopefully it will improve over time. So, this is what I can say about these various sustainability standards. Whether they are effective, whether they are cost-effective; I think as a whole, they have been very useful in trying to maybe address this misperception that palm oil is automatically unsustainable, and also push the sector towards more sustainable practices either in leaps, or in baby steps. They are different approaches, but at least the movement has been there through all of these measures.
MCGO: So, the guidance from these certifications actually helped these companies to fulfil the sustainable palm oil production and plantations. While the responsible management practices of agricultural land actually mainly come from the culture of the company itself, as well as the small planters, we know that awareness and education are important turning pointS for the transboundary haze problem. And, we do know that your team has been diligently working on advocacy of bite-size climate education. Could you tell us more about it?
HV: Yeah, so this is sort of another project that me and my colleagues, we have worked on. We developed a website, which is Bite-Size Climate Action, and our idea for this website is to make accessible knowledge about climate change to Malaysians, so as to empower them to be able to take their own steps for climate action. So the idea was that, you know, in Malaysia, a lot of us may not be able to relate to things like polar bears, and icebergs melting, and this is what usually the conversation about climate change is all about in the international level. So we thought, let’s make it Malaysian, let’s make our case studies and our data Malaysian, and let’s make it bite-sized, so that it’s really small, and somebody can just sit down for half an hour and do one module, and, and of course, it’s free to build a better understanding about what they can do. And one of these modules is actually on forest, so we have like, on energy, on forests, on waste, on water; we have altogether, seven modules. And, and one of it, as I mentioned, is on forests, and we talk there about, you know, peatlands and what you can do about certification, how to look for certifications, how to understand labels on your products, how to be a good consumer. And, I think this is our small part in trying to educate especially the youth. And one thing that we’re really happy about is that we’ve been able to actually get a few universities to adopt it as part of their elective courses. So like my university, the Universiti Malaya, as well as my colleagues’ university, University of Nottingham—we offer it as elective courses. So, students can also take it as part of their education; they can have, you know, a line in their transcript that they have some knowledge about climate action, and hopefully, this will even open up opportunities for them to work in the climate sector in the future. So this is what we’ve been doing with Bite-Size. If people would like to check it out, it’s online—you just have to Google it.
MCGO: It’s interesting to know that it’s free, and actually, it’s suitable for the university students. So is it mainly catered for the undergraduates, or grad school too?
HV: It is evenly catered for all levels. So, we actually have a section where we talk about how to adapt the contents, all the way from primary school to university, and both for science students and non-science students as well. So of course, we try to make it very simple, very fun, very interactive, but as accessible as possible.
MCGO: Wow, that’s amazing! Perhaps, maybe one day, I could adopt that in UK as well. So apart from the transboundary haze issue, we have seen you also actively involved in climate change research work; and recently, methane emissions has been a highlight in Malaysia industry, especially with the reporting required for the UNFCCC. So what should we know about methane, and who needs to be aware of it, in Malaysia?
HV: Yeah, so methane is something that is quite new on the radar of people, recently. So, the idea being, when people talk about climate change, they always talk about CO2, right, carbon dioxide, but then we kind of forget about the other greenhouse gases, and methane is one of them; and actually, methane is much more potent than CO2. So methane is actually one of the key gases that will help, if you address methane, to address climate change in the short run, which will buy us more time to address the other greenhouse gases in the long run. So it’s really important for this sort of immediate 10 to 20 years, and Malaysia has recently signed up for the Global Methane Pledge, and along with many other countries, and what we are interested in this research that you rightly mentioned we are looking at, is to see how Malaysia can sort of adapt its commitments and its policies to ensure that we can play our part to fulfil the Global Methane Pledge. In Malaysia, the two biggest industries that are producing methane are oil and gas, and palm oil, and these two industries are our super important industries; they are our key cornerstone industries of Malaysia. So it really means a lot, you know that our main industries are also the main methane producers; we can look at it as an opportunity—we can make big action, and it can be effective in a very short time. But you know, the challenge here is actually quantification and reporting. You know, a lot of times, we don’t really know how much methane is being released, where it’s being released, and we don’t know how to quantify the actions that we are taking. So these are the kinds of things that we are looking into, the challenges that Malaysia has, and also the opportunities in terms of methane for the country. Our project is about six months in, so we are still maybe early days, but we hope to be able to make a bit more impact as time goes by.
MCGO: Looking forward to see some of the outcomes from the project. The Climate Change Advisory Panel 2023 is formed in Malaysia by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and Climate Change; and we have found that you have been recently appointed to this advisory panel. Can you explain to us what is the direction and the role played by this advisory panel, particularly by yourself as well, to move the climate change agenda forward?
HV: Yeah, so actually, this appointment was just very recent, so it’s still early days. And actually, it’s not me personally; it’s actually Universiti Malaya, which has been appointed along with a few other local universities, so USM is also on it, and UTM, as well. So, I think the role that we will play as academics, is to highlight to the ministry, you know, what kind of research we are doing in the context of climate change. So for example, me as part of this UM group, you know, one of the areas of interests will of course, be things like methane, things like peat, land use, land use change; so, this is important for us to be able to communicate to the ministry. And also, one of the main roles, as we understand it right now, of this advisory panel is to advise the ministry on what we see as priority areas for negotiations at COP28. So, as the process goes along, we hope that, you know, we will be able to really guide that process a bit; I’m not sure to what extent, you know, hopefully, the ministry will take on board what we are hoping to share.
MCGO: Yeah. It’s really good to see that there’s such an advisory panel formed; and, we’re really looking at the Malaysian government trying to take serious actions to help like to reduce the climate change effect or impact in Malaysia. Throughout the interview, we have felt a lot of passion from your interview, your personal blog, and all the sharing sessions with the general public. Can you tell us more about what inspired your interest in this topic that you have been working on for quite some time, and then still being passionate on it?
HV: Yeah, so my background is international relations, so that is, you know, my training. But I was always not so much interested in sort of the hard politics issues of, you know, geopolitics, and war and peace, this kind of stuff. So, when I was thinking about, you know, what I should focus my research on—something international, something trans-boundary, something ASEAN, haze was the thing that came to mind; because it was a very prominent part of my childhood, and I’m sure of yours as well, you know. Malaysian children born in the 1990s and 1980s—this was something that disrupted our school. You know, if you had siblings, for example; my sibling has asthma, so there was, you know, hospital trips involved and all this. It was a big part of our collective memory, so I chose to focus on that. And as I studied this case, further, you know, it brought me to things like the palm oil, global climate politics, and it really was very clear to me that this is something extremely important to the region, not only in terms of the environment, but also in terms of the economy and the future and development and people; so, it was interconnected in so many ways, and that’s what really got me really very dedicated to learning more about this problem. And, that has been my area for the past 15-20 years, and from there, it really cultivated an interest, you know, in sort of like, scholar activism, climate change, climate action. And, I have seen many of my students coming in into international relations with similar interests in, you know, environmental politics and diplomacy, and this has also inspired me much more. And, I think this is also my role to play, to inspire students and to encourage students in this direction, as well, so I’m really happy to play this role, and also hopefully inspire others to move towards this direction in thinking about environment, not just from the side of science, but also from the side of governance, policy, and diplomacy. And yeah, I foresee that I will be doing this as long as I can.
MCGO: Thank you so much. It’s really inspiring when we listen to your sharing as well; you are so knowledgeable. And then, on the work that you have done, the books you have published, actually, it really makes a big difference for us in the ASEAN region to understand the matter of transboundary haze, not only on the physical side, but actually on the grassroot and actual questions of how do people deal with it, why does it happen, a lot of which are actually on the social side. So, I’m really glad to have Dr Helena, together with us for the interview today. Thank you so much, Dr Helena!
HV: Thank you so much, Maggie; thank you!
SG: With that, I would like to thank our guest, Dr Helena Varkkey, and our interviewer, Maggie Chel Gee Ooi, for joining us on this episode of Atmospheric Tales. Thanks to all our listeners, for tuning in; make sure to subscribe and share!
In this episode we discuss ethics and morality in the context of climate change and public health including geopolitical challenges, temporal justice, indigenous voices, and ways to make an impact.
Our guest Prof Ans Irfan is a multidisciplinary global public health expert with over a decade and a half of experience as a health equity strategist, serving on the faculty of Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. As a scholar-practitioner, he has worked across cultures, continents, and countries, including Pakistan, China, and the United States, since the early 2000s. He is currently based at Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University, where he explores the complex intersection of religious moral philosophy, social ethics, and public health policies, focusing on conceptualizing religion as a structural determinant of health and its implications for public health and climate action. In addition, he is also affiliated with the Harvard Innovation Labs at Harvard Business School along with Harvard Climate Entrepreneurs’ Circle. He holds a Doctor of Medicine, a Doctor of Public Health in climate-resilient health systems, a Doctor of Education in higher education administration, and a Doctor of Science in information technology and climate innovation.
Our interviewer Dorothy Lsoto is a graduate student pursuing her Ph.D. in Environment and Resources at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She holds an MS. Environment and Resources with a graduate certificate in Energy Analysis and Policy from UW-Madison. At the Nelson Institute, Dorothy lectures an undergraduate capstone course that she designed on Air Quality, and Equity in an African city with a focus on Kampala. Her doctoral research examines the persistent colonial city design of Kampala on its air quality and health. She studied Environment Management for her bachelors at Makerere University, Kampala. It is from here that she worked with renewable energy technologies and air quality in East Africa for over a decade.
Episode notes and references:
Music by: Ritesh Prasanna
Audio editing and transcripts by: Paras Singh and Raag Sethi
Podcast website: https://atmospherictales.com
Transcript:
AI: Ans Irfan (Guest)
DL: Dorothy Lsoto (Interviewer)
SG: Shahzad Gani (Host)
SG: I’m your host, Shahzad Gani, and welcome to another episode of Atmospheric Tales. Our guest today is a multidisciplinary global health expert with over a decade and a half experience as a health equity strategist, serving on the faculty of Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. As a scholar-practitioner, he has worked across cultures, continents, and countries, including Pakistan, China, and the United States, since the early 2000s. He is currently based at Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University, where he explores the complex intersection of religious moral philosophy, social ethics, and public health policies, focusing on conceptualizing religion as a structural determinant of health and its implications for public health and climate action. In addition, he is also affiliated with the Harvard Innovation Labs at Harvard Business School along with Harvard Climate Entrepreneurs’ Circle. He holds a Doctor of Medicine, a Doctor of Public Health in climate-resilient health systems, a Doctor of Education in higher education administration, and a Doctor of Science in information technology and climate innovation. I’m excited to welcome our guest, Prof. Ans Irfan. Our interviewer Dorothy Lsoto is a graduate student pursuing her Ph.D. in Environment and Resources at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She holds an MS. Environment and Resources with a graduate certificate in Energy Analysis and Policy from UW-Madison. At the Nelson Institute, Dorothy lectures an undergraduate capstone course that she designed on Air Quality, and Equity in an African city with a focus on Kampala. Her doctoral research examines the persistent colonial city design of Kampala on its air quality and health. She studied Environment Management for her Bachelor’s at Makerere University, Kampala. It’s from here that she worked with renewable energy technologies and air quality in East Africa for over a decade. Welcome to the show, Ans and Dorothy!
