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Exporting ESG: Can EU Standards Deliver Fair Sustainability in Global South contexts?

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In this blog, ISS Guest Researcher Kim-Tung Dao delves into the effects that European Union ESG (Environmental, Sustainability, and Governance) standards can have on export partners in the ‘Global South’. Whilst ESG regulations are an important tool for the EU to control corporate behavior, they can have unintended consequences on producers, including onerous paperwork, blocking access to markets, and creating hierarchies of knowledge and expertise. Rather than rigid models of compliance, the author argues for a more inclusive and flexible approach that concentrates on transformation.

Image Credit: Wikimedia

European Union ESG regulations are reshaping global business practices, but their impact on the Global South remains complex and contested. This blog looks at the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of EU ESG frameworks in countries in the ‘Global South’ and proposes pathways toward more inclusive and equitable sustainability governance that respects diverse contexts and knowledge systems.

The Global Reach of European ESG  Standards

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) regulations have emerged as central pillars in re-shaping corporate behavior toward sustainability, particularly within the European Union. The EU positions itself as a global regulatory leader, and its recent frameworks: the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), and Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR)- impose increasingly strict rules on companies operating within or trading with Europe.

While these frameworks aim to foster responsible capitalism and ecological stewardship, their influence extends far beyond European borders, raising a critical question: How do EU ESG regulations shape economic, social, and ecological outcomes in the Global South? Can these standards genuinely promote sustainable development globally, or might they inadvertently entrench existing asymmetries and constrain development pathways in the very regions they intend to benefit?

Economic Development: Opportunity or Exclusion?

Access to Green Markets 

EU ESG regulations can function as powerful catalysts for production upgrading (the process of moving to higher-value activities in global supply chains), enabling firms in the Global South to participate in emerging “green” value chains in EU countries. When effectively implemented, these standards allow exporters to secure long-term access to premium EU markets, differentiate products through sustainability credentials, and capture price premiums for verified sustainable goods. The International Trade Centre has documented how producers aligning with non-tariff environmental and social standards often gain entry to more stable, higher-value market segments, particularly in sectors like specialty coffee, ethical textiles, and certified forestry products.

However, the economic reality for many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Africa, Asia, and Latin America reveals a different picture. For these businesses, ESG regulatory compliance costs often represent a significant barrier. The financial burden of certification fees, auditing costs, and infrastructure investments can be prohibitive. Administrative complexity through extensive documentation and reporting requirements strains limited resources. Additionally, many SMEs face technical capacity gaps.  While the EU provides technical guidance documents, these often remain insufficient for practical implementation. The complexity of the regulations and guidance frequently drives SMEs to seek expensive external consultants, ironically often from EU or US firms, creating an additional financial burden and potential dependency that undermines the goal of empowering Global South businesses.

The EUDR starkly illustrates these challenges by mandating full traceability and due diligence for commodities like palm oil, cocoa, and soy. Research by ECDPM highlights how Indonesian palm oil producers, particularly smallholders, struggle with the mounting costs of compliance with traceability protocols (tracking systems). Without targeted support mechanisms, such regulations risk creating a “green barrier” to trade that disproportionately affects the most vulnerable actors in global supply chains.

Social Development: Empowerment or Imposition?

From a social perspective, ESG-driven supply chain due diligence can foster improved labor standards, gender equity, and protections against exploitation. As EU firms face increasing pressure to assess and mitigate human rights impacts across their value chains, this has stimulated rising investment in social infrastructure and monitoring systems. It has also encouraged greater stakeholder engagement with previously marginalized communities and advanced the development of grievance mechanisms and remediation processes (ways to raise complaints and fix problems). The Shift Project notes that ESG regulations can drive positive business and human rights outcomes when paired with effective enforcement and local capacity building. In sectors like cocoa and coffee, EU sustainability demands have encouraged certification schemes and community development programs, as documented in multiple Fairtrade Foundation reports.

However, these well- intentioned frameworks may inadvertently marginalize the very communities they aim to protect when not grounded in local contexts. While establishing fundamental workers’ rights is important, the challenge lies in how these standards are implemented. Many ESG standards emerge from European perspectives and risk disrupting informal economies that support millions of livelihoods, not because workers’ rights are inherently problematic, but because the implementation often lacks sensitivity to local economic realities. These frameworks often overlook local working traditions and traditional governance structures while imposing externally developed metrics that fail to reflect local contexts. In regions like West Africa, cocoa farmers often lack the support infrastructure to meet traceability requirements tied to deforestation monitoring, leaving them vulnerable to market exclusion. Moreover, rigid labor standards, if applied without considering local economic conditions and providing transition support, may displace informal workers without offering viable alternatives.

Environmental Governance: Protection or Appropriation?

Ecological Safeguards

Environmental sustainability constitutes the cornerstone of EU ESG policies. Regulations like the EUDR aim to curb global deforestation and biodiversity loss by demanding verifiable, sustainable sourcing. These measures can catalyze the restructuring of multinational supply chains to prioritize conservation, adoption of more transparent environmental practices, and increased investment in ecosystem restoration and protection. By raising environmental due diligence expectations, the EU is effectively internationalizing its Green Deal ambitions, potentially accelerating global progress toward climate targets and biodiversity conservation.

Sovereignty Concerns

Yet, these ecological gains may come at the cost of local autonomy and environmental justice. As the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) and the authors of ‘Pluriverse: a post-development dictionary’ argue, a “one-size-fits-all” model of environmental governance often overlooks Indigenous knowledge systems that have sustained ecosystems for generations. It often ignores local conservation practices that balance human needs with ecological integrity and fails to account for diverse cultural understandings of nature-human relationships. This dynamic can lead to what critics term “green colonialism,” wherein sustainability is imposed through externally defined metrics that sideline plural understandings of environmental stewardship. Furthermore, in many parts of the Global South, livelihoods and ecosystems are deeply intertwined. Forest-dependent communities, shifting cultivators, and pastoralists may find their access to land and resources restricted under ESG frameworks focused primarily on carbon storage and biodiversity indicators.

Toward Inclusive ESG: A  Pluriversal Approach

To ensure that ESG regulation contributes to truly equitable sustainability, fundamental shifts in both process and substance are essential:

Co-creation and Shared Governance

Standard-setting must evolve from top-down prescription to collaborative co-creation. This requires meaningful engagement with diverse stakeholders from the Global South throughout policy design, representation of civil society, smallholders, Indigenous peoples, and local governments in governance bodies, and effective mechanisms for incorporating local knowledge systems and perspectives.

Capacity Building and Transition Support

The implementation gap must be addressed through comprehensive support systems. This includes dedicated funding for SMEs to upgrade practices and technologies, development of accessible and affordable traceability tools training programs that reach marginalized producers, and flexible implementation timelines that recognize different starting points.

Just Transition Integration

ESG frameworks must explicitly incorporate principles of justice and equity at their core. They should balance climate and ecological goals with social development imperatives, use context-sensitive indicators that respect diverse sustainability models, integrate benefit-sharing mechanisms that compensate communities for ecosystem services, and recognize the “pluriverse” of sustainability approaches beyond Global North conceptions.

Beyond ComplianceToward Transformation

EU ESG regulation represents a promising step toward responsible global capitalism, but the promise alone is insufficient. For ESG standards to support equitable sustainability in the Global South, they must transcend box-ticking compliance and embrace deeper, more inclusive frameworks. A pluriversal ESG model, one that integrates diverse knowledge systems, promotes justice, and fosters ecological stewardship, can offer a path forward. This requires humility, dialogue, and genuine co-governance from European policymakers and businesses. Without these elements, ESG frameworks risk reproducing the very inequalities they ostensibly seek to eliminate. The path ahead demands not just technical solutions but fundamental reconsideration of how sustainability is defined, measured, and governed. Only then can ESG truly deliver on its promise of a more equitable and ecological global economy.

 

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Kim Tung Dao

Kim Tung Dao is a recent PhD graduate of the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research interests include globalization, international trade, sustainable development, and the history of economic thought.

 

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From the Brahmaputra to the Rhine: Tracing the Currents of Climate Mobility

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In this blog, Ranon Jahan, a researcher at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD, Dhaka, Bangladesh) brings together his thoughts following the Environmental and Climate Mobility Network conference held in Bonn, Germany, in July of this year. Through the comparative case studies of two rivers, he considers the interlocking issues of risk, climate mobility, and disaster governance.

Photo Credit: Rawnak Jahan Khan Ranon

“Millions of them must move”: a warning first voiced by William Vogt in 1948. Seventy-six years later, we are still counting millions of displaced people each year, with the numbers only growing. On 10th July 2025, as a young researcher from Bangladesh, I shared how it occurs in my home country at the Environmental and Climate Mobility Network (ECMN 25) Conference held in Bonn, Germany. The conference draws collective understanding on climate mobility which brought together 180 participants from across the world includes 128 presentations and 6 workshops. The whole conference was the platform for the researchers, practitioners and policy makers to share their findings, methods and recommendation. It explores both challenges and possibilities of governing climate mobility. These diverse perspectives reshaped how I see my work in global platform. This blog is my reflection on those connection where global narratives align with local realities, where they miss and why accountability in climate mobility governance matters now more than ever.

Two Rivers, One Story

I began my Bonn journey standing by the Rhine River, thousands of miles away from the Brahmaputra’s eroding banks in Bangladesh. The Brahmaputra is one of the largest rivers in the world, known for its powerful current and seasonal flood in Bangladesh. During monsoon, it becomes furious, with a shifting course. It can swallow homes, schools, agricultural land and entire villages, leaving families nowhere to go. When I was standing by the Rhine and looking into the its flowing water, I felt the same pulse of uncertainty that my fieldwork has shown me back home. Back by the Brahmaputra, my conversations with local communities were filled with stories of distress and uncertainty. Standing by the Rhine during the conference, listening to others speak of their own hardships and governance challenges, I realized those conversations were not so different after all. Presenting my findings there was more than a research, it was a way of placing a local story in a global current.

The conference quickly revealed that the issues I work on are not limited to one region. Listening to different research from around the world, I realized that the struggles of climate mobility transcend borders. In the same panel where one researcher presented statistics on Assam, India, estimating the staggering yearly costs of disasters, another shared how a single flood in Germany caused damages far exceeding those figures, despite advanced structural measures. The scale may differ, but the vulnerabilities and governance challenges are interconnected.

 

Photo Credit: Rawnak Jahan Khan Ranon

Beyond Climate: The Messy Web of Governance

Over three days, it became clear to me that climate mobility is not shaped by climate change alone. Geopolitics, global conflicts, and migration governance are constantly reshaping displacement narratives and dynamics. Much of the discussion revolved around finding better governance systems for this deeply complex issue. Yet, we also confronted a harder question: as researchers, are we clarifying or complicating the concept by layering on new terminologies?

The conference was a meeting ground of questions and stories of thriving, struggling, and striving migrants from across the globe, including my own presentation on displacement risk along the Brahmaputra. But when the conversation shifted from problems to solutions, the overwhelming complexity of governance took center stage. Speeches and presentations often concluded that governance needs to be both localized and global. Yet, the connection between the two is far more tangled than it sounds, echoing what some scholars describe through the lens of glocalisation—the uneven and sometimes contradictory ways global agendas are interpreted and reworked in local contexts.

My own presentation centered on multi-actor responsibility, leadership, and power-sharing as a way to reduce vulnerability to displacement at sub-national level. Yet, in reality, both Bangladesh and elsewhere, the governance remains limited, underperforming and far from adequately accountable. But after three days of attending different sessions, the questions left unclear to me is “who is accountable, how and to what extent?” In practice, accountability often moves through layers, what governments promise on paper, how institutions interpret it, and what actually reaches people on the ground. Yet true accountability should not end with legal or policy frameworks; it must be felt in practice through transparent decisions, meaningful participation, and clear limit on what those in power. And yet, I remain unclear about how this should ultimately be realized.

Photo Credit: Douwe van Schie

From Local Currents to Global Tides

One reality struck me that policy processes, reviews, advocacy, and negotiations move far slower than the pace of displacement. By the time governance systems are being negotiated, the communities we talk about have already been uprooted. Amidst all of these thoughts, my time in Bonn was overwhelming and filled with concerns and contested ideas around climate mobility. By the end, I couldn’t point to a single, immediate global action that would secure the rights and quality of life for millions at risk.