DL: Thank you, Shahzad, and welcome, listeners! Today, we have Ans, as you’ve heard from Shahzad, and we’re going to dive into our conversation today, which is very exciting. We’re talking about climate change, ethics and morality. So just to get right into this conversation—climate change now more than ever, is getting most people’s attention. We have witnessed increasingly extreme weather events around the world, including prolonged drought and flood events which threaten agriculture production, warmer ocean temperatures that usher in more powerful tropical storms, and decimate aquatic biodiversity. And this year, actually, Canadian fires blanketed the northern portions of the United States in particulate matter and ozone. And even as I speak today, as we speak today, we still have an air quality alert that is going on and, so that’s one of the issues we’re faced with right now in, at least in Madison, Wisconsin. All of these symptoms of climate change impact public health, and these impacts are often not equally felt around the world. And according to experts like yourself, the lives of people living in more developed countries and the consumption of those nations at large, are primarily responsible for climate change. And yet people living in the Global North will not feel the impacts of climate change as immediately, or as significantly as developing nations in the Global South, whose contribution to the problem is really minimal. And to explore this topic more deeply, I would like to ask you just a few questions about the historical and political background of climate change and public health, and how these issues are manifesting in the present, what we’ll likely be grappling with in the future, within the context of ethics and morality. So, according to the American Public Health Association, or APHA, climate change poses a major threat to human health; so, Ans, how would you define human ethics and morality in the context of climate change and public health?
AI: Hi, Dorothy, so wonderful to be here! I generally resist sort of like, defining things because I think they restrain our imagination, but it’s kind of, I think, you already alluded to it, in terms of like, both the power differentials, as well as our duty to do what is right, right? So I could sort of like, you know, comment on, in these like broad philosophical terms, in terms of like, you know, what is just and right, which really kind of boils down to, from a both moral and practical responsibility, to mitigate climate change and work towards a future where we’re actively adapting to the changing climate, right? So, it’s about how do you reduce climate change impacts, but also how do you advocate for those policies to make sure people who are most socially vulnerable both within these countries, or so called Global North, but specifically in the Global South as well. But what I will say is that, you know, we need to avoid the temptation of, you know, just sticking with these definitions, and just taking those without scrutinizing these, which is all to say that we need to scrutinize those terms such as like, you know, what is fair? And what is morally right, right? So, because science cannot answer those questions, those are questions that are going to come from ethics, they’re going to come from morality, and philosophy, and so on, so forth. And we have this colonial tendency, particularly in the Global North, where we use this vague colonial language, without scrutinizing those terms in a meaningful way. So my invitation has always been to, you know, fellow colleagues, academics, practitioners within climate change sphere, that whenever folks, especially those in a decision-making capacity are talking about, you know, that climate morality and ethics is about fairness and justice, like, what did they mean by that, right? What sort of actions does that lead to, right? So because like end of the day, what we need to keep in mind is that, you know, there are a couple of these, just really egregious statistics that are like, top 1% of the richest people in the entire globe consume more resources than the poorest half of the entire humanity, or like, you know, world’s top 10% richest people, they cause about half of global emissions, right? So like, you know, those are the things we need to keep in mind when we are talking about fairness and justice, when it comes to climate ethics and morality.
DL: Wow, that’s very interesting that you say that, actually, because sometimes we get very stuck on the definitions, right? And just the way you have broken it down for us makes more sense for me, because usually, it’s a blanket of like big terms. What does that mean to an individual? What does it mean when you break it down? So thank you very much for breaking that down for us. And maybe just to tag along a question that maybe would go along with what you just shared; when we talk about justice, how should we balance the needs and also the interests of the current generation, with other future generations? Like, what ethical considerations should guide decisions about like, the effects of climate change that you’re talking about, and how do we adapt to it?
AI: Yeah, absolutely. So I think, and this is something I’ll probably bring up again, in our conversation, but it’s really important for us to keep in mind that we should not be conceding to this incremental climate oppression, if you will, which is really that, in the US context, for instance, and I talk about the US, a) because it’s home, and b) because it’s one of the countries that has like outsized power and role to either engage in climate action or climate inaction, one way or the other. So in our context, for instance, there’s this broader conversation about that we owe it to the future generations from an ethics perspective, but there is very little about that particular mindset getting implemented. So examples would be, for instance, like Biden administration, which allegedly, Democrats are the ones who are supposed to be caring about climate action in the US context, if not globally, but Biden administration has sort of like, you know, approved all sorts of these projects, from Alaska Oil Project, Key West Gas Pipeline Project, expediting gas lines—it’s absolutely absurd how much there’s absolutely no care about the future generations, right? And, when I teach climate change, I teach this concept of past dependency to my students, where the idea really is that the choices that we’re going to make today are going to limit our choices in the future, so if you’re going to continue to invest significantly into fossil fuels today, it’s not so much that, oh, we’re going to automatically switch those off; we cannot because that is going to limit our choices for many decades to come. So, which is all to say that at the moment, sure, we do have the responsibility, but beyond these sort of like, you know, like metaphysical conversations, there’s very little action about implementing and incorporating that ethical, moral imperative into policies and programmes. You know, ing this up, that subsidies for fossil fuels, as well as agriculture, and so on, so forth are around like $7 trillion; so that’s about, I want to say about more or less 8-9% of global GDP, that we’re still spending on fossil fuels around the globe, which really is just an egregious statistic, knowing what the IPCC has been telling us, for many, many, many years, knowing what we know now, which people have known for a long time; but now, all of those climate impacts are manifesting from climate refugees to, you know, starvation and everything else in between, but despite that, there’s this massive investment going towards fossil fuel industries and these industries are at this point, getting propped up through these subsidies, and that’s where sort of like, you know, the challenge is. Often, the ethical considerations are completely lost altogether, and often, we don’t really push our politicians to do more and think about the future generations. The questions we really should be asking ourselves is that, you know, what is it that we want to explain to our children that, why is it that we did nothing to prevent a totally catastrophic future, which we’re going to leave with them? And often these conversations get shut down, whenever you’re just stating the state of affairs, be it the political economy of climate change, be the impacts of climate change. People often conflate it with oh, well, you’re pushing climate doom and gloom, when the reality and the lived experiences and the embodied experiences of poor people around the world, including the United States, are just those particular realities. But people want you to create, particularly a lot of climate scientists, they want you to create this cognitive dissonance basically, to not think about that intergenerational justice, right? Like, to not think about what is it that we’re going to be owing people in the future, and then they talk about this, like mythical technology and techno-optimism, that’s somehow going to fix climate change in the future, which it’s not. It’s a very complex social issue; until we start putting pressure on our politicians, until academics such as myself start explicitly, specifically, holding these politicians, and including our own leaders within these institutions, accountable, I’m not sure, like, if we’re going to be able to deliver what we owe to the future generations, unless we embrace this sustainable future as one of those really key priorities from an ethics and morality perspective. So, because I can pontificate about it all day long, but till we stop pegging our imagination to political expediency, it will not deliver an intergenerational climate justice.
DL: Yeah, thank you. Actually, when you say that, I’ll talk about all the oil that is being right now, you know, all the permits that are being issued out right now, it’s very interesting, I’m from Uganda, and we are 100% renewable, honestly, because we have hydro, and then we have solar, that’s all we use as energy, and you know, obviously, we have biomass, which is considered “renewable”, and there are issues around how you define renewable in terms of biomass. But yeah, so we discovered oil in the Albertine region, right? And so, right now, it’s a big talk of like, when do we start to drill and who is drilling? Who is investing in that space? And, you see the superpowers that are coming in, France, specifically; the French are like, really, really strong. They’ve really like, put themselves out there and they’re investing heavily. And it’s in the most beautiful space, the Murchison Falls National Park; it’s a wonderful place to go to, and I really want to go back and like take all the pictures that I need to get, because I know it’s not going to be the same anymore. But, it breaks my heart to know that the big powers are the ones who are investing in this space, and we’re not going to see the benefits of having a clean environment, clean air quality anywhere in Uganda. And, I worked with the native tribes in the US and they have a thing where they say, you should be able to use whatever you use from the land, and have seven generations after you come in and use the same resource or enjoy the same benefit that you are enjoying presently. So, thank you for putting that into context for us, and maybe, this goes right into what you just shared, so, within the intergovernmental organizations, it’s assumed that wealthy, wealthier countries have a moral obligation to the poorer nations in supporting adaptation and mitigation measures. How do you address the ethical implications of global power dynamics, right, in the context of climate change and public health? Because, these are the same people who are like, at the COP, they’re the ones who are in the Paris Agreements, and they are the very same people who are funding these big power projects or fossil fuel projects, so please help us, sort of, like understand this.
AI: Yeah, absolutely. So I think, my focus or rather critique in the Western Hemisphere, is more geared toward the so-called liberals, especially in the US context, which is kind of more like, the average person is a centre-right Democrat, and, but they consider themselves to be like, you know, liberal people who are socially progressive. But more often than not, you know, like they are more married to the ideas of respectability politics, and less so about delivering action or delivering benefits to those at the margins of the society. I say that all to say that, in my view, like, I don’t think proposals like climate reparations are radical, I think they are very much a pragmatic, practical policy solution to what’s coming with climate change. So, how do we go about it, in my view? I think like, from an ethics perspective, I’m not sure if it’s also complicated, to really aggressively advocate for climate reparations around the globe. Now, what shape or form that they take, that is something we can discuss and think about, and consider the voices, specifically of the people, of the so-called Global South, as opposed to, you know, giving into this tendency of speaking for the voiceless, in a very colonial mindset. But I think climate reparations is that good starting point, and there’s some action at the UN level, from a loss and damage perspective; we’ll see how aggressively it’s pursued and actually implemented, but these conversations have sort of like an intake in some shape or form. Climate reparations, in my view, is the only way to move forward if we are to actually incorporate climate ethics into these conversations, because wealthier nations, like they have a lot of resources that they’re constantly spending on things like, you know, militaries, like for instance, in the United States context, the sheer amount of money we spend on our military, just to bomb people around the globe, by an institution that’s one of the most polluting industry on the entire planet, the American military; so, just imagining a world where you’re repurposing those resources and giving back to the communities who never caused the problem to begin with. So kind of going back to some of the statistics we were sharing at the beginning of this conversation, that much of it, you know, it was created by people in the Western Hemisphere and rich people specifically on that, and it continues to be a problem that is being caused by the richest, and the prices getting paid by the poorest. I’m sure you’ve come across, at least in one capacity or the other, if you were on any social media, about the submarine that was, you know, trying to go see Titanic, with all these billionaires, right? So, it’s just fascinating that there was this other story about 700+, you know, people who were trying to get to the Greece coast—they’re just fleeing violence, they’re fleeing a lot of other social challenges that can be traced back to colonialism in the past, and to some extent, to climate change at the moment, because climate change, disrupts livelihoods, and so on, so forth—but, there was virtually nothing that was done for those particular folks. In fact, my understanding is that the Coast Guard was observing that ship calling or issuing distress signals, but they took a very long time to actually try to do something to help them, versus when you look at these billionaires, like multiple countries’ entire military apparatus was mobilized to try to find this little submarine, so like you know, say, Canada and Canadian Navy were mobilized, US Navy and Coast Guard, French military was mobilized, and you know, all sorts of apparatus and both, you know, from their policy position perspective, as well as practical resources that were poured into trying to find that. And, in my view, it kind of creates this sort of, you know, this like picture for climate change, right? Like, you know that when it’s happening to the richest, whatever is it that you know, whichever way you look, you know, that all the resources immediately appear out of nowhere, right? So, all of a sudden, we have the money and the finances to support these people. But if it’s about the poor, we constantly want to push this neoliberal scarcity mindset that, oh, we don’t have resources, when they actually do. So, long-winded way of saying that I think climate reparations is the way to go, and as far as like, you know, how do we think about kind of both considering the implications of it and practically moving towards it, in my view, the only way moving forward is to say, global solidarity among the poor and working class, across nations, both within nations, as well as across the globe, to really put pressure on governments around the globe. Because like these governments, even in the Global South continue to be controlled by these global regimes like the World Bank, or IMF, or the political pressure from nations like the United States, so even if people are demanding something, the governments have only so much capacity to do so, because there are all these other pressures that are imposed by the Western world. So thinking about like, you know, that particular global solidarity from, you know, again, Global South to Global North, but having a more ethical responsibility in the Western world, where we are putting a lot more pressure on our governments to do more, like in the case of United States, for instance, I rarely ever come across anyone in public health, and I’m talking about scholars, and other faculty and colleagues, who are engaged with climate negotiations at the UN level, let alone providing policy solutions, let alone just, you know, creating this mass mobilization to put pressure on our government, so, the government is negotiating on the behalf of poor people, both in this country as well as the Global South, as opposed to negotiating on behalf of corporations, which is something that the US government has historically done.
DL: Wow, wow. Well said, and well put. And it’s very interesting, because I did a class in my first year here for my Master’s—it was international law and climate change. That class broke my heart in so many ways, but it also like, got me thinking a lot about that I’m from Uganda, and it’s less represented in these international talks, right, much more like all the other countries that are struggling, right, basis the people who are representing us, so the people who are able to show up. When you talk about visa issues, are we going to get a visa to go for these talks, first of all, and are you going to have like good lawyers, because these countries have very good lawyers who can go and negotiate, right? Are you going to be able to afford the good lawyers to show up and negotiate for you? Who is going to show up for you anywhere? Like other people, they are sending their data scientists, but we don’t have that, right? Or if we do, there are very few. And so when you go in these talks, and if you’re able to go to the talks, how are you able to negotiate for your own country, for your own continent, for your own people—it becomes a big question, and I thought about it so much, it bogged me down, and I’m like, I’m tired of thinking about it. Because at the end of the day, there is so much unfairness that goes on around and around the world, and climate change is only going to exacerbate the unfairness around us because who’s going to afford, you know, to live a comfortable life when all this happens, so thank you for bringing that up.
AI: Yeah, I just wanted to interject just very quickly to say that you’re absolutely like 100% spot on, and I just want to share that I was at COP27 in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt, and the room charges at the particular resort where they decided to have that conference were like, I think sometimes, like upwards of $1,000 a night, like no one can afford it. I mean, forget people coming from, you know, in that context, local continent; you know, even people like poor people, or even middle-class people in the US context, and so no one can afford to actually go and join these conversations. And so, it becomes this question of like, you know, climate education as well, that are we educating our communities? Are we educating our students? Are we educating our faculty? Are we educating the masses, so they actually know what these conversations are about? And what is it that our government agenda is, that what are those simplified talking points that these people can actually push for one way or the other, right? Like, this is what you should be negotiating. And that’s where I think this colonial apparatus comes into play, coloniality of knowledge, and the reason that thing survives is, basically is that there’s so much confusion and vague and complicated language that gets used, and people are told that, oh, well, it’s beyond your comprehension, so you can’t do it. And then there’s this, like, you know, practical challenge, which you have to really point out that it’s not something that people can simply even think about going to, let alone actively participating in any meaningful way, at the global stage. And, then there’s this sort of, this language of, you know, civic society engagement, which is really that, you know, like, you create this venue where people can talk about it, and those venues are always vibrant at these international negotiation conferences, but at the same time, you know, like they are used to, you know, mask the actual inaction, across these particular conferences on a consistent basis.
DL: Yeah, wow. I mean, that’s where we are right now. Sometimes you think about it, and you’re like, I can’t think about it anymore, because there’s nothing, I feel hopeless, I can’t do anything, and it’s very crippling. In my case, I’m more of an action-based person, and so when I get to that point where I can’t do anything, I feel really bogged down. So one day, one day. Let’s just talk about, because this, this is a very interesting conversation, and just to tie into that, you know, like centering voices who are the oppressed, right? So in your article Colonialism, the climate crisis and the need to center indigenous voices, you mentioned that colonialism and capitalism are the root causes of climate change and environmental degradation, and we’ve seen this anyway. Could you help break this down for us, at least for those who don’t have an understanding of what colonialism is, in terms of climate change? And in terms of like, the importance of centering indigenous voices within these conversations around climate change, and public health, and you know, these big international platforms where decisions are being made for people who are not at the table?
AI: Yeah, absolutely. So, colonialism basically in my view, if you can just boil it down, it’s been this, like, extractive project by a very small percentage of the global population. It has been about commodification of resources and human beings, and it has historically reflected in literal extraction and colonization of all these countries, and current contemporary settler colonial nations like the one I am in, the United States of America. And that particular process itself, has always been about extracting labor and extracting value, and it has completely and absolutely disregarded anything that was outside of that particular singular outcome of extracting wealth, from everything that they saw, be it the global humanity, be the resources, be the environment, and so on, so forth. And that’s something that continues to pay dividends for those who have historically done that, and that gets sho wed in the global power dynamics that you were referring to earlier, and it shows again, in, like, rich people consuming most of the resources that we were talking about earlier, and so on, so forth. So that’s been the colonial project, right, you know. And, the contemporary understanding, primarily coming from, I don’t think it’s anything malicious, but for most scientists, particularly in the STEM sector—we don’t historicize our scientific developments, we don’t historicize how we got to where we are today. And often, things like colonialism are seen as these things of the past, when they’re not; they’re very much present today, they’ve just taken different shapes or forms, right? I’m not going to get too theoretical as to not bog down the listeners, but, what I will say is that, you know, I encourage them to check out this particular framework called coloniality matrix of power, where they’re sort of, you know, these scholars and theorists have been working on it for a very, very long time. And primarily, a couple of things that I’ll point out from it, is that colonialism basically, in our contemporary society, reflects in this notion of coloniality of power, which is really about structures of power control and hegemony. Right, so like, you know, think about the inescapability of capitalism that is, you know, beaten into our heads where we think that capitalism is the end of history, and we cannot move past it. And that’s one example of both coloniality of power and coloniality of knowledge, right? Like, you know, thinking about the neoliberal systems in the contemporary society that are pushed by Western worlds across the globe, and if anyone who resists it, we creates this entire made-up, conjured-up narrative about how much we care about human rights when we actually don’t, and impose all sorts of crippling, dehumanizing sanctions; so the example would be Cuba, for instance. So, things like that, you know, those are examples of coloniality of power, right, so like, you know, WTO, IMF, World Bank, the United States, and funding mechanisms around the globe, all of these serve to maintain that colonial power around the globe. And, that’s something, it’s not in the past, it’s not on the fringes, it’s very much our lived reality, but it requires that we question our ontological assumptions about how the world works, which very few people are given time to actually think about that part. And along the same lines, you know, there’s this similar notion of coloniality of knowledge, which is really about, you know, just basically making Western ways of thinking and Western knowledge as universal. So like, you know, like this very positivist way of thinking, that everything needs to be observed; these are the people who have difficulty entertaining the ideas of fairness and justice and ethics and morality, because you cannot quantify and reduce it down to a number. Because that’s where their comfortable and easier spot for them to perceive the world lies and that’s really kind of, I think, again, like it becomes incredibly important that we are interrogating our ontological assumptions about how the world works. And, in doing so, we can reject this binary thinking of, you know, just having one or the other responses to both climate change as well as to our political system, as well as to the current global world order, and really rethink and reimagine a world, which is just, and kind and humane, and without climate change.
DL: Yeah. Wow. I mean, when you just talked about that, I was just thinking about, I was going back to my own research, and what I’m seeing. I work in a space of air quality alternatives, as you know, back home in Uganda. and all the papers that are being written, and it’s only been recent, that people are doing research in air quality or at least ambient air quality, because we have not heard also monitors to monitor air, measure the specifics of what the particulates are in the air, because it’s very expensive, obviously. And we have to rely on like the Western world, to like get the technology there set up, and all the things that come along with it. And, probably I’m going to be very frustrated, because I like to think about why are things the way they are, and maybe I’m not supposed to do that and just go with the way business is as usual like everyone else, but I’m not that kind of person; I like to question things and why they are. And it’s also part of my research—I look at how colonialism shaped the air quality that we see. All the papers coming out right now, just talk about the numbers and I’m like, but, there is a reason why things are the way they are. And so for my research, we were colonized by the British in Uganda, right? And so where they designed the city boundaries, so we had the British settlements, we have the Indian settlements, and then we have the native settlements, and so you see that the air quality in these settlements is very different, but no one is talking about this. So I like that you have to question like, you bring the question of colonialism into, like, climate change, because you have to understand some of these things to make meaning of where you are currently. So thank you for bringing that to our attention.