Yet, the conference was an eye-opener, giving me a macro lens to view my work. My story from the Brahmaputra may seem small in the grand scale of global climate mobility, but it resonated alongside every other study shared in those rooms. Each case added a knot to the tangled net of mobility challenges, showing the urgent need to both untangle these knots and zooming into those knots closely.

It left me with a powerful reminder that  local stories are never just local, they are threads in the global fabric of climate mobility, and understanding them is key to creating governance that is both just and effective.

Acknowledgement

The author’s participation in the conference was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant Agreement No. 884139).

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

 

About the author:

Rawnak Jahan Khan Ranon

Rawnak Jahan Khan Ranon is a Research Officer at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD). With a degree in Forestry, he has developed his expertise at the intersection of natural resource management and social research on climate change. His work focuses on forest management, displacement, locally led adaptation, and accountability. He continues to study how governance and adaptation affect the lives of vulnerable communities in Bangladesh.

Emphasizing locally-led knowledge interventions in cases of neglected humanitarian crises: Launching the Namibian Humanitarian Observatory

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In this blog, Sister Agrippina Nandjaa (Caritas Namibia) marks the opening of the Humanitarian Observatory in Namibia, considering the importance of ‘neglected crises’ and their intersection with climate change. The Observatory in Namibia joins a growing network of spaces for research, discussion, and advocacy, coordinated by The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre (HSC).

 

Image by Unsplash : Bernd Dittrich

The Namibia Humanitarian Observatory was launched on 24 May 2024 to create a space for discussion with communities and stakeholders around vulnerability to disasters across the country. The self-governed Observatory aims to engage communities prone to recurrent climate-related shocks to share experiences and explore pathways toward creative and self-reliant communities, especially in the case of drought. The widespread impact and long duration of drought make it one of the most costly hazards in Namibia. However, the impacts of drought can often be lessened through preparedness and early action aimed at decreasing community vulnerability and exposure. Namibia is the most arid sub-Saharan country, experiencing very high evapotranspiration rates (Mendelsohn et al., 2002). Consequently, it is exposed to recurrent droughts, with historically devastating consequences. A growing population, persistent poverty, and climate change provide even greater threats in the future. And, with the situation in Namibia often falling into the category of ‘neglected humanitarian crises; affecting international support and aid, we are reminded of the importance of the everyday actions and practices that drive humanitarian action from the local and grassroots level.

A platform for discussion and analysis around drought

In partnership with The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre (HSC) of the International Institute of Social Studies, the Namibia Humanitarian Observatory will be a platform for discussions that enable communities and authorities to respond to humanitarian crises. It will bring together communities to assess historical drought events and their extent and impacts in Namibia. It will facilitate the gathering and analysis of relevant data and explore the current institutions and systems involved in drought monitoring, forecasting, early warning, mitigation, and reduction in the country by subsistence farmers.

This space will also act as an early action initiative that initially focuses on rapid-onset hazards such as climate change awareness and strategies for subsistence farming. Agriculture is primarily the main activity for subsistence farming in Namibia. In its humanitarian work across the country, particularly now with the distribution of food parcels for vulnerable households, which includes undocumented people, Caritas Namibia has been thinking of what skills, training, and advocacy of recovery programs are needed in the long term in order to cope with protracted drought in the 14 regions of Namibia. Traditional farmers seem unable to cope with the changing weather and climate that has resulted in low rainfall during the farming season compared to 50 years ago. Now, Caritas Namibia, together with the local government authorities, wants to explore the way of rethinking lost skills, new skills, advocacy, and training for subsistence farmers to improve their household livelihood to counter dependence syndrome and increase the communities’ adaptive capacities. The Namibia Humanitarian Observatory will contribute to this objective and will also safeguard the importance of local and indigenous knowledge and practices when it comes to disaster preparedness, response, and prevention.

The launch was hosted in the Zambezi Regional Councils and was attended by the Governor of Zambezi region, the Councilors, and council staff, Joseph Moowa Kalokela, member of Namibia Observatory, Gabriela Anderson, community manager of HSC, Joram Tarusarira from the University of Groningen and member of the Namibia Observatory, and Agrippina Nandjaa, Coordinator of the Namibia Humanitarian Observatory and Caritas coordinator. The attendees of the launch were able to leave reflecting on how countries like Namibia, who are adversely and continuously vulnerable to the effects of climate change, can play a vital role in international politics in holding other countries accountable for their own roles in the changing climate, like the environmentally damaging consequences of warfare in Israel and Russia.

Together, the presenting team at the launch of the Namibia Humanitarian Observatory were able to gain the support of the local government in the Zambezi region of Namibia and further the roots of the Humanitarian Observatories. That is, the importance of discussing the role of different actors within the humanitarian field and how they work together (or not) in addressing humanitarian needs in a highly contextual and locally relevant way.

For more information about the Humanitarian Observatories, check out The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre website, and the information pages around the Humanitarian Governance (HUM-GOV) project. The Humanitarian Observatories regularly contribute interesting articles to BlISS. 

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the Author

Sister Agrippina Nandjaa

Sr. Agrippina Nandjaa is a Catholic religious sister lives and work in Namibia, and directing Caritas Namibia-Namibian Catholic Bishop’s Conference. Agrippina hold a master degree in development Studies-Social Policy from International Institute of Social Studies-Erasmus Rotterdam University, Honor degree in adult education and community development and Diploma in community education from the University of Namibia. She has experience over ten years. Agrippina is also coordinating the Namibia observatory which was lunched on 24 May 2024 in Zambezi region-Namibia.

 

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Contested Spaces and Narratives at COP28: A Reflection Piece

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In this blog, ISS MA student Manju von Rospatt reflects on her experiences at the UN Climate Change conference (COP28) held in Dubai from December 6 to December 13. Manju attended COP28 representing Eutopya and interviewed stakeholders and attendees at COP and contrasts the approach of indigenous, youth, and Global South representatives with the glitz of lobbyists from industry, and representing some of the biggest countries attending.

Image by Author.

From December 6th – December 13th, I took a short break from my regular academic routine at ISS to enter a very different world of high-stakes negotiations around climate change: the controversial and consequential 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) in the United Arab Emirates. Attending COP28, the largest climate conference to date, in Dubai was a dizzying experience. Like many participants, I entered the conference with ambivalence, unsure what the week would have in store both for me and the final statement. The news coverage that we read about COP28 in the mainstream media tends to be dominated by the progression of the formal (and closed door) negotiations processes taking place between the 200 member states of the UNFCCC. Yet, attending COP28 was so much more than following the official negotiations and drafting of the agreement text.

 

Clashing narratives and crossing paths

Together with the international youth media group Eutopya, I interviewed a host of people across countries and roles at the conference, from indigenous and youth leaders, environmental justice activists, and civil society leaders to researchers, negotiators, and politicians. If you’re interested in these interviews, please look out for updates from our podcast in the following weeks. Speaking to a cross-section of people across age, ethnicity, gender, sectors, roles, and regions, gave me a sense of how COP28 is a contested space, rife with contradictions between various factions campaigning with different methods and interests. Each constituency proposed different solutions: technological, market-based, political, social, or spiritual. Cognitive dissonance permeated my time at COP28, as I jumped between conversations and events with climate justice advocates calling for people-centred just transitions and with organizations focused on energy transitions alone. I found fewer spaces than I had hoped at COP28 that brought these disparate perspectives together into a holistic approach. I found that people tended to stay within their constituency bubbles through self-selection whilst at COP28. Several interviewees also commented that the spatial distribution of pavilions across the Expo City venue further facilitated the segregation of interest groups. Even within buildings at the conference, pavilions were juxtaposed in glaring ways. For example, to visit the climate justice and indigenous youth pavilions, one needed to walk past two floors of pavilions of large energy companies and organizations, including OPEC.

The national pavilions, with multi-million dollar price tags, featured carefully curated narratives of national sustainability. These were further presented and performed by country representatives at side-events. Clearly, green-diplomacy has become an opportunity for many countries to green-wash, exercise soft-power, and legitimize state activities.

The corporate presence at COP was also striking, particularly in the open and commercialized Green Zone,  has been likened to a trade fair.

Single-Person Electric Helicopter featured in the Green Zone

Alongside COP28, I attended the private-sector event World Climate Summit, hosted in a glitzy hotel by the World Trade Center. I heard mining executives explicitly discuss how to maintain and enlarge profit margins, by including corporate social responsibility and sustainability as a flashy ‘side initiative’.

Luxury Electric Car Shows in the Green Zone at COP28

At an event hosted by Chilean mining corporation SQM on “sustainable lithium mining,” an audience member, a mining executive from Nigeria, explicitly initiate a business deal mid-Q&A to expand mining operations together with SQM. Their explicit concerns about expanding profit with the transition towards renewables and disregard to rhetoric around sustainability could not differ more from the ones I heard from civil society.

 

Separate spaces for differing ‘solutions’

Coming from a social justice perspective, I was particularly interested in how indigenous leaders, youth groups, and Global South environmental justice advocates would position themselves at the conference, which was bound to focus mostly on the energy transition. I was curious as to what kinds of tension would emerge between the mainstream narratives and voices at the margins of the conference. According to Asad Rehman, Executive Director of War on Want, this was the first year in which civil society and climate justice organizers were able to secure an official pavilion. At past COPs, organizers would gather at the margins of the venues, hosting meetings on the lawn, benches, and cafes. Across interviews with civil society members, I heard that protests at COPs were increasingly prone to UN securitization and oversight. At the same time, formalized channels for CSO constituencies and youth representative negotiators are incrementally included in the formal COP negotiation process. Despite this progress, corporate and national interests glaringly dominate the COP process.

During the six days I spent at COP, I witnessed and participated in several protests in the UN-designated blue zone of the Expo City (the Green Zone lies within UAE’s jurisdiction and has a zero tolerance policy for protests). The protests called for everything from calling for negotiators to add the phrase “phase out of fossil fuels” to the final text, climate reparations through sovereign debt cancellation for African countries, ceasefire in Palestine, and centering indigenous voices. Among smaller daily protests, a large protest organized by the COP28 coalition of CSOs on December 9th made history; activists marched through the conference venue, demanding their voices to be heard.

Farooq Tariq, General Secretary Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee (PKRC) and president Haqooq Khalq Party, speaking to protestors about climate justice

On December 11, the COP28 coalition organized another historic event, the “People’s Plenary”, in counter-response to the market-based, technocratic and Eurocentric approaches to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Historic People’s Plenary on December 11th featuring climate justice speakers

Many activists I spoke with were particularly concerned about the location of COP28 in the authoritarian UAE as well as COP29 which will be held in Azerbaijan. Following UNFCCC regulations, all slogans, posters, and routes had to be planned with and approved days in advance by executive members of the UNFCCC secretariat, upon risk of being ‘debadged’ (having your access to the Conference taken away) and deported if the agreements were not upheld. Following the UN’s rules, organizers needed to refrain from phrases directly mentioning Israel or the US and avoid “Free Palestine” calls, though the more neutral “Ceasefire Now” was permitted.  I also heard multiple stories from interviewees of intimidation and debadging against climate activists from the UN security officers.

Final protest on the evening of December 12th as negotiators finalize the wording of the text

A final agreement written to serve corporate interests

As I write this now, the final COP28 document has passed, hailing “the beginning of the end to fossil fuel” due to the unanimous acknowledgment of the need to transition away from oil, coal, and gas. Yet, the final product of the non-binding agreement is full of frustratingly vague and softened language which will allow for many loopholes without clear targets or timing. Language such as “phasing-down unabated coal power” and “phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” clearly reflect the lack of scientists present at the conference (estimated at 0.5% of overall attendees) and high influence of fossil fuel lobbyists (with some 2,456 lobbyists present) and the political influence of OPEC. OPEC’s strategy was to have member states reject any language on phasing out fossil fuel production and rather push for language on reducing fossil fuel emissions, enabling further extraction and profit with promises of dubious carbon capture and storage technology.

Civil Society forms an unauthorized chain of solidarity, whispering “please support the phase out” to negotiators, in front of the entrance of the room in which final negotiations take place.

Though the outcome of COP28 has been a deep disappointment for many, it is a start: a beginning of the end to fossil fuels. I feel inspired by the fierce energy and tireless conviction with which civil society and activists, especially youth, have campaigned to build their coalition-based collective power. Without the pressure and demands of civil society, processes like COP would be even more susceptible to corporate and elite capture. I feel honored to have been present and witnessed history in action and know that the climate justice movement will only expand from here.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1702979927530{margin-top: 0px !important;}”]About the author:

Manju von Rospatt is an MA student at ISS in the Social Policy for Development Major and producer for Eutopya, an international youth media group. She is also an intern at the African Diaspora Policy Center. Manju’s interests center on issues of climate justice, labor migration, transnational networks, gender equality, rural development, and social protection, especially within the South and Southeast Asian context. Manju attended COP28 this year with Eutopya, interviewing various stakeholders, from climate justice activists and civil society groups to politicians and COP negotiators.  Please follow along with the podcast on Spotify!

 

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‘Important and urgent’: this decision-making matrix shows that we need to act now to fight climate change

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Climate change was first flagged as a global risk several decades ago, but warnings were not taken seriously. Now that climate change is part and parcel of our daily lives, the need for immediate and concerted action to limit its effects is increasingly being recognized, but there is also strong resistance to the radical change required to do this. In this blog article, ISS Professor of Pluralist Development Economics Irene van Staveren contemplates how the well-known Eisenhower decision-making matrix can help us take climate change seriously. We are already in the ‘important and urgent’ box, she argues — an understanding that should drive us to act.

Image Source: Asana.

Some years ago, when I was receiving training in time management, I was introduced to the Eisenhower matrix. I am still grateful to the American general for it because I use the two-by-two table every day. The two columns are called ‘urgent’ and ‘not urgent’ and the two rows are called ‘important’ and ‘not important’. And that’s where you plan all your tasks.

The trick is to spend most of your time working on tasks that are important but not urgent. Then you can work wonderfully focused on your core tasks and not under time pressure and with the fear of not meeting a deadline. The latter happens if you have let time slip through your fingers or have not planned properly. Then you suddenly find yourself in the box of tasks that are not only important but also urgent.

Now that I am preparing a course on climate change for the Economics Bachelor at EUR in Rotterdam, I notice that the Eisenhower matrix can also be applied to climate change. When Shell knew more than thirty years ago that fossil fuels could lead to global warming, almost no one saw it as an important problem and certainly not as an urgent problem.

On the contrary, we all happily consumed fossil fuels, regardless of the CO2 increase due to more cars, taking flights and enabling deforestation for our consumption of meat. It was only in 1995, with the first international climate conference (held in Berlin), that policymakers seem to realize that it could become an important problem.

But it was not until twenty years later that governments worldwide were prepared to make agreements in Paris on a safe limit on warming: 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius. And now, many uncontrollable forest fires, severe floods and droughts, and rapidly melting ice caps later, it has also become an urgent problem.

So, we have all wasted too much time on other things, such as drilling new oil wells, pumping out old gas fields and pointing to other countries that emit even more CO2 or are catching up because their prosperity is much lower than ours. Some even thought it was better to first generate even more polluting economic growth in order to earn the money to invest in sustainable energy.

We now know better, continuing on the old path is expensive: every day that we intervene earlier, the costs in the future will be lower. We need to get to net zero faster as a popular and insightful book argues. And now we are all in the box of ‘important and urgent’. The deadline to stay below 2 degrees is close on our heels.

This means that we, particularly in the Global North, are now forced to take controversial measures, provided they have an effect in the short term. So, no new nuclear power plants or solar shields in space. But CO2 capture and storage underground. And mega wind turbines near nature reserves, because horizon pollution is not nice, but in about 30 years those wind turbines can be taken down again because, hopefully, we will have made the energy transition.

And much stricter regulations for the acceleration of CO2-neutral construction, production and transport, and much more and higher CO2 taxes. In short, now that the climate problem has become not only very important but also quite urgent, there is only one thing left: to reduce CO2 emissions as quickly as possible, as various authors are arguing as well. Eisenhower would have looked at us shaking his head: what a poor planning.

This column appeared in Dutch newspaper Trouw of 5 September 2023.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Irene van Staveren is a professor of pluralist development economics at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Professor van Staveren’s theoretical interest is in feminist economics, social economics, institutional economics and post-Keynesian economics. Her key research interest is at the meso level of the economy with topics such as social cohesion, social exclusion, inequality and discrimination, as well as ethics and values in the economy and in economics.

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Academics must have a voice in social affairs, too, no matter their affiliation

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The current wave of protests on the A12 highway in The Hague against government subsidies for fossil fuels have been both applauded and condemned. Several scientists have joined the protests in their professional capacity, which has led to questions of whether their activism threatens their independence as scholars. In this blog article, Dorothea Hilhorst responds to the argument of Dutch scientist and writer Louise Fresco in an NRC column last week that academics have no place in protests. All academics/scientists should be wary of their place in society and should use their positions of expertise to advocate for better outcomes, she writes.

Last Sunday, on 1 October 2023, I was standing on the highway of the A12 in The Hague, together with about 600 activists from Extinction Rebellion, until we were taken away by the police. I was fascinated by the colourful collection of activists with their original slogans chalked on cardboard and enjoyed the cheerfulness of the chants and the music. Many of the activists were here for the twentieth time in a row. Extinction Rebellion has been blocking the highway on a daily basis, starting 9 September, and aims to return every day until the Dutch government stops subsidizing fossil fuels.

As I was sitting on the road, I had serious conversations about why I was there as a scientist and whether my presence was at the expense of my independence. What struck me most is that the question of independence is so strongly linked to activism and taking action to the street. Scientists constantly interact with social groups. In fact, this is encouraged. Scientists who entrench themselves in their ivory towers have an increasingly smaller chance of obtaining scientific funding or promotions. Science is part of society, and the issues we deal with are largely determined by societies. And often enabled by societal actors, too, a lot of research is in fact financed by commercial companies.

It is very common for scientists to be active in politics in addition to their work and, for example, to serve on behalf of a political party in the Senate or on municipal councils. Scientists also often sit on supervisory boards or are attached to a company as supervisory directors. This often leads to additional income, which must be properly reported, for example on university websites, for reasons of propriety and transparency.

The social involvement of scientists regularly leads to questions about the independence of science, especially when it can be demonstrated that the scientist takes the interests of a company into account in the scientific work or — as is currently the case — if the question is raised whether it is ethically responsible to have companies such as the fossil industry, the tobacco industry, or alcohol producers help pay for research. Except in these specific cases, social involvement is seen as a must and is not considered to be in conflict with the independence of the academe. But strangely enough, it does when it comes to involvement in an activist organization — a clear double standard.

Take for example Louise Fresco, who recently argued in a column for the NRC that scientists and academics have no place in a protest, is an example of a socially involved scientist. In the past, she was a supervisory director of Rabobank, a major Dutch bank, and, as a scientist, she was co-director of Unilever in addition to her scientific work. She is currently a supervisory director at agriculture company Syngenta. In her column, though, Fresco says that scientists should not demonstrate . With that argument, scientists should also not be involved in an industry or political party. These organisations are not exclusively based in their actions by scientific evidence, and their agendas are always encompassing more that the scientist’s field of expertise can oversee.

I am happy that the activists of Extinction Rebellion are open to listening to my research findings about the consequences of climate change for poor people in poor countries — people who have never been on an airplane, yet who are paying the highest price for climate change. I think that with my scientific attitude, which is used to questioning and critically observing (like all scientists), I can contribute to the movement, and I notice that my questions about the action strategy are taken seriously, whether or not they are taken up. Above all, I am convinced that being on the A12 will not prevent me from remaining true to my independent research methods.

Is criticism of the alleged loss of independence of demonstrating scientists perhaps a veiled rejection of the method of civil disobedience that Extinction Rebellion has adopted? In that case, I advise Louise Fresco and other concerned colleagues to delve into the positive contributions to the world history of civil disobedience for, for example, the abolition of slavery, decolonization, or the fight for women’s suffrage. Scientists that remain in their ivory towers, or indeed continue to sit around glass-topped boardroom tables, can fail to engage with the full spectrum of society. This, surely, is to the benefit of no-one.

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About the author:

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.

 

 

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Humanitarian Observatories Series | A humanitarian observatory for discussing heatwaves in South Asia was recently launched — here’s how it wants to improve responses to heatwaves

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The heightened vulnerability of the South Asian subcontinent to heatwaves can be ascribed to several interacting characteristics — but these have not been adequately examined and discussed. The Humanitarian Observatory Initiative in South Asia (HOISA) was launched earlier this year in an attempt to bridge this gap by charting the particular risks and vulnerabilities of the region, observing the state of current humanitarian governance processes, and based on ongoing discussions providing recommendations for more effective responses to heatwaves. This article details some of the main dynamics of heatwaves in South Asia considered during HOISA’s first panel discussion, including specific governance challenges that the observatory will focus on.

A street vendor in Ahmedabad adapts to heat on hourly basis using his own resources, technology, and design. 2022.

A heatwave is a climatic process and a period of abnormally high temperatures — higher than the normal maximum temperature that occurs during a particular season.[1] While they have always occurred, their frequency and severity have rapidly increased due to climate change caused by the industrialisation of modern economies and increased carbon emissions.[2] The WHO considers heatwaves to be one of the most dangerous natural hazards because of their destructive effects, which are severe: from 1998 to 2017 alone, more than 166,000 people have died globally due to heatwaves,[3] and the impact on livelihoods has been just as immense. Yet, heatwaves rarely receive adequate attention because of their delayed effects that moreover are not always easily to pinpoint.

 

South Asia is particularly vulnerable to heatwaves

While heatwaves are global phenomena that know no national boundaries, their manifestations and impact vary from region to region, depending on various characteristics such as demographics and geography. From this viewpoint, South Asia is known to be one of the most vulnerable regions in the world. First, it has a high-density population numbering close to two billion people. Second, the region has immense variations in its geographical features, social structures, built environments, socio-economic means, and much more. The interaction of these characteristics makes it particularly complex to govern — and the complexity increases even more when heatwaves occur.

 

And the subcontinent is set to face even more heatwaves

Moreover, a recent report of the WMO claims that heatwaves are 30 times more likely to take place on the subcontinent than before, with massive damage to livelihoods and wellbeing, ecosystems, economies, and infrastructure expected to occur in the coming decades. In one of the latest examples, February this year was observed as the warmest month since 1901. Thus, not only are heatwaves already affecting South Asia badly — it’s going to get much worse.

 

A humanitarian observatory to better understand heatwaves in South Asia

It is in light of this that the HOISA, the Humanitarian Observatory Initiative of South Asia, was launched in April this year. Its objective is to monitor humanitarian governance processes, with a focus on responses to heatwaves. Considering the urgency of the matter, HOISA organized a first panel discussion on April 7th, which brought together about 30 actors working on heatwaves. Panel discussants included Dorothea Hilhorst (International Institute of Social Studies — ISS), Prabodh Chakrabarti (Swami Vivekananda Chair and Professor of Environment and Disaster Management, RKMVERI, Kolkata), Keya Saha Chaudhary (International Council of Voluntary Agencies — ICVA), Nimesh Dhungana (Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute of the University of Manchester — HCRI), Delu Lusambya (PhD researcher at the ISS) Mihir Bhatt (All India Disaster Mitigation Institute — AIDMI), and Khayal Trivedi (HOISA Project Lead).

The panel focused on the increasing risk of heatwaves, the uniqueness of this occurrence in the region, existing humanitarian systems, and the first steps towards measuring and planning for the effects of heatwaves. This is because although South Asia has suffered the most due to heatwaves and also has found many ways to adapt to it, relatively limited humanitarian and governmental action has been observed and recorded. Some of the main observations made by participants and action points are discussed below.

 

South Asia’s characteristics make heatwaves more intense and dangerous

At the launch, we discussed how the abovementioned characteristics such as population density, infrastructure, and geographical features such as altitudes affect and sometimes aggravate the effects of a heatwave. For example, recent research on ‘wet-bulb temperatures’ in South Asia reports that parts of the region on the subcontinent are much closer to the threshold limits of human survivability than the African and Gulf regions. The depth and range of vulnerability and exposure of the population and economy of the region to heatwaves are also much more intense and complex here. In light of these and other observations, we argue that the current humanitarian approach to heatwaves in South Asia needs to be revisited.

In such a context, we must accelerate the implementation of heatwave action plans at all levels and in key sectors driving development, starting with employment, health, education, and so on. The built environment and supporting infrastructure in their current form, for example, are simply not capable of withstanding severe temperature shifts and is making it harder to adapt, Nimesh Dhungana, one of the key panel members from Nepal, stated at the discussion. A comprehensive study is required to ensure that these are adapted sufficiently and rapidly.