AI: Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that you’re spot on. And I’ll also share that, you know, like I was born in Pakistan and grew up there. And that too, is just like kind of, a former British colony, because the British have been, the English I should say, have been the nightmare for the entire world. And there, you know, I grew up in a farming family, and you know, at the time, you don’t have the requisite knowledge to understand and analyze things. But looking back, much of the challenges that, you know, my family or my community was facing, you could trace those back to those colonial processes, right? Like, you know, kind of, you are doing this really incredibly ground-breaking work of thinking about your pollution and coloniality, and the still remaining effects of colonialism, both in power structures and physical structures. Like I’ve observed it in that sort of like, you know, Indian and Pakistani context. The British, like their interest was, again, like, you know, just the commodification of just about everything that they saw, and extracting value from it for their own benefit, not for the communities. And, there was this, like mass diversions of rivers at this, like large-scale commercial irrigation, and it led to sort of like, you know, destruction of many, many ecosystems. And, there are parts of Pakistan, that now have major flooding issues, because those systems were destroyed under this, like British irrigation systems that they develop for commercial crops, right? So a lot of it was about sort of like, again, like people lived in a lot more sustainable ways, but they were all about cash crops, and that ended up robbing indigenous populations of their autonomy to protect their natural communities and the ways they’ve been living for centuries. So like, you know, it created all sorts of these so-called mandi (which is a term for market) accounts, which was, again, all about cash economy, it was all about the superiority of urban population, it was all about creating local indigenous elites who can then do the bidding of these colonial oppressors on their behalf like, you know, the new canal system, the seepage from that water system, that increased water tables, and eventually sort of, their issues of waterlogging, and just, total crop destruction, around that country. And, those are just some of the things that come to mind, from that colonial process, that the country is still paying the price for, up till this day. So yeah, so, thank you for sharing the example of Uganda.
DL: Yeah, sure. I’m yet to publish the paper. I’ll share it with you, because I think the results that I’m seeing, they are very interesting. And, as we start to wrap up, I would just want you to speak more on like, I mean, you went to the COP27, but like the report of COP26 on climate change and health, states that the public health benefits from implementing ambitious climate actions far outweigh the costs. Could you speak more on this as it relates, obviously, to the ethics of achieving this?
AI: Let me just preface this by saying that the challenge isn’t that people don’t know, or, by people I mean, like, you know, scholars and practitioners of climate change; the challenge is that the way these like colonial regimes work around the globe, including and within countries and in countries like the United States, is that this notion of incrementalism, it convinces us that mass death and violence is acceptable. So bit by bit by bit by bit, of over the years and decades, we get convinced, and we just like, you know, move our goalposts even further. COVID is an example, for instance, before I get to the benefits of that action, COVID is an example. You know, initially, it’s a lot of mass deaths that was caused by this particular disease, and a vast majority of it was preventable. But our governments, two successive administrations, failed the population both in the United States, as well as around the globe, colossally, in epic proportions, where they basically actively made a decision that they’re going to prioritise the economy, and not the poor people; and the result was this mass death and morbidity and mortality, and the long term effects of COVID. But, that wasn’t a process that happened overnight; it was a process where they basically started convincing people that oh, X amount of death is acceptable, Y amount of death is acceptable, and then that bar kept getting lower and lower and lower and lower and lower, and, to the point where people were, are now convinced that millions of people who have died, and thousands, who are dying right now, and getting disabled, is an acceptable thing, as a society. I shared that all to say that climate change is pretty much along the same lines from an ethical perspective, because like, as the years pass by, as opposed to really harping on that urgency and putting pressure on the governments, what we’re really doing is we’re trying to convince that oh, X is acceptable, but that sort of like, value of that X continues to get changed to a point where again, like, you know, massive deaths and morbidity and mortality that’s caused by climate change continues to be an acceptable thing, as opposed to actively, aggressively thinking about trying to mitigate it; which brings us to our question of, you know, benefits, which is really, for the most part, I’m not sure like, there is any ethics-related or, you know, morality related debate about the action. Rather, the question or the framing should be that, what are the costs of inaction, because that’s the question that is not asked. So like, even when we’re talking about health inequities, or social inequities, or Global North, you know, inequities, often the conversation is always about, oh, look at X community who is getting impacted, but we don’t talk about the flip of it, which is really well, who stands to benefit from it? So, in this particular, sort of, like, you know, question, I mean, we know for sure that just that 0.5 degree change, 1.5 degree centigrade, which is something that we were aiming for, and now, we’ve been convinced both by the government and a lot of well-meaning scientists, who are pushing this sort of, like, you know, the narrative of climate optimism, which at some point, is scientific malpractice, in my view, you know. Now we know that the 1.5 degrees centigrade is, you know, we don’t think we’re going to be able to get there, right? So, now the conversation is about 2 degrees centigrade; so, even if we were to look at just that difference of 0.5 degrees centigrade overall warming, like, it’s a massive, massive difference. For freshwater availability, like that doubles in terms of like, you know, the reduction in it in the Mediterranean; I think that was one of the statistics I was looking at. From, you can look at the crop yield, you know, the production goes down, almost like you know, 0.5 degrees centigrade reduces the crop production by twice as much as it would have been at 1.5 degrees centigrade. And then similarly, with sea level rise, coral bleaching, and so on, so forth; the list goes on and on and on. But the point is that, you know, as opposed to using that 1.5 as an aggressive metric, now, we’re convinced that oh, well, we can’t do 1.5, let’s aim for 2. And, in a decade, people are just going to start pushing, well, you’re being a climate doomer and gloomer, maybe we should aim for 2.5, right? And, often these are people who are in positions of privilege; like, you know, these are academics, who have the luxury to sit in their, in some cases, literal glass houses, and talk about what level of acceptability they’re comfortable with when it comes to mass death of the poor masses of the globe. So, I say that all to say that I think the question should be reframed; the question we should be asking is, what are the costs of climate inaction? And that, in my view, would be a lot more generative, because like this thing, really, you know, reproduces all those talking points (like, well, it’s too expensive) but no one talks about how expensive inaction is going to be and what sort of moral challenges that inaction is going to create from climate refugees, and internally, displaced populations, and so on, so forth.
DL: Thank you very much, and it’s been wonderful speaking with you and over back to Shahzad.
SG: With that, I would like to thank our guest, Dr Ans Irfan, and our interviewer Dorothy Lsoto, for joining us on this episode of Atmospheric Tales. Thanks to all our listeners for tuning in; make sure to subscribe and share!
In this episode we will discuss renewable energy colonialism, impact on local communities, and the NIMBY rhetoric.
Our guest Dr Susana Batel is an assistant researcher at University Institute of Lisbon , Portugal. For over a decade her research has focused on adopting a critical approach to examine the relation between re-presentation, identities, power, discourse and communication, and social change, namely regarding public participation in environmental issues, and public responses to renewable energy and associated technologies. She has 80+ published works and is a Co-Editor of the journal Papers on Social Representations.
Our interviewer Nyasha Milanzi is an undergraduate student in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Ashesi University, Ghana. Her research focuses on developing low cost sensors for use in air quality monitoring and dust soiling on solar PV measurements.
Episode notes and references:
Music by: Ritesh Prasanna
Audio editing and transcripts by: Paras Singh and Raag Sethi
Podcast website: https://atmospherictales.com
Transcript:
SB: Susana Batel (Guest)
NM: Nyasha Milanzi (Interviewer)
SG: Shahzad Gani (Host)
SG: Welcome to Atmospheric Tales, a podcast that amplifies stories and experiences related to air pollution and climate change from around the world.
I’m your host, Shahzad Gani, and welcome to another episode of the Atmospheric Tales. Our guest today is an Assistant Researcher at the University Institute of Lisbon in Portugal. For over a decade, her research has focused on adopting a critical approach to examine the relation between representation, identities, power, discourse and communication, and social change, namely regarding public participation in environmental issues, and public responses to renewable energy and associated technologies. She has 80+ published works and is a co-editor of the journal Papers on Social Representations. I’m excited to welcome our guest, Dr Susana Batel.
Our interviewer today is Nyasha Milanzi. She’s an undergraduate student in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Ashesi University, Ghana. Her research focuses on developing low-cost sensors for use in air quality monitoring and dust soiling on solar PV measurements. Welcome to the show, Susana and Nyasha!
NM: Thank you for your kind introduction, Shahzad. I’m excited to dive in our discussion. The shift to less carbon-intensive and more sustainable energy systems is centred around renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, hydro, biofuels and others. According to the International Energy Agency, over 2022-2027, renewables are forecasted to grow by almost 2,400 GW equal to the entire installed solar power capacity of China today. This rapid expansion of renewables has brought us here in discussing about renewable energy colonialism with Dr Susana Batel. Welcome to the show, Dr Susana! I’m going to jump right into our first question on renewable energy colonialism in the Global South. In the Global South, renewable energy colonialism perpetuates power dynamics that prioritise the energy needs of the Global North over the energy needs of the Global South. Despite the fact that many countries in the Global South lack access to electricity (for example, 597 million Africans did not have access to electricity) and rely on harmful forms of energy, such as biomass for cooking (approximately 600,000 lives are lost each year in sub-Saharan Africa due to exposure to biomass smoke), the focus of renewable energy production in these regions is often centered around export to the Global North. This is evident in the case of green hydrogen, where the potential for energy poverty alleviation in Africa is overshadowed by the emphasis on export to the European market. For example, I quote a statement from the European Investment Bank website—“Large-scale green hydrogen generation will enable Africa to supply 25 million tons of green hydrogen to global energy markets, equivalent to 15% of current gas used in the European Union.” Dr Susana, the followers of the podcast would like to know how colonialism mechanisms are at play here, and also, how can their governments and policymakers prioritize the energy needs in their respective countries before they can look into feeding the energy-rich countries, particularly in the Global North.
SB: Thank you, Nyasha, for your question, and also Shahzad, for the introduction and the invitation, to both of you, to be here. So, that’s a very good question and actually, this focus on green hydrogen is a very relevant one. And, actually, even here, in Portugal, from where I’m speaking, we’re also having a Valdez rush into this new gold, so say, of the green hydrogen as a key solution to resolve climate change. And actually, even if we are in the Global North, but still in the south of Europe, so a peripheral region as well, that is also shaped by correlations with other Northern countries. And so actually, we’re also having exactly the same debate. And also, green hydrogen, is it green, first off—and that’s what I will get to in a minute as well—so the way it is produced, can we really say it is green, and also for whom is this national strategy being proposed and enforced? So thinking about Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa specifically, and again, also this now run for green hydrogen, a lot of issues come to play here that make us think of it as this renewable energy colonialism. So one of them is precisely even starting, as I was saying, by this notion of renewable energy colonialism, allowing us to think for whom is this being produced, as I was saying, is also the case for Portugal. So if we look at the rhetoric behind these efforts and agendas to foster the production of green hydrogen, we see that, precisely, a lot of it is with a view towards economic growth and towards exporting it to the Global North. So local regions and communities where it will be produced, and also their local resources, based on which their livelihoods depend a lot, such as water, land, agricultural land, and so on and so forth, they will be damaged and taken for this purpose, but with most of the benefits then to be exported, as you said, to other countries and other regions of the world, specifically in the Global North. So that’s already a key aspect, obviously, of what makes it renewable energy colonialism. And, what that first aspect brings to the fore as well is precisely this issue that it is being sold as green, but actually, for instance, as you also highlighted, it uses water to produce this green hydrogen. And this means, in turn, that you should be in a region to produce it, that’s very, there’s very abundant water. And if not, you’re not only probably contributed to further desertify that area, but even to, there’s also uncertainty, what will be the consequences for water resources in the area as well, out of this process for hydrogen, green hydrogen production. The other key issue that is being debated as well also related then with this renewable energy colonialism, is precisely that then for it to be green, it implies that the electricity generated to part this water and make the green hydrogen, it needs to come from renewable energy sources. And what this often implies, is then that there will have to be built large scale energy infrastructures, such as big wind farms, or solar plants, and so on and so forth, that will then feed into this green hydrogen production, which in turn these plants as well, they also have often, they also come with a lot of local impacts and impacts for communities, and if they are not deployed in a way that involves everyone and the local communities, regional communities, national communities, etc., then those harms will for sure, be even more no, so, often what happens is precisely that is that there are no benefits for the local communities, and there are only detrimental effects. So it’s often done through this top-down, technocentric and extractivist perspective and approach. And that means precisely that who benefits then from green hydrogen and all its components, so to say, is mostly the big corporations that often are financing these infrastructures, and also sometimes, the national governments that allow for it for these to happen in their territories. So, in this sense, I think that if we think about how can governments and policymakers then prioritise the energy needs of local communities and citizens in their respective countries before they look into feeding energy-rich countries is precisely by contesting this type of rationale and process that leads to the deployment of these large energy infrastructures, and feed these big agendas for green hydrogen as it is being done. So I think, precisely, what needs to be done is thinking more in a decentralised way, in a way in which thinking about how can we give electricity to everyone and to all communities, is done involving those communities and involving people and therefore thinking about, and for the country and the region where these governments and these communities are located, instead of just thinking about economic growth at a national state level, let’s say no, so that is really for the state and not for its citizens.
NM: Wow, thank you, Dr Susana, for your answer, and I think you did a great job in analysing this question. And I would just like to highlight like some of the points that you brought up, which includes like for example, we don’t talk about, let’s say, if we deploy these huge amounts of energy infrastructures, which will require abundant water with them in the case of green hydrogen, is going to lead into water scarcity in many regions in Africa; there’s already water scarcity because of climate-induced drought in recent years. So, it’s important to look at also the after-effects and also talk about asking a critical question, like who are these infrastructures built for? Are they built for the local community, or for other people, and how ethical is that? And I think it also answers our second question that we were going to ask you on the Desertec project. For our podcast listeners, I’m just going to briefly read what it’s supposed to be: the Desertec project was originally designed for wind farms and solar plants to be deployed in the North of Africa and Middle East to feed the European grid, which is an unequivocal example of the renewable energy colonialism in the Global South. So with that, I think you also talked about how this is also at play even where you are from, in Portugal, where I didn’t even think that any renewable energy colonialism could also happen in the Global North. It is important to know that renewable energy colonialism extends beyond Global North-South relationships, and also operates through power dynamics between core and periphery regions. Dr Susana, can you provide an example of renewable energy colonialism that is not specific to Global North-South relations, and how do our core-periphery power dynamics come into play in these cases?
SB: Yes. So obviously, I think this renewable energy colonialism idea departs from Global North and Global South relations, and from historical colonialism. But, I think it is also very useful then to think about, if not equal, obviously, because colonialism as it is, it has, again, a specific history and is based on specific structural power relations. But I think it’s very helpful precisely to make us think as well, if again, if not equal, but similar processes are happening also in the Global North. And what we see more and more also today and also actually historically, so already for some centuries, is this continues and even increasingly exacerbated power dynamics between urban areas and rural areas, in which basically, rural areas are seen more and more as just a place for resource provision, and to provide to urban areas no, and urban areas as the consumers. And so, it creates these core-periphery dynamics that, again, are the basis as well of renewable energy colonialism between the Global North and Global South. And what we see for instance, again in Portugal, but also in other countries in the Global North, is that that is happening also in the relation between then urban and rural territories, in which basically, as I was discussing regarding green hydrogen, and the deployment of large scale, renewable energy generation infrastructures in these more rural areas, what happens is that, now is that rural areas are almost the sacrifice zones that get all the costs and all the negative impacts of the construction of these infrastructures, and they don’t get any benefits that, they’re not involved in deciding about those projects. They do not allow them, even for local communities, even sometimes to stay in their communities and to thrive in those communities in the long term. So it’s a similar type of dynamics that happens here as well. And for instance, here in Portugal, I’ve been accompanying it regarding wind, hydropower plants and how actually, throughout the last century, this has been the case now; these large, huge really, infrastructures with a lot of impacts have been constructed and deployed in rural areas, inland territories, with a lot of impacts for the local communities. And often even what happens is that they are deployed based on discourses and rhetoric or vocal socio-economic development. And they are even sold almost as these promises and bits of development that people then aren’t attracted to, because, precisely, they want to stay in the places where they live, and they like to live, and they want to be able for future generations to also be able to stay in those territories and to thrive there. And so, people tend often even to accept these infrastructures as a sign of hope almost to towards that future. But actually, then what we see is that often, that’s it, that’s just rhetoric from the developers, from the politicians and governments that support these infrastructures, and those promises then actually tend not to materialise then. So what happens is that these infrastructures even further contribute to the desertification and depletion of these areas, in terms of local socio-economic development, and then the people that managed to stay at and live there. So in that sense, I think that this idea of renewable energy colonialism also as an analytical lens, some say, so as some glasses to look at the renewable energy transition, and which inequalities is easy to create in as well, and which types of further discrimination and injustices is it reproducing and creating anew—I think it’s very important then, both in relations between the Global North and the Global South, but also within the Global North.
And I think for that also something very important, that is important as well for the case of the green hydrogen which you were bringing to the discussion earlier, is precisely also this idea that with globalisation and the new liberal capitalist system that we live in, what contributes also to this colonialism, and these power relations is precisely these big corporations, large corporations that are often foreign to the countries where they are exploring and extracting these resources, and exploring these communities, and therefore they really don’t have their interests at heart, no? So it’s often deployment of this infrastructure, and these extractive activities in a very, well, colonialist and extractivist way, with no connection and no concerns for local communities.
NM: Okay, thank you so much. So yeah, so I think in Portugal, it is all the hydro energy that is a great example of what you’re just describing, energy colonialism in Portugal. And with that, I think I’m going to ask you a question in relation to the USA. So given the significant amount of land that will be required for wind farms to meet energy or consumption needs, how do you think we can balance the need for renewable energy with concerns around the land use and ecological impacts?
SB: Yes, so that’s a very good question. And I think that also, again, it links to the first question that we were talking about, and, and I think it’s really going forward, what we need is also a more degrowth mindset and economy and perspective, no? So I think the even when we think about, you know, the right to have access to energy, and that everyone in the world can access that, that needs to be thought about through also considering that some people in the world and specifically in the Global North, really need as well to reduce their consumption of energy and the modern way of life or as some others put it, no, this imperial mode of living that is typical of the Global North. And, if you look even at some of the Sustainable Development Goals, and some of the policies that European Union is supporting towards the green and digital transitions, actually, they don’t want to change that that imperial mode of living. So they want to just continue with business as usual and renewable energy technologies within this format, within this logic will just be, you know, continuing this economic growth model no, and that for sure, it will, again, reproduce existing inequalities, it will reproduce energy poverty. So the ones that were previously poor in different dimensions will most probably continue in being poor, because precisely the modus operandi, so to say, exactly the same as our fossil societies that are anchored and based in structural colonialism and inequalities, racism, sexism, and all of these structural, again, inequalities that are constitutive of this model of our society. So therefore, I think the problem that needs to be tackled is precisely that is to always think about these issues in conjunction. And so, thinking that, we really need this degrowth perspective to allow us as well, for moving forward with the really renewable energy transition, but in a way that is more equal to all, and that also allows for more participation and engagement of everyone in that process. And for that, we need more decentralised models for the energy transition, we need to take decisions closer to communities that will be affected by that, we need to think precisely about energy transitions that can be done more at that community and regional level, because even that’s what allows us to prevent this Global North Global South renewable energy colonialism, right? Because the problem here is often that no, that we, in the models we use nowadays, we can be producing and extracting resources and energy from certain places that are very far away from the places where they will be consumed. And so obviously, that also helps with losing the trace of the negative impact, that even for instance, getting rare earth minerals that are needed for wind farms have for local communities that are far away from where those wind farms are going to be deployed. So again, I think the key might be precisely in thinking more about renewable energy transitions through this logic of degrowth on one hand, and decentralisation and these ethics of care for everyone at a global level and at the local level, all at the same time in an integrated way.
NM: Thank you so much. Portugal is at the front of the renewable energy transition. In 2021, 5066 GWh of electricity was generated in Portugal (of which 88.5% from renewable sources and including roughly 45% generated by hydropower, mostly large-scale dams). Can you give examples of community contestations against hydropower plants in Portugal, and also some examples of health-related harm, or psychological harm, provoked by hydropower infrastructures?