 

Mobilizing funding for adaptive measures is a key priority

Another important parameter in planning for and mitigating this natural hazard is the mobilization of funding. Across the humanitarian sector, current funding is simply not sufficient to meet the growing needs, particularly when it comes to taking adaptive measures. At the panel discussion, we agreed that more holistic and less siloed approaches to securing funding are needed to address the impacts of climate change. In the case of heatwaves, this means funding modalities that consider both the immediate and long-term consequences of heatwaves to ensure not only immediate responses but also the improved resilience of communities to heatwaves over time. Therefore, increased investments and integrated funding should form part of heatwave management strategies and plans in South Asia.

As part of this, attention should be paid to the meaningful locally led involvement of communities and local and indigenous solutions to addressing heatwaves. What makes this challenging and even more urgent is that the heatwave-affected population in South Asia is hardly protected by a social safety net, leading to massive losses and damage. Resolving or forming sustainable practices that ensure uniform funding will protect these populations therefore becomes critical. Furthermore, the coming together of researchers and operational experts to study and pilot heatwave safety nets, both formal and informal, is overdue in South Asia.

 

Heatwaves must be placed on the global political agenda

In the wake of increased risks associated with heatwaves and the distinct ways in which it affects the region and its people,[4] this phenomenon must be placed on the global political agenda. Governments, the United Nations, academics, and activists together must aim to draw a global heatwave compact signed by all stakeholders — including those affected — that stretch beyond the current climate policy community.

 

A joint plan of action for South Asian countries should be formalized

Moreover, as a phenomenon that exceeds borders to affect an entire region, a joint plan of action between countries in South Asia must be formalized. And humanitarian actions must take place simultaneously in a cohesive manner for a positive impact, which is in fact the agenda of the several humanitarian observatories forming across the globe. The formation of a global movement to address the effects of heatwaves worldwide is therefore vital.

 

Increased trust in science is a key pillar for effective interventions

But such a joint effort and action across South Asia requires a grasp of the state of South Asia’s heatwaves. Unfortunately, the increasing distance between science and society, between evidence and knowledge, and the fragmented use of data and tools for adapting to heatwaves have also been observed lately in the region. More research, knowledge, and evidence is needed, as well as interdisciplinary knowledge exchanges and the transfer of technology, tools, data, and key concepts. Unlocking private and public data on heatwaves and related phenomena that are currently difficult to access is an important first step.

 

Interdisciplinary heatwave workforces needed

Moreover, we need a locally led comprehensive, multi-level, and multi-directional approach with multiple stakeholders to plan and mitigate the dire effects of heatwaves in the region. Building interdisciplinary heatwave workforces with the knowledge, skills, and capacities to prevent, manage and reduce losses, and to evaluate how to improve things, can help strengthen existing humanitarian systems.

To summarize, South Asia is undoubtedly one of the most complex of the heatwave-affected regions and requires the urgent attention of researchers, policy makers, humanitarian leaders, and other stakeholders to chart local actions and observations and make changes to these to ensure that effective interventions will make a direct impact. Partners of HOISA must and will continue observing, reflecting on, discussing, and recommending actions humanitarian actors and other stakeholders should take.

[1] NDMA India: https://ndma.gov.in/Natural-Hazards/Heat-Wave

[2] IPCC Report: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM_final.pdf

[3] WHO: https://www.who.int/health-topics/heatwaves#tab=tab_1

[4] The Guardian view on an Indian summer: human-made heatwaves are getting hotter.

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About the authors:

Khayal Trivedi is the Project Lead, Humanitarian Observatory Initiative of South Asia.

 

 

 

 

Mihir Bhatt. All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (AIDMI) India.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prabhod Chakrabarti. Swami Vivekananda, Environment and Disaster Management India

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keya Saha Chaudhary. Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific at ICVA

 

 

 

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Fighting fossil subsidies: why professors are protesting in their gowns on the highway

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The recent occupation of the A12 highway in The Hague to protest fossil subsidies has dominated news headlines as protestors blocked the highway en masse for several days in a row. ISS Professor of Pluralist Development Economics Irene van Staveren was one of several academic researchers who joined the protests. In this article, she explains why they decided to appear in academic gowns and refutes several counterarguments scientists, politicians, journalists, and others use to deny climate change or the need for climate action. Neutrality is no longer an option, also for scientists, she writes.

About a week and a half ago, I also stood on the A12 highway alongside Extinction Rebellion (XR) to protest against fossil subsidies. I wore my academic gown, along with about thirty other professors, to make it clear that we were there as scientists. Science has been demonstrating for decades that the Earth is warming, and we have increasingly more evidence that this is due to our economic behaviour.

However, there were some counterarguments. For example, an economist who has held numerous leadership positions in the public and private sectors wrote, to my astonishment, that “there is no way to deduce from climate science that ‘fossil subsidies’ should be abolished.” While economic science convincingly demonstrates that price incentives lead to behavioural change. Economists who specifically focus on climate (climate scientists, in other words) emphasize that a price tag on CO2 emissions helps to reduce them.

The new leader of the political party CDA (Christian Democratic Appeal) also reacted sceptically to our resistance, suggesting that companies would relocate abroad, and emissions would continue while we would have fewer jobs. As if job retention in polluting sectors should be a priority in these times of labour market tightness. We actually need a lot of hands for the production and installation of solar panels, heat pumps, and insulation. In line with this short-sighted point, there is also the well-known comment at social gatherings, “what about China?” If you genuinely believe that, you should stop buying goods that are produced cheaply there. China is not idle; it’s the country that installs the most solar panels.

Let me now address those subsidies. There was some sour commentary from an investigative journalist claiming that the term is incorrect and that the calculation is based on assumptions. The term does not refer to government expenditures but rather to tax breaks for large companies in the oil, gas, and coal industries. But by now, doesn’t everyone who follows the news know this? They are disguised subsidies. And yes, when you calculate a cost advantage, you cannot avoid making assumptions. The research that XR is based on is transparent about this and calculates the tax benefits compared to the fossil taxes that households pay. Meanwhile, the government has just admitted that the amount is even higher: at least 40 billion euros.

Finally, some university boards had reservations about us being there in our academic gowns. Fortunately, my dean and board supported us wholeheartedly. And rightly so. The academic gown does not belong to the university but symbolizes science. When politics claims to want to achieve the goals of Paris but simultaneously ignores scientifically substantiated arguments that this means we must significantly reduce fossil energy much faster, then we have a responsibility to reinforce these arguments.

Because, as the writer Elie Wiesel said, “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.” If our country does not stop fossil subsidies very quickly, we are contributing to millions of climate victims. Especially in the Global South, more and more people are already facing shortages of drinking water and food, as University of Amsterdam colleague Joyeeta Gupta, the recently awarded Spinoza Prize recipient, mentioned in her speech at the A12.

This blog article is based on a column first published in Dutch in the newspaper Trouw on 19 September 2023.

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Irene van Staveren is professor of pluralist development economics at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Professor van Staveren’s theoretical interest is in feminist economics, social economics, institutional economics and post-Keynesian economics. Her key research interest is at the meso level of the economy with topics such as social cohesion, social exclusion, inequality and discrimination, as well as ethics and values in the economy and in economics.

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Extinction rebellion

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On Saturday 9 September, thousands of activists joined Extinction Rebellion in a blockage of the A-12 highway in The Hague, to protest against the 37 billion Euro annual subsidy of the fossil fuel industry in the Netherlands. The amount was established by research collective SOMO and consists of direct subsidies and tax exemptions. On the highway and at the support demonstration organised by several Dutch NGOs there were dozens of professors, wearing their gown joining the protest, among them several professors of ISS. Joyeeta Gupta of the University of Amsterdam and winner of the Spinoza price 2023 spoke at the support demonstration. Here is her speech.

Good morning all!

I am here today because I take every opportunity to call for climate justice. My argument today is: Living within Earth system boundaries requires a just approach. There are system boundaries on Earth. from local to global level. Boundaries must be safe and just. Safe – to ensure that the system does not collapse. Just to ensure that damage to people and nature is kept to a minimum.

Globally, we have crossed seven of the eight boundaries. At a local level, at least two boundaries have been crossed on 50% of the land area, affecting 80% of the world’s population. Boundaries relate to climate change, water, nitrogen and phosphorus, biosphere, air pollution.

Climate change is also part of this. The Paris climate limit of 1.5-2 degrees Celsius is not just enough. Already at 1°C, tens of millions of people are exposed to very high temperatures; much more for sea level rise. Extreme weather events are already costing lives and damaging infrastructure. Furthermore, climate change affects all other Earth systems. By not demanding stronger targets, we accept that these millions of people will be affected by our actions. I repeat, by not demanding stronger targets, we accept that these millions of people will be affected by our actions.

Global boundaries determine what we do in each country. Every country must try to reduce its emissions. But rich countries that have emitted heavily in the past must do more. Instead, in the Netherlands we subsidize our fossil fuel sector with 37.5 billion euros annually, while we only provide hundreds of millions in climate aid. That’s mopping with the tap open. And with a very small mop, and a very large tap. We have no blueprint for phasing out fossil fuels, even though we led the world on climate change in 1989. The global fossil fuel sector is worth between $16 and $300 trillion. We must make this sector responsible. A first step, which should have been taken thirty years ago in the Netherlands, is to abolish fossil fuel subsidies in a fair manner, so that it does not affect access to energy for the poorest.

Boundaries mean that we have to share environmental utilization space. This seems painful because we have to produce and consume less. But perhaps that has no influence at all on our well-being, our happiness. We need to redesign our societies to ensure that what we do here does not harm anyone else far away. We must adopt the ‘no harm’ principle. Boundaries mean that we have to share the environmental utilization space. But if we let the market do that, the price of scarce resources will rise and only the rich will be able to buy them. Ensuring that the world’s poorest have access to water, food, energy and housing will put additional pressure on the boundaries we have already crossed. This may sound like the problem is that there are too many poor people. But to meet the minimum needs of the poorest, their additional pressure on the environment is equal to that imposed by the world’s top 4%. And we are among the richest countries in the world. Boundaries mean that we have to share environmental utilization space. Indigenous people and local communities protect at least 22 percent of the world’s most important biodiversity areas – where 80 percent of biodiversity is found. We should support them, not marginalize them. Climate change could even cause the Amazon to become a net emitter of greenhouse gases, further increasing climate change.

We have crossed boundaries on climate change, biodiversity and water. This means we need to use less and share better. We need Earth System Justice – to ensure that we are held accountable for the harm done to others and to ensure that resources are distributed fairly. We need a global constitution. We must mobilize all actors. If governments are unwilling to take action, social movements may have to use their civil rights to convince their governments to do so with peaceful demonstrations. We must get rid of fossil subsidies. We must get rid of fossil fuels. Thank you.

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About the author:

Professor of Environment and Development in the Global South, Faculty Sustainability Professor, Governance and Inclusive Development (GID), Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

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EADI Conference 2023 | From sunbathing to sunstroke: How should we personally respond to the risks of (severe) heat and heatwaves?

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This summer, several weather records have been smashed, with the hottest week ever recorded occurring last week. The heat is becoming a serious problem; some may argue that climate change is on our doorstep and no longer an unimaginable future. But while heatwaves are particularly dangerous, leading to a loss of lives and health risks, above-average temperatures are also risky, even when a heatwave hasn’t been declared officially. In this article, ISS PhD researcher Lize Swartz asks whether we should also be taking action when there are no heatwaves and what role we can play in protecting ourselves—and those around us—from the heat.

We watched as a young woman upend a jug of iced water over her head. “That’s the absolute worst thing you can do when you show signs of heat stroke,” my friend commented. It was a hot day, the temperatures reaching 32°C, and we were sitting at a beach restaurant. We’d been on the beach for a few hours but as it became progressively hotter, we decided to take a break, sitting in the shade at the restaurant until the sun would lose its sting. The woman had turned pale shortly before, moving to the shade after sitting in the full sun. She had been in the sun for too long and showed signs of heat exhaustion.

All around us, we saw people lying or sitting in the full sun–on towels, on lounge chairs restaurants rented out, at the restaurants themselves. Irresponsible, I was telling myself, but these days not only because of the risk of getting skin cancer from enduring exposure to the sun. It was irresponsible because it was hot and because staying in the sun all day causes the body to heat up and not cool down unless measures are taken. Particularly in that kind of heat. You know, the one that’s not pleasant and that there seems to be no relief from. And it seemed that people were not taking these measures, staying in the sun until they were already starting to feel sick, relishing the heat, like lizards, without realizing that they were being scorched.

That got me thinking about whether the risks associated with heat and heatwaves are adequately understood. Granted, it wasn’t that hot, 32°C being a bit hotter than usual, but not the blistering 38°C we’d had in July last year when a heatwave swept across the country. Still, the body’s ability to cool itself down given the type of heat that we were exposed to that day was already reduced. I could feel myself struggling, with the sweat pooling up all over my body instead of evaporating. It wasn’t enjoyable. I needed to drink liters of water to rehydrate, and ultimately, only a lukewarm shower provided relief.

This heat, accompanied by humidity, is the worst type. It doesn’t cool down at night; the air remains hot and sticky. Houses stay warm. We wake up the next day and it would be a continuation of the previous day’s heat. Our bodies don’t regulate our temperatures as well, though they try to. There are only a few things we can do: stay in the shade, stay inside, cool ourselves down with water. Yet the people on the beach weren’t doing that, oblivious to the heat.

Local and national authorities have a mammoth task of creating awareness about the risks of heatwaves and heat in general, for example by issuing a heat warning in advance. A question that arises is when they should start taking action: When there’s an official heatwave? When it’s above 35°C? Clearly, longer exposure to the sun, even at 32°C, can make people ill. Should the government be circulating information on heat-related risks even when it’s a normal summer’s day when there’s a risk of the body not being able to cool itself due to the level of humidity and the lack of the circulation of air? Or should we have enough common sense to be doing it ourselves?

I think that when leaving ourselves to be the judge, we can make poor decisions based on a lack of relevant information to make an informed choice, or out of wilful ignorance. There are tons of people who don’t heed the warning to seek shelter when it’s hot, who still engage in normal activities without realizing that their bodies are overheating. Could it also be a matter of not being able to discern that our bodies are getting too hot? Do we need more education about that, so that we know that when we perspire heavily and remain sticky, it’s a sign that we need to cool ourselves down?

In a year that’s already marked the two hottest days on earth, ever (!), these questions are becoming urgent. The underlying question is, of course, who is responsible for ensuring that we are protected from the heat: the government, or us? It’s a combination, I believe–where we cannot do it ourselves, or do not do it, it should be taking steps to protect those who cannot or will not do it themselves. Through heat plans or awareness campaigns. And by ensuring that vulnerable groups have the necessary means to shade and cool themselves.

But it is also clear that we need to take action individually, and the first step could be to take responsibility for our own bodies—to self-govern our bodies in times of heat by understanding the risks of heat and how it can affect us, and by acting cautiously, especially if we don’t know how our bodies react to the heat. I don’t know how we can start doing this, but reading more about the risks of hot temperatures can be a start.

A second, related step could be to help each other understand the risks of exposure to heat by creating opportunities for social learning and acting on what we’ve learned, including helping each other understand or access information on the effects of heat. And we can act to assist those requiring help. In the U.S., for example, cooling centers are organized by the U.S. government and cooling stations by individuals or organizations acting together for others in their community who suffer from the heat and who don’t have the means to adequately cool themselves.

This remains a big issue among people who live in dwellings inadequately designed to remain cool or who don’t have the financial means to cool themselves, such as through a sun screen or aircon. Often, these are also more vulnerable segments of the population, in particular the sick, disabled, and/or elderly.

The inspiration for my post is the seed panel on urban resilience to heatwaves that THUAS and ISS researcher Sylvia Bergh and I are organizing at this year’s EADI Conference. We’ll be looking at citizen, government, and private sector responses to heatwaves, and I’ll probably want to discuss individual responses.

The panel takes place on Thursday July 13, 2023 at 10:00 CET. Topics range from integrated heat planning in the Netherlands to measuring the accessibility of cooling stations and urban heat hazard exposure in Kampala, Uganda. If you’re a registered conference participant, you can join in person or online. If you haven’t registered, we’re writing up the key takeaways and observations after the conference. Stay tuned!

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

 

Lize Swartz is a PhD researcher studying how changes in urban water availability affect human-water relations. She has co-authored a book called Bron on how residents of Cape Town navigated the near-collapse of the city’s water system. She has been editor of Bliss since 2017.

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Why are we blocking a highway as scientists? It is a justified response to the violence of climate change

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How can scientists help engender societal change, and when is it effective to take the road of activism? This question has become increasingly relevant in the face of the urgent need to  address the implications of climate change. In this blog (that first appeared on 1 June 2023 as an op-ed in the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant), Professors Thea Hilhorst and Klaas Landsman – both recipients of the Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands in 2022 – gave a speech during the occupation of the A12 by Extinction Rebellion. Why did they choose to participate in this action as scientists?

On 27 May, an estimated 8,500 activists blocked the A12 highway in The Hague. There was no misunderstanding about the illegal nature of the action. Right from the start, the police shouted through megaphones to demonstrators that there was no legal permission for this demonstration and that those who stayed ran the risk of being arrested. Water cannons were already spraying large quantities of water over the crowd from four military vehicles placed at the head and the rear of the mass of people. Indeed, the demonstration took place without a permit, and blocking a highway is against the law. Nevertheless, we then considered and still consider the action to be legitimate.

The effects of climate change are already being felt all over the world. Rich countries emit most of the greenhouse gases inducing climate change. Poor countries, and in turn the poorest and most vulnerable people in these countries, bear most of the consequences – those people who can hardly afford to eat meat or to buy new clothes at every turn of fashion, who don’t own a car, let alone ever take a plane. They pay the highest price for climate change. They pay with their health, their residence, their livelihoods, their safety, and increasingly with their lives.

Heat waves make places in India reach temperatures above 45 degrees Celsius. People with fragile health in an urban poor area living under a corrugated iron roof may not survive. The shepherd in Kenya who loses his goats due to drought has lost everything; he has no savings to buy new goats. Last summer, large parts of Pakistan flooded, destroying 8,000 kilometers of roads and 105 bridges. Even before these can be repaired, there is likely to be another flood. Increasingly, people lose their land to the river, the sea, or excessive drought. We – residents of rich countries- owe a debt of honor to these vulnerable people in poor countries.

A basic principle of civilization is to take responsibility for harm inflicted on one another. The polluter pays. Rich countries must compensate poor countries. But that is not happening. There are no concrete agreements on compensation yet. The USD 100 billion per year that rich countries have pledged for climate adaptation has not been fully delivered. What is paid partly flows back as profit to Western companies that offer technologies for climate adaptation to poor countries.

Even the most immediate humanitarian aid to mitigate the worst consequences of climate change falls short. On 24 May, a UN summit on the drought in the Sahel failed. Rich countries pledged only USD 2,4 billion of the USD 7 billion needed to address starvation. That is a stark contrast to the estimated USD 30 billion with which Netherlands subsidizes the fossil industry annually, mainly through tax benefits.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres equates climate change to ecocide. This is his statement on Twitter of 5 April 2022: “Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.” The occupation of the A12 was aimed at protesting fossil fuel subsidies.

Extinction Rebellion stands for nonviolent civil disobedience in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Bertrand Russell. A non-violent blockade of a highway, with a demand consistent with UN appeals, represents in our eyes a legitimate response to the violence of climate change exerted on defenseless people, animals, and ecosystems. Politicians linger, listen to the lobbying of the fossil industry, and hope for innovation to solve all our problems. But there’s no time to waste anymore.

Listen to science. Listen to the IPCC, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change . More and more scientists are joining Scientist Rebellion – a group of academics linked to Extinction Rebellion. We, too, will join again next time.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.

 

Klaas Landsman is the Chair of Mathematical Physics, Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics, and Particle Physics at Radboud University Nijmegen.

 

 

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Earth Day Series | How spending time in urban green spaces can counter our children’s biophobia and improve the wellbeing of older adults

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In a recent BLISS blog, we argued that outdoor nature education programmes in primary schools can help combat eco-anxiety among children. As young people have fewer and fewer direct encounters with nature, they come to fear or misunderstand it. Spending time learning through nature outdoors can help prevent this from happening. But adults can also benefit from being outside: an ongoing project shows that spending time in urban green spaces can enhance the well-being of  older adults. To ensure that urban green spaces are suited for intergenerational use, they may need to be adapted.

Photo taken by the author

Sir David Attenborough famously stated that “no–one will protect what they don’t care about, and no-one will care about what they have never experienced”. This is certainly the case for how we experience and relate to nature: nurturing curiosity and a sense of wonder for the living world is not (only) about experiencing the remote wilderness and having sufficient expertise to know enough about it – it is much more about becoming comfortable with, becoming aware of, and developing a sense of unity with nature in our daily lives and through our daily practices.

However, our experiences teaching and raising children have shown us that there is quite a long way to go. The ‘environment’ we aim to save has been reduced to a set of outside factors we can ignore; our walls and virtual reality keep us separated and ‘safe’ from it. When adults have a rare contact with it; the same applies to children.

And so, on a daily basis, we meet children and young people who claim with all their heart that they love trees and that they want to plant new ones “because they allow us to breathe”. But do they care about the old tree in the square which they never climbed, hugged, or raced around? And can they help understand their deep value for human beings and solve environmental problems without having the intimate experience of the living world? In other words, is experiencing nature instead of reading about it in books or learning from others how to protect it necessary for children to truly understand it, love it and act for it?

 

Good intentions, but too little interaction

Experience Aurélia has had with primary students show that the same who proclaim that they want to save Planet Earth, are also afraid to walk through ivy leaves because they believe they are dangerous,  or cannot touch earth with their bare hands (“too dirty”). They want to “fight for the climate”, but freeze in the face of the weather variations of a temperate climate (“it’s rainy”). They want to save pollinators, but run away from each striped insect, winged or not. They dream of saving biodiversity, but want to “kill” weeds and fungi, as they might be dangerous. They are passionate about fighting plastic pollution, but offer plastic goodies at every occasion.

These children are simply scared because the reality of nature is different from what they see trough television or on the internet. They are scared of nature because it provides them with sensations that have become unusual. Their exposure to weather variations, unexpected events, or different subtle sensations has dramatically decreased with the limited ecosystems they actually access, which leads to disgust and fear. This phenomenon is called biophobia, and it is now deeply anchored in the minds of adults and educators alike,[1] who spend 93% of their lives inside buildings or vehicles, and is so well reproduced by the younger generations we raise indoors. They think love and they feel repulsion.

But this can be countered: research shows that children engaged in outdoor activities on a daily basis develop more pro-environmental behaviours, with positive effects on attitudes towards biodiversity and natural ecosystems.[2] Aurélia’s experience working in nature education in Amsterdam confirms this: by developing programmes of regular experience of nature, a virtuous loop in the relationship between humans and living things is quickly established. Children wonder about the old tree that was cut down and the woodpeckers that used to nest there. With students regularly learning outdoors, the green area next to the school has become part of their daily life and identity. The school organises regular clean-up actions to preserve the outdoor learning opportunities.

This committed attitude towards nature then spreads from the children to their families and to the wider community. One community for example is now fiercely trying to protect a neighbouring park from further land artificialization projects, thereby affirming that the patch of nature they enjoy should not serve as a dumping ground for waste or a place for drug addicts – they see it as a place for families, children, and teachers to enjoy. Hence, when we invest in outdoor education – when we foster authentic human-nature connections in our daily urban lives – we show the city’s policy-makers that we value the ecosystem we belong to.

 

Young and old alike can reconnect

This observation stretches beyond the biophobia of children: we believe that not only children need to reconnect with urban nature, but also (older) adults. A desk review carried out as part of the ongoing AFECO project in which Sylvia is involved shows how urban green spaces benefit older adults. The project aims to empower older adults to apply affordable, age-friendly, and eco-friendly solutions to their own living environments to help them ‘age in place’, i.e. to keep living in their own homes and in their own local environment and community. The project will develop an open e-learning platform aiming to raise awareness and educate older people, (in)formal caregivers and social workers on the practical adjustments and subsidies that exist (e.g. to install a stair-lift, insulate the home to save energy), and the benefits of and ways of caring for the natural environment, for example by having the tiles removed in their gardens, or getting involved in community gardens.

The benefits are shown to be multiple: urban green spaces yield many health benefits, including a longer life expectancy, fewer mental health problems, improved cognitive functioning, and a better mood.[3] Studies have shown that such benefits are particularly important for older adults who often do not have satisfactory alternatives to exercise, socialize, or enjoy nature.