SB: So, as I was saying, with some colleagues, I was doing some research on hydropower plants, projects and how they were deployed throughout the last century, and so that means throughout the dictatorship that was imposed in Portugal for several decades, and then from there through to the democratic period that we that started in 1974, and still today. And what we see is precisely that something similar in the deployment of these infrastructures, throughout these different socio-political regimes, is that they are deployed in this logic of progress and all economic growth that is characteristic of capitalism. And it is that logic that also makes it obviously, the very big differences between the socio political-regimes or individual freedoms and practical ideals and rights, but that transversal aspect of capitalism makes it precisely then, that these infrastructures are similarly deployed in a way that these regards to the impacts they have for local communities for local socio-ecological systems as well, and therefore, they create obviously, a lot of psychosocial negative impacts as well in the communities living nearby them. It was interesting, for instance, because a lot of this research to look at psychosocial impacts in the beginning of last century for instance, we had to go to archival materials to see how these psychosocial impacts were documented. And it was interesting, for instance, to see that in the 1950s, or even 1960s, for instance, these dams now were completely non-existent idea for local communities, and so local communities have thought of them as a cut now in the river, which is quite interesting to think about that that’s precisely what it is, is having like this wild river that lives in harmony with the communities, nearby them, and that is being almost cut and slaughtered in a way by these large dams. And so in a lot of this work, we’ve documented precisely that type of psychosocial impact that happens a lot, obviously, when dams have large fields, villages, and that has happened also, even in Portugal’s recent history, that entire villages had to be relocated somewhere else, because of the construction of these dams. But dams affect also other local communities that even if they don’t have to relocate, or their houses are submerged that live nearby them, though, because they really affect the local environment, and the livelihoods therefore, that are dependent on it, all the surrounding local communities. And then what we managed to do with this archival research as well, which was very important too, was precisely to also then unearth almost, no, so bring to the fore, and give voice to actually, to these contestations to these hydropower plants, that somehow also happened during the dictatorship, so many decades ago, even if obviously, in a very different way, than what they could be or how they could happen in the democratic period. But again, through these almost oral history materials, we managed to identify that there were communities and people that were against these things now, and that would like to contest the construction of these dams then, and that has continued again, from then to nowadays, not only with hydropower projects still that are presented, often in public policies, and by the Portuguese government as renewable energy. But again, more and more activists and academics have contested that notion precisely because we know nowadays of the many socio-environmental impact, negative impact that large dams can create, and so more and more, they are less considered, at least in these contexts, as renewable, as renewable energy. And, but on top of that, also, more recently, we have witnessed the same type of impact by wind farms, and more recently now by solar power plants. So now, the push in Portugal is, as I said, also for this green hydrogen idea, but that hasn’t really started yet, at least in a more material way. But also what has been happening more in the last years, is the deployment of these large huge solar plants as well, and that has also been very contested by communities precisely because, for instance, we have this case in Alentejo in the south of Portugal, where a community started to develop and implement this idea of a renewable energy community and which you, so as a community, you try to make it self-sufficient from an energy point of view, by having solar panels say, that are at the community scale, or even at the household scale, that are enough to make that community self-sufficient. And, so they picked up on this idea of renewable energy communities that is also being, trying to be fostered in Portugal and at European Union level, through specific legislation and all that. And then, soon after, they started to try and develop and implement this renewable energy community, they just heard that a huge solar plant, precisely to feed into this green hydrogen idea or it will be one of the purposes of it, at least it could be, this huge solar plant would be built also very near where this renewable energy community was trying to be developed, and obviously dismayed, this community contested that solar plant, precisely because what often local communities want is the more smaller scale decentralised options, and not these large scale infrastructures that ruin the landscape, ruin the symbolic and cultural relations that they, and attachments that they establish in those places and those landscapes, and also sometimes even farming lands and other uses of the land that are significant to the local communities, and to local livelihoods.
NM: Thank you so much, Dr Susana. So another interesting dimension to the renewable energy acceptance is the concept of NIMBY. Can you briefly talk about the concept, Not In My Backyard (NIMBY)? How are developers, policymakers, the media and active protestors using the NIMBY rhetorically, and what are the consequences?
SB: A lot of the research that I’ve done has been precisely looking at how this NIMBY idea, no, is used by developers and politicians, the media as well sometimes, to basically accuse these local communities that oppose these infrastructures, of being just irrational and ignorant, and selfish. So it’s a way for them to delegitimize that opposition by saying, well, you’re only opposing that solar plant, for instance, or that hydropower plant, because you are a NIMBY now, because you are being selfish, because you live next to it. Now, if it was being built somewhere else, you wouldn’t care about it. And actually, what research has been showing more and more is that NIMBY doesn’t stand out, no, as an explanatory framework. So say, for local opposition, for local communities’ opposition to this renewable energy infrastructures, it actually doesn’t fit, no; it’s not it’s not a good explanation, precisely because what research has shown more and more is that what is at stake, is the fact that these processes are made in a very top-down, imposing and even dictatorial way, so to say, so they are not up for discussion, they don’t involve conveniently the local communities and all the other stakeholders that will be affected by these projects. As we’ve already discussed, a little bit here also, what happens is that even when there are some public consultation processes, those are very tokenistic. So they actually, you know, might then involve some slight little changes in the project, but not, for instance, a real discussion about if a project should go ahead or not, in that specific location, or somewhere else, and so on and so forth. And so in this way, that people in local communities, obviously they feel powerlessness, and they feel disempowered, even from, deciding about their own life, no, their own communities, sometimes even in the case of the submersion of villages from hydropower plants, as we’ve seen, even they lose the control and the autonomy of their own houses and households. So obviously, it’s all these dimensions of injustice that create local opposition and that’s what activists and researchers have been increasingly making more clear, no, and showing that it is not about NIMBY, it is not about people not knowing what can be the benefits of hydropower plants, or just reacting emotionally because it’s being built close to them, but it’s about them knowing what is important for them and for their local communities and for their culture.
So researchers are, all even more recently, no, being more aware also of the dangers of using NIMBY as an explanation and again, actually, even for researchers, as I’ve also highlighted in a lot of my work, that move is only now starting to happen. But for developers and even for, as I said, politicians, governments, local authorities, media, NIMBY is very often used to just dismiss when local communities oppose these infrastructures and obviously, it is very helpful for them to precisely dismiss and delegitimise local communities’ opposition. And so that’s why I think it is helpful to more and more not use the concept of NIMBY, or only use it to show how actually we are talking about issues of injustice when people oppose energy infrastructures, and trying to engage policymakers and local authorities and developers more and more through this lens of injustice and the inequalities these projects often create.
NM: Thank you, thank you, Dr Susana. It was really wonderful having you here, on this episode. I really enjoyed talking to you and discussing about energy colonialism in the global South and in Global North as well. I would really like to thank you for taking the time to come and share your over a decade of experience with us.
SB: Thank you so much, Nyasha; it was really great to discuss these issues with you. And yeah, thank you for all the very important questions that you brought to our conversation as well.
NM: And, thank you, Shahzad, for hosting us today.
SG: With that, I would like to thank our guest, Dr Susana Batel, and our interviewer, Nyasha Milanzi, for joining us on this episode of Atmospheric Tales. Thanks to all our listeners for tuning in; make sure to subscribe and share!
In this episode we will discuss coastal zone management, sustainable development, and social and gender impact assessment in Barbados.
Our guest Dr Janice Cumberbatch is a Lecturer of Social and Environmental Management at the University of West Indies at Cave Hill, Barbados. She has over 30 years professional experience in participatory research, environmental management, social and gender impact assessment, heritage tourism management, meeting facilitation and training. She has also published several articles in the areas of environmental management, climate change, social planning and sustainable development. Her research is focused on participatory approaches to social and gender impact assessment; Investigations of social and gender resilience in climate change and disaster risk management; and Applications of change management in the public sector and in civil society groups.
Our interviewer Shifali Mathews is a PhD student in Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on using environmental epidemiological methods to promote health equity and environmental justice in the era of a changing climate.
Episode notes and references:
Music by: Ritesh Prasanna
Audio editing and transcripts by: Paras Singh and Raag Sethi
Podcast website: https://atmospherictales.com
Transcript:
JC: Janice Cumberbatch (Guest)
SM: Shifali Mathews (Interviewer)
SG: Shahzad Gani (Host)
SG: Welcome to Atmospheric Tales, a podcast that amplifies stories and experiences related to air pollution and climate change from around the world.
I’m your host, Shahzad Gani, and welcome to another episode of the Atmospheric Tales. Our guest today is a lecturer of Social and Environmental Management at the University of West Indies at Cave Hill, Barbados. She has over 30 years of professional experience in participatory research, environmental management, social and gender impact assessment, heritage tourism management, meeting facilitation, and training. She has also published several articles in the areas of environmental management, climate change, social planning, and sustainable development. Her research is focused on participatory approaches to social and gender impact assessment, investigations of social and gender resilience in climate change and disaster risk management, and applications of climate change management in public sector and civil society groups. I’m excited to welcome our guest, Dr. Janice Cumberbatch.
Our interviewer today is Shefali Matthews, who is a PhD student in Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on using environmental epidemiological methods to promote health equity and environmental justice in the era of a changing climate. Welcome to the show, Janice and Shefali!
SM: Thank you so much for the introduction, Shahzad, and welcome to the show, Janice!
JC: Thank you very much for having me.
SM: I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to discuss your perspectives on social and environmental management, which really brings together multiple disciplines to solve critical issues in people’s daily lives. In particular, I’m excited to learn about your expertise in the blue economy, and participatory processes, as well as heritage tourism management and coastal zone management in Barbados, and in the Caribbean region. Barbados, like other Caribbean countries, is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as sea level rise, ocean acidification, and more frequent and intense natural disasters, such as hurricanes, to name a few. Could you elaborate on how these effects can impact the lives of the inhabitants, and the economic activities of the country?
JC: Certainly, no problem at all! Thanks very much for giving me the opportunity to discuss these issues. So one of the features that’s really critical to dealing with the fact that we’re so vulnerable to climate change, is that we must have effective early warning systems; and, that seems straightforward, like, just have an early warning system. But, the truth of the matter is that, it has to be diverse; I just had a student who did research on this. You’ve got a heterogeneous population, you’ve got people who are of different ages, genders, socio-economic levels, different capacities. So, when you want to put an early warning system in place, you have to consider what are the diverse ways you have to use to get people informed. Apps are really wonderful; and that might work with the modern, you know, Gen Z population, but the older folk are still listening to the radio. So, we actually have to be very diverse in designing early warning systems. But then we have to think about things such as insurance, because trying to address vulnerability means that you have to put something in place for people who might not be able to prepare very well, and they need to recover, and some of the most vulnerable populations don’t have what they need to recover; and, insurance is a primary example of that. There are still sectors such as the fishing sector where people are unable to ensure their boats and their gear. In that regard, we’re really happy to have the CCRIF, because what the CCRIF does, and by the CCRIF, I’m talking about the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility—they have made it possible for, first of all, governments to have premiums that allow them to apply for relief in the aftermath of something like a hurricane, so that timeframe that governments took to recover from a bad event. And you know, we have bad events regularly in terms of hurricanes in the Caribbean; we are one of the most disaster-prone regions, in that regard. Governments can now, based on the premium they have with the CCRIF, they can now apply for and get a cash injection to start the process of cleanup and recovery, getting utilities back in place and the like. But more importantly, what CCRIF has also done is put some other products in place; the one that I particularly like is the one that we call the COAST—the Caribbean Ocean and Aquaculture Sustainable FaciliTy, and that one targets the very vulnerable, especially the fishing communities, to help them in the aftermath again, of an event, to recover. So we have to think about products like the CCRIF and its other elements such as COAST, and how we can expand on those; we need to understand how we can get the mainstream financial institutions and insurance institutions to come on board so that these vulnerable communities like fishing communities, can better be prepared to respond in the event of a hurricane or a volcano. So yeah, we’re very vulnerable, but we have had some opportunities through, as I said, the Caribbean Catastrophic Risk Insurance Facility and its other products to help governments and vulnerable communities respond better; and, you know, we are working on getting things like early warning systems set up properly, so that it doesn’t just target a few, but it gets to everybody, understanding the diversity within our populations. If we don’t do things like that, then you know, we take really long to recover; governments are then plagued with trying to find ways to support the most vulnerable. Barbados experienced hurricane Elsa, I think it was back in 2019 perhaps and I may have that year wrong, I’ll have to check; but it was a few years ago, and the government is still housing some people and paying rent for people who lost their homes during Hurricane Elsa, because at the end of the day, what happened was that their houses were lost, and the government had to find somewhere to put them up. It was actually 2021, I just checked; so we’re starting 2023, and the government is still carrying the burden of paying for housing for people who lost their homes, and who didn’t have insurance during that period, and helping them put houses back in place, so they can move out of rental facilities, and get back into their own homes. These are just some of the realities of being a small and a developing state, with limited resources and vulnerable communities.