However, the design of parks have long neglected the needs and preferences of older adults.[4] Barriers that prevent older people from using green spaces include poor maintenance, littering, and perceived safety issues. They may also have concerns about inadequate toilet facilities, a lack of seating, and shelter from weather conditions.[5] We believe that these concerns can be addressed by adopting intergenerational design features in which both children and older adults at the very least can enjoy green spaces – preferably together.[6]

To conclude, during this Earth Week 2023, let’s reflect on how each of us can help to ‘invest in our planet’, this year’s theme, by advocating for more and better urban green spaces, especially for children and older adults.

 

References

Bixler, R. D., Floyd, M. F., & Hammitt, W. E. (2002). Environmental socialization: Quantitative tests of the childhood play hypothesis. Environment and Behavior, 34(6), 795-818.

Bjerke, T., & Østdahl, T. (2004). Animal-related attitudes and activities in an urban population. Anthrozoös, 17(2), 109-129.

Eagles, P. F., & Muffitt, S. (1990). An analysis of children’s attitudes toward animals. The Journal of Environmental Education, 21(3), 41-44.

Loukaitou-Sideris, A., Brozen, M., & Levy-Storms, L. (2014). Placemaking for an Aging Population: Guidelines for Senior-Friendly Parks. UCLA: The Ralph and Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/450871hz

Nieuwenhuijsen, M. J. (2021). New urban models for more sustainable, liveable and healthier cities post covid19; reducing air pollution, noise and heat island effects and increasing green space and physical activity. Environment International, 157, 106850. Doi:10.1016/j.envint.2021.106850

Soga, M., Gaston, K. J., Yamaura, Y., Kurisu, K., & Hanaki, K. (2016). Both direct and vicarious experiences of nature affect children’s willingness to conserve biodiversity. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 13(6), 529.

Soga, M., Evans, M.J., Yamanoi, T., Fukano, Y., Tsuchiya, K., Koyanagi, T.F. and Kanai, T. (2020). How can we mitigate against increasing biophobia among children during the extinction of experience? Biological Conservation, 242, 108420.

Zhang, W., Goodale, E., & Chen, J. (2014). How contact with nature affects children’s biophilia, biophobia and conservation attitude in China. Biological Conservation, 177, 109-116.

van Hoof, J., Marston, H. R., Kazak, J. K., & Buffel, T. (2021). Ten questions concerning age-friendly cities and communities and the built environment. Building and Environment, 199, 107922. Doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.107922

[1] See Soga et al. (2020).

[2] See Bixler et al. (2002), Bjerke & Østdahl (2004), Eagles & Muffitt (1990), Soga et al. (2016), and Zhang & Chen (2014).

[3] see Nieuwenhuijsen (2021) for an extensive review.

[4] See Loukaitou-Sideris et al. (2014).

[5] van Hoof et al (2021).

[6] See Loukaitou-Sideris et al. (2014).

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Aurélia Chevreul-Gaud develops change management strategies to implement outdoor learning on a daily basis. She is a mentor in nature-based education, creator of the 7 Connection Gateways Pedagogy© and holds a master’s degree in change management. She is also a public speaker – see her TEDx performance. Her current project based in The Netherlands, focuses on integrating outdoor learning into urban teachers’ practices and linking it with the International Baccalaureate Primary Year Programme.

Sylvia I. Bergh is Associate Professor in Development Management and Governance at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), and Senior researcher at the Centre of Expertise on Global and Inclusive Learning and the Research Group on Multilevel Regulation at The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS). Some of her current research  focuses on the governance of heatwaves, and from her position at THUAS and with the Research Group on Urban Ageing, she is currently involved in the EU-funded AFECO project.

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Earth Day Series / Honour thy financial commitments: climate funds promised at COP27 won’t reach vulnerable countries unless these things are done

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When the COP27 summit was kicked off in Egypt in November last year, there was hope that some progress would finally be made in financing climate action. But Hao Zhang, who attended the summit, observes that although efforts seem to have been stepped up, there is not yet reason for optimism. In fact, COP27 was marked by the failure of government leaders to truly commit financially to meeting climate goals. While the past year has witnessed devastating disasters, a potential economic downturn and energy crisis, the war in Ukraine, geopolitical unrest, and the aftermath of Covid pandemic, this is not enough to justify the lack of commitment, she writes.

Source: Hao Zhang

While countries have increasingly prioritized the financing of climate action in the last years, talks at recent COP summits seem to indicate that an even greater financial commitment was made to mitigate the effects of climate change. This also seemed to be the case for the recent COP27 summit that took place in Egypt at the end of last year, and which I attended. For example, on November 9 last year, the COP27 presidency explicitly scheduled a Financing Day to emphasize finance as the key to achieving climate policies and increasing climate ambition.[i]

And at the summit, attention was draw to the huge gap between climate adaptation financing and loss and damage commitments, the latter referring to the negative consequences of climate change risks that cannot be or are not mitigated in time.[ii] Thus, at the summit, developing nations banded together to urge wealthy nations to increase their financial commitment to addressing these urgent problems. The somewhat positive news is that parties at the summit in the end agreed to create a specific fund on loss and damage that aims to provide financial assistance to countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

However, even if the issue of loss and damage is now being added to the official agenda and for the first time has explicitly been discussed at a COP meeting,[iii] there is still a long way to go in enacting the commitments. Here are some of the things I have observed while at the COP27 summit showing that at present, it’s still all talk and no trousers when it comes to implementing climate funds:

 

  1. It has not yet been decided exactly “who should pay into the fund, where this money will come from, and which countries will benefit”. [iv] This may raise concerns that negotiations around specific issues related to how the fund will operate are likely to go on for years, with no concrete investments being made. Another central question in the funding of climate action is linked to the allocation of funds: which issues or activities should be allocated funds first, and by whom? Apart from scale-up commitments, national governments should also consider the strategic allocation of funds for climate action. An effective strategy is needed to assess and prioritize different agendas and issues and distribute funds among those countries requiring financial resources.

 

  1. Previous commitments first need to be honoured. It is reasonable to have to somewhat curb our optimism about getting something done when we recall that the financial commitment wealthy countries made in 2009 to mobilize USD 100 billion a year by 2020 for climate adaptation still hasn’t been fully honoured. In fact, COP27 opened with a rallying call for countries who’d previously committed money to pay up.

 

  1. The discussion on climate financing also revolves around how much money we will need to keep global warming within the 1.5°C limit and how countries and people who need the money most can get access to it. On one hand, climate operations seem not to be receiving nearly enough funding. Although at COP27, we witnessed nations constantly announcing new finance plans to close the funding gap, including 10 million euro from the Netherlands for the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Plan upstream financing facility, a USD 150-million package from the US for adaptative measures, 11.6 billion pounds from the UK for international climate finance, and an increase by Germany of its climate contribution to USD 6 billion a year by 2025,[v] to name a few, these are by no means sufficient to keep us on the 1.5°C

 

  1. On the other hand, it appears that access to climate funding remains a problem for those in need all around the world. There are certainly a variety of financial and technical resources floating around in the system given that party representatives from wealthy and developing countries alike have pledged to allocate even more funds. However, how to locate and access funds can be tricky. At the summit, civil society leaders from the developing world pushed for more streamlined access to financial resources. Representatives of NGOs from China, Angola, Bangladesh, and India for example stated at a side event that it is crucial to ensure and provide better access to NGOs and other entities who fully comprehend local needs and priorities and who closely collaborate with the local communities who suffer the most from the climate crisis.

 

What can we learn from this? Although there is increasing pressure on parties to scale up their ambitions, the execution thereof may actually be the bigger problem, as leaders of developing nations have stated that keeping existing promises is more vital than making more pledges. Despite the fact that the Egyptian presidency defined this meeting as the “Together for Implementation” COP,[vi] there are still more promises than a clear implementation strategy for financing aid initiatives.

To this end, I have made a number of suggestions based on my observations, which are detailed below.

 

The private sector should be encouraged to invest

First, it has become strikingly clear that public funds from national governments cannot be the sole source of climate financing, first of all because of their hesitance or inability to commit sufficient funds. Here, the private sector can play a significant role. Governments must develop policies to encourage private sector investment in addition to increasing their own investments in various initiatives. One of the most crucial things governments can do according to Mark Carney, UN special envoy for climate change and finance, is to “provide clear signals on where they want to go in key industries” and supplement these with “targeted and effective incentives”.[vii]

 

Local realities need to be heeded and technical support provided

Second, whether funds for climate action are international, national, regional, or local, it is essential to maintain a flow of information, provide clear application guidelines, and support staff capacity building. However, as the representatives pointed out during the side event, those who engage with local stakeholders targeted by climate action lack clear instructions on how to access these resources, and those negotiating financial packages, are likely to have little understanding of local requirements. It appears that the top politics may already be detached from the bottom-up realities.

 

The climate crisis should not be used as a geopolitical bargaining chip

Lastly, certain issues such as the level of mitigation efforts and NDCs appear still to be overlooked by the parties. Talks on finance cannot dictate the narrative at the negotiations. Moreover, the disconnected offers and needs may serve as a wake-up call for all parties that the multilateral talks are not and cannot be the sole solution to our climate catastrophe. Parties cannot use the climate crisis as a geopolitical bargaining chip; civil society and business actors may not be best served by sitting at the table and talk or shouting some slogans outside the meeting rooms.

[i] Refer to the COP27 website

[ii] Refer to UN Environment Programme

[iii]  Refer to the UNFCCC website

[iv] Refer to UNEP’s website

[v] Refer to the Global Center on Adaptation

[vi] Refer to the UNFCCC Climate Champions website

[vii] Refer to Mckinsey Insights

[vii] Watch the recording on YouTube

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Hao Zhang is a PhD candidate at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). Before joining ISS, she was a master’s student majoring in international affairs at School of Global Policy and Strategy at University of California, San Diego. Her current research focuses on policy advocacy of Chinese NGOs in global climate governance. Her research interests lie in global climate politics and diplomacy, and NGO development in China.

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Addressing eco-anxiety among children – from environmental education to outdoor learning

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[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1592900783478{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;}”][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1592900766479{margin-right: 10px !important;margin-left: -10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Concerned about the long-term effects of environmental degradation and climate change, young climate activists such as Greta Thunberg are in the frontline of climate protests currently sweeping the globe. While children of all ages, not just adolescents, are becoming increasingly concerned with environmental change, environmental education programmes in schools, combined with the limited time children spend outdoors, may not be so helpful. In this article, Aurélia Chevreul-Gaud and Sylvia I. Bergh argue that outdoor education can play an important role in helping children reconnect with nature to ease their eco-anxiety.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”23809″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]From an early age, children are exposed to a wealth of information on environmental degradation and disasters featured in the media and in conversations among adults. Indeed, their approach to the world around them is mainly – if not only – shaped by this information. Environmental education programmes provided to children by primary schools are based on the idea that broadening the scope of the information children receive can help ensure an understanding of how human action impacts the environment and can foster their desire to act.

Raising children’s awareness of environmental risks and of the need to save the planet at first sight seems to be a good idea, as it can theoretically help them become responsible, problem-solving adults that can shape the world they want to live in. But what if it’s not that simple in case of children? With one of us being an outdoor learning specialist for primary schools, and with both of us having school-age children, we observe a large gap between the theory taught at schools and what happens once children step outside the classroom. Children seem to be out of touch with nature and don’t know how to interact with it, having internalized the discourse that they are harming instead of healing the natural world.

The question then arises: Are standard educational programmes centred on environmental disasters as effective as they seem, or are they simply engaging in fearmongering in a way that paralyses instead of inspires children to act?

Environmental education in its current form often leads to eco-anxiety among children. Why do we say this? We have observed that through environmental education programmes in primary schools, children between the ages of 4 and 12 learn that the environment is being threatened because of human action and that they have an important role in addressing this. They are taught about threats that include climate change, deforestation, drought, biodiversity loss, and plastic in the oceans. And they are taught that they have to act.

But how can they respond to such big and often-distant disasters? These are serious, anxiety-provoking questions whose solutions are far beyond their reach. The burdens are too heavy for their young shoulders to bear and not appropriate for their age and emotional development; their inability to act while watching the world around them crumble leads to eco-anxiety. Australian research shows that 44% of children are worried about how climate change will affect them in the future, and one-quarter of children believe that the world will end before they reach old age.[1]

And their responses to environmental harm can be inappropriate. We meet many primary-school students who react strongly to environmental harm, showing their love for nature and passion for saving the planet (listen to a podcast on this here). Sometimes with tears in their eyes, they vehemently warn others to tread lightly, using expressions such as “You are hurting the tree!” when a friend scratches an elm or a beech tree or “You are killing nature” when someone is walking in a field of daisies.