SM: Great, thank you so much for sharing. So, you did share some of the challenges and adverse impacts of climate change and these realities in this region, but you also did share some solutions such as the early warning systems. So, building off of these climate adaptation strategies, what do effective investments in coastal infrastructure look like to impact resilience and to also potentially yield ecosystem benefits, and what kinds of benefits are needed to ensure equitable results for tourists and residents?
JC: Okay, so Barbados has been very fortunate because we have taken coastal management very seriously going as far back as 1983, where we had a project to assess what we needed to protect our coastlines. And by 1996, we’d established our Coastal Zone Management Unit; the Coastal Zone Management Unit in Barbados is heralded as a significant, successful project and a successful unit, and the reason why, is because they have been able to get it right. It’s not just a case of investing in the hard structures; it’s not just a case of investing in revampments and groynes and boardwalks; it’s a lot more than that. What we were able to do through the Coastal Zone Management Unit, which we call the CZMU is, we started by the baseline studies; we studied it, we studied our coastal and oceanographic processes to understand how the Barbados coastline works, so you had to invest, first of all, in understanding your coastline. Because you had, first of all, to appreciate the fact that your coastline was critical; you had to have a vision of the importance and understanding of your coastline in terms of protecting, supporting your economy, supporting livelihoods and protecting your country as a whole; so we studied it. We then did comprehensive risk evaluations of our coastline, and we did multi-hazard evaluations in terms of wind and earthquakes and storm surges and erosion and the like. We did vulnerability assessments, including a social vulnerability assessment; we did risk assessments. We moved from there, and we’ve established, now what we call, the National Coastal Risk Information and Planning Platform, because we have to have a database that allows us to put all that information there, update it regularly, to be sure that we can constantly be able to respond effectively. It’s after you’ve put all of that in place, and believe me, that was done through significant loans from the Inter American Development Bank, but again, the competence of the Coastal Zone Management Unit, because they were well established, they had a plan, they had an act, their staff were competently trained, their capacity was built, they were able to carry out these programmes through these loans successfully; then you start on the infrastructure, because you can’t just go and drop infrastructure in the ocean—you can exacerbate the situation. So you’ve understood the situation, and then you start on the coastal infrastructure. We’ve done different projects; we’ve constructed different types of coastal defences, we’ve done shoreline enhancement, in terms of walkways and headlands and breakwaters, yeah, in an effort to reduce flood. We had coastal areas that were more susceptible to flooding than other areas; we had coastal areas that were more susceptible to erosion than other areas. By doing the study, we understood this and then we could design the correct offshore or onshore structures that would work, whether it was a revampment or boardwalk or otherwise. We also then invested in ecosystem-based adaptation; we did a pilot project looking at regeneration and construction. So understand that we didn’t just say, okay, we need to protect the city, we’re gonna put up a seawall—we didn’t take that approach. No, the approach we took was this, let’s understand our coastline, let’s put together a database, let’s understand the the climate risk, and then let’s design, let’s do modelling. And I can tell you that any structure that the Coastal Zone Management Unit puts in place, undergoes both mathematical as well as physical modelling, so they take it very seriously, and this comes at a significant cost. We have been very fortunate that the Inter American Development Bank has invested heavily in helping us to protect our coastline in this way. Yeah, that is, in terms of effective investment, you don’t start with the hard structures, you start with understanding your coastline, you start by understanding your risk, and then you design and implement, and sometimes you have to adjust them in instances where things may have to be adjusted. But yeah, that was the approach that the Coastal Zone Management Unit took, and it has, has worked for us so far.
SM: That’s great to hear, that the coastal zone management has really been tailored to the context of the local issues in Barbados. So, in addition to the impacts of climate change that we’ve discussed, there are other environmental issues such as plastic pollution, poor water and waste management, that threaten Caribbean countries economics and biodiversity. For example, studies in Barbados show that visitors value the quality of coastal and marine resources, such as white beaches, sea water quality, and thriving coral reefs. Therefore, tourism would be heavily affected by the loss of those assets. Can you tell our listeners what the blue economy is, and how it can integrate solutions that can guide Caribbean countries towards real sustainable development? Especially because the blue economy has become important in Barbados to the point where the Ministry of Marine Affairs has incorporated blue economy on its name and agenda. So if you can comment on how effective blue economy efforts and policies are, including main challenges.
JC: Sure, no problem. I smiled when you asked this question because we have seen in Barbados, and I’m sure you have similar scenes in the US and other parts of the world, cool soup warmed over, meaning, old concept new name. The thing about the ocean is that, we’re island people—Barbados is an island, the ocean has always been critical to our economy, our livelihoods, and the lives of Caribbean people. Now, new branding is cool; it brings new, renewed focus on the importance of an issue or a resource in this case, and sometimes it helps mobilise resources. And that’s how I like to see the blue economy because, blue economy is fundamentally talking about the use of ocean resources for economic growth, to improve livelihoods and jobs. Well, when you live in an island, you’ve constantly been using the ocean for those purpose. You use it to feed yourselves, you use it because of fish. You use it in your tourism product; people come and it’s our beaches that attract them. It’s critical to transportation and transportation routes. So when everybody started talking about blue economy, green economy, pink economy, I’m like okay, branding, nice, that’s rebranded, let’s brush it off, make it fresh; but the point is, let’s perhaps take a different look at it, and let’s understand how we can use it better. That’s how I see the blue economy. So, I think the epitome of how Barbados is perhaps demonstrating that it’s taking blue economy seriously, is that we’re finally getting our marine spatial plan in place. We’ve been playing with this for a long time now. We’ve had several efforts at establishing marine spatial plans, marine protected areas, whatever. But very recently—and again, the Coastal Zone Management Unit is central to this—Barbados received the grant from The Nature Conservancy back in July 2022, and it helped to establish something called the Barbados Environmental Sustainability Fund. And then, in September of that same year, the government of Barbados entered into a debt conversion transaction with the IADB again, with TNC, The Nature Conservancy as major partners. A critical part of the funding coming out of that debt conversion, is financing of a unit to establish our marine spatial plan. And in trying to establish our marine spatial plan, we’re finally saying, look, the ocean is critical to us, we have to protect it into the future; how are we going to do this? Let’s bring all of the players in place, so let’s have the difficult conversation. We will not be having a series of podcasts around easy topics, nobody does that; we have series like these around difficult questions. When you try to make your blue economy work for you, you have to consider the gains. Why do I say you have to consider the gains? You have to consider the gains because immediately, everybody thinks about what they’re going to lose. Everybody started saying oh, well, there’d be no fish zones, or we won’t be able to pursue oil and gas in the way that we might have wanted to pursue that particular industrial effort. So people immediately go to the, oh my goodness, we’re going to lose things. What we have to be clever and strategic in doing around the marine spatial plan, around trying to make your blue economy thrive, is look at what are the gains, and ensure that people buy into and understand the gains. Let me give you an example. Barbados has been engaged in solar energy since 1970; we established solar heaters on our roofs since 1970. You can do the mathematics. But we didn’t go beyond that; we were very happy to have warm water to shower with in the morning, but we missed the opportunity to take the option of this beautiful sunshine that we have and use it, you know, for more renewable energy source options. So now in 2023, we’re trying to move towards having fully renewable energy economy by 2030 or thereafter, but we had, sort of, heaters since 1970. Gas, however, gas products were nice and cheap; so we weren’t worried about putting gas in our cars. Now they’re phenomenally expensive again, we’re thinking about moving in this direction; climate change is more of a threat, there’s more of an impetus to move in that direction. The issue, though, was back then, we did not see beyond, well, we just have some warm water, but you know, we don’t have to pursue this any further, because we can afford gas. We didn’t think about the broader gains to us, as a society if we had pushed that envelope further. So if I come back now to blue economy and marine spatial plans, if we want to be successful, if we are really going to push the gains that we can gain from our ocean resources, and use them sustainably, we can’t just look at the short term benefits, as we did with solar heating in 1970, and beyond; we have to say, what are the long term benefits of pushing the envelope with our blue economy? Making a decision to establish a marine spatial plan that undoubtedly will have some stakeholders losing or changing the way which, a better way of putting it I should say, change the way in which they operate, but ultimately, they’d be, again, down the road. If they’re short term gains that you can demonstrate from now, that’s wonderful as well, but getting everybody to buy into the gains is actually the difficult part of blue economy, and marine spatial planning policies, and the like, because people tend to see the short term losses. So the trick is, the struggle is, how do we get everybody to buy into the blue economy gains, in terms of the long term? It also has implications for coastal developments, not just fishers, not just oil and gas, but as a tourism destination; everybody who wants to build a tourism facility, wants to put it on the coastline. We already know that that is a problem, we already see the risk of coastal developments. So the question is are we really, really ready to push the envelope on blue economy and taking the difficult decisions now by getting people to buy into and support the long term gains?
SM: Thank you so much for sharing your perspective. I definitely agree that this will require a paradigm shift from short term thinking to long term thinking, especially with the current issues that we’re facing in terms of sea level rise and other pertinent environmental challenges, along with what we’ve mentioned before about social vulnerability. Tourism is also an important economic activity in Barbados, that besides the beneficial outputs, it also brings harmful human practices that are destroying coastal marine marine environment through overfishing, marine pollution, ecological imbalance, and more. Can you describe the main challenges for the sustainability of tourism in the face of climate change, along with all other relevant socio-economic barriers, such as green taxes and operating cost, especially in small island developing states of the Caribbean region?