Such severe and inappropriate reactions reveal not only a misunderstanding among children about the resilience of nature and how humans harm the natural world rooted in limited interaction with it but also the intensity of the anxiety younger children have about their relationship with the environment. Eco-anxiety among young children not only leads to critical mental health impacts such as depression, anger and fear but also to inappropriate coping mechanisms such as denial and cognitive dissonance.[2] Indeed, “they are indifferent or afraid,” a secondary school teacher remarked when we asked him how his students react when he teaches on the environment.

 

Why and how is environmental education giving rise to eco-anxiety?

Most so-called environmental education programmes, meant to be inspiring and playful, are designed to be delivered in the classroom, often involving brand-new plastic toys, computers, or even virtual reality components. Children are asked to consider how to solve ‘environmental’ problems from behind computers and use these gadgets, but seldom go outdoors to observe what’s actually happening.

But a transition to outdoor learning programmes can help foster deeper connections between children and the natural world.

Outdoor nature education programmes in primary schools nurtures love for and a feeling of being one with nature, as well as long-lasting pro-environmental behaviours.[3] It gives children a solid – and joyful – base to develop a balanced set of problem-solving skills which involves emotions, thinking, and action. It fosters holistic thinking. When we provide regular education in nature, children become sufficiently comfortable with and curious about the living world. When day-to-day learning happens in nature, then the outdoors is not a place or resource anymore; the living world becomes their home.

In addition, spending time in nature offers children essential conditions to heal from depression and anxiety, especially eco-anxiety. An extensive body of research[4] shows that nature-based education is absolutely essential for developing a holistic understanding of and a strong, positive connection with nature. This is echoed in observations made by some of the 10-year-old pupils that participated in a dance lesson we organised outdoors. “I feel freer,” one exclaimed, while another believed that “we feel more inspired”.

 

What does this mean for primary school teachers and curricula?

Outdoor learning should not be the privilege of a few forest schools located far from the cities in which we live. It is possible in many traditional urban schools. But to integrate it more widely, we need teachers trained to deliver a substantial part of their curriculum through nature: we need to teach them how to design an outdoor lesson plan that meets their objectives, how to manage risk and safety wisely, how to take advantage of small local urban nature islands, and how to deal with bio-phobia (their own and that of their pupils). We need teachers to be equipped with environmental programmes promoting connections with nature and to be supported and appreciated by their schools and the parents.

And the payoffs are substantial. When we see pupils learning outdoors with a teacher who took the plunge, we see joyful children who are able to focus on their learning and who also develop an authentic connection with nature – children who have an idea of the smell of a slug (“like the rain”), who are curious and know what to expect when digging into the soil, or who respect fungi and pass on a wise approach toward them. We see knowledgeable students who are getting prepared to act wisely and in harmony with nature.

[1] Tucci, J., Mitchell, J., & Goddard, C. (2007). Children’s fears, hopes and heroes:
Modern childhood in Australia. Australian Childhood Foundation and National Research Centre for the Prevention of Child Abuse, Monash University, Ringwood, Victoria.

[2] Léger-Goodes, T., Malboeuf-Hurtubise, C., Mastine, T., Généreux, M., Paradis, P., & Camden, C. (2022). Eco-anxiety in children: A scoping review of the mental health impacts of the awareness of climate change. Frontiers in Psychology, 13 Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.872544.

[3] Liefländer, A. K., Fröhlich, G., Bogner, F. X., & Schultz, P. W. (2013). Promoting connectedness with nature through environmental education. Environmental Education Research, 19(3), 370-384. doi:10.1080/13504622.2012.697545

[4] See for example Bola et al. 2022; Hosaka et al. 2017; Rosa et al 2018; Sugiyama et al. 2021.

[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1679389692184{margin-top: 0px !important;}”]About the authors:

Aurélia Chevreul-Gaud develops change management strategies to implement outdoor learning on a daily basis. She is a mentor in nature-based education, creator of the 7 Connection Gateways Pedagogy© and holds a master’s degree in change management. She is also a public speaker – see her TEDx performance. Her current project based in The Netherlands, focuses on integrating outdoor learning into urban teachers’ practices and linking it with the International Baccalaureate Primary Year Programme.

 

 

Sylvia I. Bergh, is Associate Professor in Development Management and Governance, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), and Senior researcher in the Research group Multilevel Regulation, part of the Centre of Expertise on Global and Inclusive Learning, The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS). Her recent research focuses on the governance of heatwaves, and she is currently starting up a new research project on the Inner Development Goals and how to foster the required skills in future global governance professionals.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1596795191151{margin-top: 5% !important;}”][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]

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Fashion and Beauty in the Tower of Babel: how Brazilian companies made sustainability a common language at COP27

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 Fashion is one of the most polluting industries in the world, plagued by sky-high greenhouse gas emissions, mountains of excess clothing manufactured and cast away each year, and the widespread use of fossil fuels in producing synthetic fabrics. A roundtable organized at COP27 drew together Brazilian companies who are leading the pack when it comes to sustainable fashion and beauty. Panel conveners Luciana dos Santos Duarte and Sylvia Bergh summarize the main takeaways and what it implies for the role these industries can play in helping address the challenges posed by climate change.

Tower of Babel. Source of image: Ancient Origins

The Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) can be compared to the biblical Tower of Babel. Stretching into the sky, in the tower thousands of people suddenly had their speech confused by God and could no longer understand each other. But still they continued to talk. COP can be seen as a metaphorical Tower of Babel, convening thousands of people from different contexts who speak different political and economic languages to continue talking about climate change, a phenomenon that is as contested as it is complex.

COP represents the most ambitious event in the world to deal with the challenges posed by climate change. Most recently, COP27 brought 35,000 people to Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt. The private sector was well represented, with a range of companies sharing their diverse approaches to pursuing sustainability and demonstrating their commitment to corporate social (and environmental) responsibility and their adherence to one or several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In attending the conference, on the one hand they were able to position the discourse on sustainable business practices at the UN level, while on the other, no references were made to unsustainable practices. In the end, obscuring these seemed to point to greenwashing. In other words, the myriad approaches to and vocabularies around private sector sustainability make it difficult to separate fact from fiction.

The fashion industry alone is responsible for 10% of annual global carbon emissions – more than that of all international flights and maritime shipping journeys combined. Yet this is often obscured, with the responsibility to reduce, reuse, and recycle placed on individual consumers instead. In light of this, we hosted a roundtable on fashion and beauty at COP27. The aim of the ‘Sustainable Fashion Made in Brazil’ roundtable, one of just three main events on fashion at the conference, was to critically understand how companies approach sustainability.

We chose to focus on Brazil, as it is one of the main producers of fibers, textiles, leather, and apparel in the world. While the country is still trying to regulate the fashion sector towards sustainable practices, its biggest corporations are adapting to international requirements and to what they believe is sustainable. We believed that the discussions could help the companies learn from each other while perhaps also helping ignite similar discussions in other contexts.

Roundtable about fashion and beauty at the UN Climate Change Conference COP27 hosted by Luciana Dos Santos Duarte. Source image: Sylvia Bergh

In partnership with the NGO Responding to Climate Change, the Ethical Fashion Brazil agency, and the Civic Innovation research group of ISS,[1] the roundtable brought together fashion corporations Grupo SOMA, Lojas Renner, and Malwee, as well as beauty companies Laces and Hair and Simple Organic to talk about efforts to make fashion sustainable in Brazil. Okeanos, a Miami-based supplier of plastic made from Brazilian stones that is producing sustainable hangers for the fashion industry, was also present.

Here’s what the companies who participated in the roundtable have been doing:

Grupo SOMA has a market value of close to 1,8 billion Euro. Although it owns several brands which are not known to be sustainable,[2] at COP27 it showcased a project by one of its brands, Farm Rio, which produces jewelry made by the Yawanawá indigenous women in the Amazon rainforest.

Like Grupo SOMA, Lojas Renner is one of the 150 companies in the world to have signed the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action, an initiative[3] of the UFCCC through which fashion companies pledge to achieve net zero emissions by 2030.

Malwee is one of the biggest fashion companies in Brazil. With “six brands [4],” it manufactures 45 million pieces of clothing each year. It is moving toward sustainability through textile engineering, and the company is carbon neutral (due to the 1,5 million square meters of preserved nature of its own Malwee Park, which is open to the public).

Beauty companies Laces and Hair and Simple Organic are two cases of sustainable entrepreneurship focused on innovation. At the conference, Laces and Hair referred to nature to describe their business practices, for example their goal to “repair damaged hair with nature”. Simple Organic was a beauty startup until it was bought by Hypera Pharma so it could scale up its production of organic skincare and make-up. The product communication expresses values of diversity and gender neutrality. Among its innovations, it developed biodegradable plastic bags that will become fish food if they end up in the ocean, and they are launching a sunscreen that is reef friendly.

After a round of presentations, there was time for discussing problems companies face and ways of overcoming these. Based on a fashion report compiled by high-school students for the Model United Nations educational simulation (MUNISH 2022), we developed some questions to guide the discussion. Why? Because high-school students represent the generation who is (and will be) most affected by climate change, and who should have the right to dialogue with the big players. Two solutions they suggested and that we then discussed were 1) taxing fast fashion, and 2) identifying products that are not sustainable (like the letter T for Transgenics on food packaging in Brazil).

The roundtable participants believed that before taxing companies that are not engaging in sustainable production practices, the government should do more for those companies that are sustainable. “We need more regulation, inspection, control, and certification,” said Malwee’s representative, in addition to “investing not only in buying carbon (credits) but reducing the environmental impact of the production processes”. Lojas Renner’s representative said that “almost all regulations come from Europe and North America” and acknowledged the efforts of the Brazilian Textile Retail Association (ABVTEX) to regulate the fashion retail chain in Brazil. She also said that her company is trying to comply with the new requirements before they become a regulation.

When asked about the National Policy for Solid Waste, a policy enacted by the Brazilian government in 2010 that criminalizes the disposal of textile waste as ordinary waste despite lacking enforcement, participants argued that the companies should be responsible for their own environmental impact. For instance, they could choose not to work with suppliers who are not certified according to the regulations.

Most participants agreed that they need to educate their consumer about what is sustainable. In this sense, they are selling not only products, but also creating a service to raise awareness on sustainability. Social media is a vector for education, but at the same time, it is a tool to create desire, which in turn creates revenue. In this sense, growth and degrowth are related to the consumer acceptance of the brand and to business as usual, not to an environmental movement.

When asked about the paradigm that 90% of the consumers buy a product because it is trendy, and only 10% because it is sustainable, they agreed that sustainability should become an intrinsic motivation. They need to change the way in which they produce, but not the product, or at least not the product aesthetic, in order to engage in the ethics of sustainability.

“We don’t need to make sustainable fashion, but fashion sustainable” – Malwee representative

Roundtable Sustainable Fashion made in Brazil at COP27. Source image: Greg Reis for Harper’s Bazaar Brazil

Although the presentations and the discussion during the roundtable showed different approaches to sustainability, the companies’ representatives converged on some topics like taking responsibility for the climate impacts of the fashion value chain and not expecting the government or consumers to lead the transition to sustainability. From a single project of jewelry in the Amazon to neutralizing the carbon footprint of the whole value chain, their different strategies serve as inspiration for our understanding of the role of fashion and beauty industries in addressing the challenges of climate change.

Please see this page for a longer version of this article.

[1] The event along with a social media campaign forms part of the activities of our research project ‘Transmedia Sustainable Fashion made in Brazil – Documenting the Roundtable at COP27 UN Climate Change Conference and exploring creative strategies to communicate scientific research’, sponsored by the Civic Innovation research group of the International Institute of Social Studies (Erasmus University Rotterdam).

[2] Grupo SOMA includes the following Brazilian brands: Farm, Farm Global, Fabula, Animale, Cris Barros, Foxton, NV, Maria Filó, Off Premium, Hering, Hering Kids, Hering Intimates, and Dzarm.

[3] It is not clear whether the initiative fosters genuine dialogue among companies, and whether it undergoes any external (independent) evaluations.

[4] Malwee, Enfim, Malwee Kids, Carinhoso, basico.com, basicamente.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Luciana dos Santos Duarte is doing a double-degree PhD in Production Engineering (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil) and Development Studies (International Institute of Social Studies, ISS/EUR). She holds a master’s degree in Production Engineering, and a Bachelor degree in Product Design. She is also a lecturer in Industrial Design Engineering at The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS).