JC: I’m happy to do so. I’d like to answer that question, if I may be permitted, by giving a quote from a book that was written by Polly Pattullo, back in 2005. And to my mind, the best part of that book was the preface written by Michael Manley, which, of course, was a former prime minister, back in Jamaica, you know, in that era. And introducing her book, Michael Manley had this to say—listen very, very carefully to this—because tourism is a balancing act, and the statement gets it right. Michael Manley said, “The tourism industry is here to stay, but the question which we dare not ignore is whether we the Caribbean people, are going to have the wit and the will to make it the servant of our needs. If we do not, it will become our master, dispensing pleasure on a curve of diminishing returns, while it exacerbates social divisions and widens that legacy of colonialism—the gap between the small comfortable minorities, and a large majority that is barely surviving at the social margin.” He said that it could be an engine of short term cash enhancement, and long-term disaster, or it could be that thing that supported and benefits our economies. I like that quote; I really, really love the introduction that he gave to that book, because that is what tourism is in the Caribbean. That’s what tourism is, in Barbados—a balancing act. We need tourism. I teach in an environmental department—Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies. My students all come and they’re all excited to support the environment, and save the environment, save turtles, save coral reefs; and it’s laudable, it’s wonderful, good goals. And then they all say, oh, tourism is the enemy. And I looked at them, and I said, but you’re here because of tourism. If we take tourism out of the equation, how are we going to feed ourselves in some of our islands? Not only are we very disaster-prone in the Caribbean, in terms of hurricanes and volcanoes, but we’re the most tourism dependent region in the world. So let’s take tourism out of the economy; how are we going to eat? We can’t eat. So that’s our real time challenge. Tourism does have negative elements, but we have to control it. And that’s what we’ve been trained to do for decades, in the Caribbean, and in Barbados. It means, again, the point I made about convincing people about the gains for everybody. We have to have hotels, we have to have attractions, we have to have Airlift; but what do we do about those to make them sustainable? How do we encourage and enhance sustainability in all aspects of the very diverse tourism industry? Because tourism is accommodation, it is transportation, it is food and beverage, it is, you know, it’s everything. There’s nothing that tourism does not touch; and I challenge you to tell me something that tourism does not touch in an island context. So, what do we actually do? Well, we actually need to perhaps return to elements such as things like the Green Climate Fund, because you have funds out there that can help regions that can help regions, that can help islands like Barbados, better manage how they are able to organise themselves, organise their economies, pay their people. And let me explain what I mean about that. If you are a prime minister, and you have to meet your weekly or monthly wage bill, you have to do it, you have to have money. And most of the time, that money is coming from tourism. So when somebody comes into your country, and they offer to develop a resort, in a standing mangrove, you have a hard decision to make. Everybody talks about corrupt politicians, I’m not talking about corrupt politicians. I’m not wasting my time with that. I want to talk about the politicians who meanwhile, have a really hard time, because literally, they have to figure out how on earth do I protect this wetland, but pay these wages on a regular basis, because this particular resort will bring me more taxes and all the rest of it? Now, this is where the other products come in, right? This is where things like the Green Climate Funds and the conservation funds, such as the one that we’ve established to set up the marine spatial plan, comes in, but we have to understand how to use those things. A very, very important statistic that I learned recently, you know that we have the Green Climate Fund, okay, and they were like, 312 billion US dollars in climate finance flows to non-OECD countries in 2018, but only 31 billion went to Latin America and Caribbean. And if that figure was further disaggregated, a very small amount would have come to the Caribbean. And the reason why it is, is because we have not yet sufficiently understood how to reach out, assess and grab those funds, to help us support the conservation and climate elements that we need to do, so that perhaps we’re not that reliant then, on the tourism dollars, so we can negotiate better with the tourism developers and say, yeah, we want your money, but this is how we want your money; or we can say that from a position of strength, like yes, tourism is important to our country, but you’re going to do tourism in a way that it benefits our people, that they’re going to get the right jobs because they’re trained for those jobs, so don’t bring outsiders in, and let us hire our nationals from manager right through the chain of employment opportunities in your property, and your operation. Put your facility where we have earmarked, because we have a national development plan that tells us where tourism development is going to take place; but it’s not where you want to put it, it’s here, because we’ve done the studies, and this is the best place for us. But we have to leverage everything that is available to us, so that we can stand up with a position of strength, and say that. If you’re always chasing after a dollar bill from a developer whose main interest is profit, and not necessarily the sustainability of your country, if you’re always chasing that dollar bill, you’ll never get to sustainability. But if you go after the products that are there, like the Green Climate Fund and all the rest of it, you build up your resilience as a small island developing state. If you understand those mechanisms—and they’re complicated—but we have facilities like the Caribbean Climate Change Centre in Belize, and the Caribbean Development Bank, who are trying to put on courses to help their member countries within the CARICOM (Caribbean Community), which is the grouping of Caribbean countries; we have those entities trying to build capacity in Caribbean countries and Caribbean governments to understand how to access those funds to strengthen the resilience, to build your adaptive efforts. And then, from that position of strength, you’re able to see, we still want tourism, but we’re defining the context in which we want that tourism. So it’s all connected, you can’t divorce investor funding in terms of the money that you’re gonna get from a private sector investor to build a resort, from the funding that you’re trying to get from something like the Green Climate Fund; you have to leverage the two of them for a position of strength to build your resilience as a small island developing state.
SM: Wonderful.I love that you shared the relevant quote in example, because it really shows the practicality of tourism in both economic and political activities. I’d like to shift gears a little bit and learn more about the participatory processes that you’re involved in, particularly social and gender impact assessments. What particular considerations go into these social and gender impact assessments? And in general, how do you characterise social vulnerability? And I’d also be interested in learning if there are certain vulnerable populations that have been overlooked.
JC: Okay, so yeah, social and gender impact assessment is something that I’ve been doing for about three decades now. My role in the overall environmental impact assessment is to ensure that the voices of the potentially affected populations are heard. Okay, so you understand that environmental impact assessment is a tool, it’s a decision making tool; it’s a way of looking at a potential development, be it a golf club, or a coastal tourism resort, a new factory, a new road, a new solar farm—there are so many different things that we’re considering. At the same time, in a small country like Barbados, we have to consider how this proposed development, which is supposed to do all these wonderful things and bring jobs and enhance our economy, moves us towards sustainability. Environmental Impact Assessment is a tool that helps us to understand how I will interface with a bio-physical and social environment, so that we’re certain that by giving approval for this project to take place, we’re getting the benefits, and we’re minimising the negatives; that’s what EIA is all about. I come into the picture and give a voice to the potentially project-affected populations. So, if this is a road, a road is a wonderful thing. But, or any form of construction, the ultimate end goal is a good thing, but the construction period is a nuisance. There’s dust, there’s noise, there’s traffic diversions, impacts on people’s lives; elderly people who are at home, because they’re retired, they get impacted most because they’re getting noise all of the time. My job in doing social and gender assessments is to understand those impacts, make recommendations on how you can reduce those; because you’re going to build a road more likely than not, and you need the road, but you’ve got to construct it, so there going to be negative impacts. How can I identify who is likely to be most affected by those negative impacts in the short term? So, I have to characterise the impact; it’s going to be loss, it’s going to be noise, it’s going to last for X amount of period of time, it’s gonna be intermittent, it’s gonna be this time of the day or that time of the day, these are the populations that are most likely to be affected by it, how they’re going to be affected by it, here are recommended mitigation measures to reduce the impacts on them for the public good—because the road, or the boardwalk, or whatever we’re trying to build, is the public good. Now understand that project affected people can be all types, because I finished a project recently, where we were looking at additional coastal infrastructure for the protection of the island, but we have people who own properties on the coastline. They may be wealthier than some of the rest of us who can’t afford coastal properties, but they are project-affected people; they’re very concerned about the short term impacts that I just described, in terms of the construction. But they’re also then concerned about the long term impacts in terms of security. If more people can access the coastline now, because we’ve made it more accessible by a boardwalk, are they likely to have more security concerns? Because of course, we also have to factor in the turtles, we can’t put bring, or put floodlights on that boardwalk. So my job then is to interface with these stakeholders at all scales, and try to understand their issues, and make recommendations on how to relieve the stress on them. Now you use the word vulnerable, and the thing about social vulnerability is that, you know, it’s talking about how countries, people, communities respond to or recover from something. And some elements make us more vulnerable than other elements. So for example, obviously, if we have a lower socio-economic status, if we are an ethnic minority, if we are the elderly, if we’re impoverished, we are more likely to have a harder time recovering, from people who are the opposite of that, and they have wealth, and they have insurance and they have property. If somebody with insurance has a damaged property, they will pull the pin on their insurance policy, and get the money to do the repairs. If somebody doesn’t have an insurance policy, the government has to come to their assistance. So that’s what we’re talking about when we when we meet social vulnerability. In Barbados, we have the elderly to consider; they’re particularly vulnerable, and they may or may not have a support system in that maybe their family lives abroad, they no longer live in Barbados. People with disabilities are especially vulnerable, because they now have either a physical or a mental incapacity that prevents them from doing what fully abled people can do, so, they have this additional challenge in trying to face the hazard or the problem. The youth are particularly vulnerable, usually because the unemployment rate among young people is usually higher than with other demographic groups, so they have a hard time bouncing back. And another group that’s particularly vulnerable are the LGBTQIA+ group, because many of our societies still have laws that make them illegal, make their practices illegal; we still have societies that frown upon that group. So literally, by virtue of their lifestyle, they’re more vulnerable. So we have groups that are faced with the same climate-related hazard, faced with an economic challenge, their options are reduced, and they’re less able to respond. And that’s what I look at, I look at those social vulnerabilities. I also look at issues such as the built environment, because some things in, within the built environment might also make people more vulnerable in terms of where they’re living. Their choices of location may be limited, and therefore, they may be living on slopes that are prone to slippage, or they may be living in unregulated housing, which is also known previously, as you know, squatter communities with limited utilities or other resources. So their built environment can also be a factor that will contribute to their problems. Barbados is a very small island, it’s only 166 square miles—so the urban-rural split for us, it’s not as big an issue, but in larger Caribbean locations, people who are in very rural locations, sometimes also are disadvantaged, by basically not having easy transportation access, by not having basic access to some provisions, such as water and electricity in the way that you would in an urban or suburban experience. So social vulnerability are the inherent characteristics of, you know, gender, race, ethnicity, social status, but also external factors that make you vulnerable. Can you access medical care easily? How far are you from a medical facility? And if you get to that medical facility, can you afford to pay for it? Do you have a free system? And even if the system is free, how long do you have to wait for it? Are you on social security? Is it enough to meet your basic needs? Those are some of the social vulnerability issues that I look at. And then when you interplay those social vulnerabilities in the context of climate, and the elements of climate that makes life more difficult in a small island developing state like Barbados, you understand why those groups are particularly vulnerable.
SM: Wow, you bring up key points around environmental justice, as the same populations that you mentioned with these socio-economic stressors, also face the most risks of climate hazards. Thank you so much, Janice, for joining us today.
JC: It was my pleasure. I hope that my few views are understood and I have added a little bit of wisdom out there that might be helpful to a few.
SG: With that, I would like to thank our guest, Dr Janice Cumberbatch, and our interviewer, Shefali Matthews, for joining us on this episode of Atmospheric Tales. Thanks to all our listeners for tuning in; make sure to subscribe and share!
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