 

Sylvia I. Bergh, Associate Professor in Development Management and Governance, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), and Senior researcher, Centre of Expertise on Global Governance, The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS).

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Connecting academic (air) mobility with carbon inequality: Perspectives from a Global South scholar

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As citizens of the Global South, now immigrants in the Global North, which narrative of climate action should we uphold: the one that we know is unfair back home, or the one that puts the responsibility of action on us because of where we reside now? Are our Western contemporaries aware of these dilemmas that we face? A Nepali scholar now residing in Norway reflects on these questions.

Growing up in a middle-income household in Nepal, I was part of a population that was allured to all things western. I distinctly recall how the elementary school curriculum entrenched the notion that Nepal could reach the stature of Switzerland someday – that’s how enticing the western notion was. That we could try to be like them was perpetuated as the goal. And thus, I was introduced to the distinct dichotomy of the spheres of we and they.

I pursued my higher studies in climate change and sustainable development, where I first came across the principle of “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities” (CBDR) that underscored climate change negotiations over a decade ago. This further deepened the we and they dichotomy for me: that those states which have the highest responsibility in the current levels of greenhouse gas emissions should bear the bigger share in curbing emissions is of course sensible! I have always understood that they equated with the Global North (whose historical emissions are the root of the climate problem) while we meant the Global South (who have historically faced the greater impacts of climate change). And of course, in this phenomenon, I was a part of the we. I had learned that we must adapt (because there is no other choice), and they must curb emissions (because they are responsible for the problem). I have had abundant discussions with teachers and friends alike, about how they are responsible for the climate crisis, and how it is unfair that we have to bear the repercussions of it. These discussions resonate with the current global negotiations as well as social movements which are premised upon climate (in)justice.

About a year ago, I moved to Europe for my PhD and was beyond elated! Omar El Akkad has said on flight patterns: “Westerners don’t tend to think this way, but in the part of the world I’m from, we talk about passports in terms of their power…”, and I couldn’t agree more. My green passport is limiting in every manner and form, at the bottom of the passport tier, and requires me to get a visa to most countries. My global citizenry aspirations are curtailed by the power that my passport lacks. And this new job offered me the opportunity to live the western dream, in terms of work, travel and to some degree, privilege!

A month into my PhD, I began to realize that I was struggling to fit in because the discussions centered around how ‘we’ need to do more, cut down emissions radically because ‘they’ suffer the impacts. This reversal of ‘we’ and ‘they’ in my workplace left me stunned, to say the least, and I began questioning: in my current situation, which ‘we’ do I belong in?

Art by Jacob V Joyce and Rudy Loewe at the Back to Earth exhibition at Serpentine North Gallery London

Many of my colleagues argue for degrowth in order to reduce emissions and live within planetary boundaries, which a growing body of scholarly literature also points to. Degrowth, after all, is not universal and is applied to “specifically high-income countries that need to degrow”. I understand the science behind degrowth but struggle with it, especially when it is voiced that ‘we’ must degrow. This becomes apparent, for example, when we discuss low carbon travel in my workplace. As colleagues of mine suggest that we ought to fly as little as we can, for both work and leisure, and then some colleagues go on to say how they have adopted a low-flight lifestyle, I can’t add anything but a few nods because of course, what they say is true. It is both refreshing and inspiring to work with people who walk the talk about individual climate action. But soon after, the question “how is this fair?” sinks in.

There is no denying that flying jeopardizes the climate, and the less we fly the better. But there is little acknowledgement that flying is linked with stark global carbon inequalities. What my colleagues pay no heed to is that I have not had the same experiences as they have. Studies show that air travel is in fact an economic privilege. While the top 10% of the income quartile consume 75% of all the energy from air-travel, the majority of the global population “are almost or entirely excluded from aviation”.

Most of my colleagues have travelled around the world, not just Europe. Their passports are inherently more powerful than mine – they don’t need a visa to visit Europe, nor for many other parts of the world. When they speak about the trips they took a lifetime ago to another country, or continent for that matter, for work or otherwise, I have no similar experiences to draw on. Back home, flying is the exception whereas here it’s the norm. I have had more opportunities to fly in the past year while working in Norway than throughout my entire life spent in Asia.

What is the basic standard for most of my colleagues is, in fact, a luxury for me. I’m not sure they’re aware of this. My version of we is fundamentally different from theirs. My colleagues and I view the world through our respective colored lenses. At least some part of their higher education has been in the Global North (Europe, the US, Canada or Australia) whereas mine has been grounded in Nepal and Thailand.

When I think rationally, I know, understand, and even agree that my individual choices, regardless of which part of the globe I live in, are mine. I can be a part of the climate crisis (should I choose to hop around Europe in cheap budget airlines for work and/or leisure) or be a part of the solution (plan the same travels by land). But it is difficult to be rational all the time, especially when my experiences, contexts and perspectives are so different, and even more so, when what I think of luxury (being in Europe) are just everyday things for others.

I focus here mostly on flying because my work encourages a low-carbon travel policy, including to avoid flying for work to the largest extent possible. While it is a sensible climate action for an institute, I do think there are nuances that need further unpacking.

Image of the University of Bergen’s Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation (CET) low-carbon travel policy. Source: https://www.uib.no/en/cet/120490/cet-low-carbon-travel-policy

Firstly, our travel budget does not allow for a low-carbon travel policy because it is fixed. The more we choose trains and stopovers in different cities, travelling for work, be it a conference, networking events or even courses, becomes more and more expensive. The choice of transport mode is therefore a matter of economic privilege, which most of us unfortunately do not possess.

Secondly, the low-carbon travel policy does not account for the carbon inequality linked with flying. How is it fair that I feel guilty for flying to conferences (which are important for networking as an early career researcher) while there are plenty of more established, senior researchers (including those working on sustainability and/ or climate change) who choose to fly between continents for a 2-day conference, even though they may not need to network any further?  I am aware of my own privilege when I discuss my choice to attend such events in person. More often than not I am reminded about how many such in-person events are inaccessible to a lot of my peers, both financially and geographically. This contributes further to my own guilt, and also to the debate about how (un)sustainable current academic practices really are.

That everyone in the room shares similar beliefs because we work at the same center and are passionate about similar things is not a given. My personal conflicts of treading this ‘we’ and ‘they’ have resulted in numerous venting sessions. Because it is sometimes both frustrating and exhausting to not be able to find another person with similar lived experiences to connect with, in a foreign land.

A friend of mine who is now in the UK advised me that I must simply unlearn things to cope with this reversal. And I can’t help but ask if it is fair that they talk about radical lifestyle transformations, when we have always aspired to look upon their everyday? Or do I feel guilty for having to ask it at all, because I know the science behind it, and need to stop viewing the world through the colored lens of we as equating with the Global South? I have also come to the glaring realisation that these ‘uncomfortable’ talks need to happen more – because they open avenues to thinking in a different manner. And that is a critical first step to instigate action.

I recently flew to two conferences, one in which a session was on making meaningful connections between the Global North and South, and the other focused on energy and climate justice. It was a meeting point for over a hundred young researchers working around the world, trying to solve world problems, one research project at a time. Could such events create ‘safe spaces’ where we can have meaningful conversations about the reversal of we and they, and develop genuine connections between the Global North and Global South? Could such conversations lead to perhaps blurring the dichotomies? Would these broaden perspectives by forcing us to think outside of the box that we’ve been trained to think in?

Reflecting on both these events, I do think that they offered the space and the connections to confront the dichotomies of we and they. I had the chance to discuss with researchers, both early career and established ones, about my dilemma with air travel as an early career researcher. Three important points have come up. Firstly, we need to question who has to reduce air travel – is it up and coming researchers who really need networking opportunities, or established ones who comprise the privileged ones? Secondly, we need to acknowledge the carbon inequality associated with flying and incentivize travel by land. We live in a system that inherently disincentivizes low-carbon travel options, as air travel is heavily subsidized while train travel is not. So, if we, as an academic community preach the shift from air to land travel, it is the community’s responsibility to incentivize the low-carbon options, especially to those from the Global South, to attend such events. Finally, the geography and accessibility to these events matter: they can be organized in places that have good connections by land and in hybrid formats (as were events during the COVID pandemic). This feeds into a larger debate of how (un)sustainable and (un)just current academic practices are- especially in terms of accessibility and inclusion of those from the Global South.

This blog was first published in Undisciplined Environments.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Subina Shrestha is a PhD Candidate, Centre for climate and energy transformation (CET).

 

 

 

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Limits to learning: when climate action contributes to social conflict

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REDD+, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, has been one of the holy grails of international efforts to combat climate change for the past 10 years: over 10 billion dollars have been pledged to this cause by donor countries. Although REDD+ aims to reduce deforestation rates while increasing the welfare of landowners, research has shown that it also negatively impacts indigenous communities and has contributed to conflict. While hard work has been done to improve REDD+ programs, there are serious unintended effects of this much needed climate change action program. We wondered if organizations will do something about these unintended effects and would like to stimulate debate on that. We found that there are limits to what they learn: some unintended effects are likely to persist.

The REDD+ programmes, developed by the United Nations, use a payment for environmental services (PES) approach to support developing countries in creating more sustainable land use models. The idea behind this is that landowners move away from traditional land use methods that deplete forests and hence exhaust their capacity to absorb CO2. In turn, they receive monetary and other incentives that make up for loss of income and enable them to work towards more sustainable land use.

However, a disturbing number of “unintended consequences” results from these programmes. Such consequences do not necessarily relate to the initial goals of the programme: it can for example achieve great results in forest preservation and poverty alleviation; yet be only accessible to those who officially own the land. Thereby it excludes the poor residents for whom the programme was initially intended. Importantly, because these effects fall outside the scope of the programmes, they are not always taken into consideration when it comes to measuring impact.

In the past years, researchers found such effects on both the forest preservation and social impact fronts. Now, determining that some bear the brunt of well-intended efforts to tackle climate change is one thing. The next question, however, is crucial: will implementers be able to learn from their mistakes? Are the unintended consequences that have been seen in the past years avoidable, and does REDD+ hence have the potential to be for instance truly inclusive and conflict-sensitive?

Will programme implementers learn from their mistakes?

The answer is, as always: it depends. Reasons for not learning from unintended effects are partly technical: for example, the difficulty to measure the actual deforestation rates or the forests that are “saved” as a direct result from the project (the so-called displacement effect). With better measurement techniques, experts expect that these issues can be overcome in the near future.

However, the unintended consequences of REDD+ that are social in nature are a completely different ball game. These include for example the discrimination of indigenous peoples and their ancestral ways of living and working the land; the exclusion of many rural poor because they do not have official land titles; the exclusion of women for the same reason; or the rising of social tensions in communities, or between communities and authorities.

Organizations which implement REDD+, such as the World Bank and the Green Climate Fund, are aware of these unintended consequences and have put measures in place to anticipate and regulate them. These “social and environmental safeguards” should prevent discrimination as a result from the programmes. Moreover, grievance redress and dispute settlement mechanisms are in place to serve justice to those who have been harmed or disadvantaged regardless.

Despite these systems and regulations, World Bank and GCF employees explain that they are struggling with managing these unintended consequences, and that it is difficult to satisfy everyone’s needs while still achieving results on the deforestation front. The dilemma they face is clear: the more time, effort and money is spent to anticipate all possible unintended consequences, the less money and time is left to use for the implement the climate change programming, and time is ticking.

Ideological limits to learning

Donors who fund the programmes appear sometimes more concerned by just increasing disbursement rates, to show they are active in the fight against climate change, than fully taking note and acting on the collateral social damage. With more pressure from civil society, donors and organizations are likely to also take more of the social factors on board, for example through the safeguard system. However, there appears to be one major blind spot, on which little learning is taking place.

To our surprise, the most encountered unintended effects are the so-called motivational crowding out effects. Time and again, it was found that, while people were initially quite concerned about the forest and finding ways to preserve it, their intrinsic motivation to do so declined when monetary rewards were offered. The neo-liberal model of putting a price on everything might work on the short run, but appears to contribute to an erosion of conservation values in the long run. So, taking stock of collateral damage, this might be one of the most unexpected ones we encountered. And unfortunately, it goes against the very ideological basis of the PES approach. Currently, we also found little action by organizations and donors to deal with this unintended effect. An ideological limit to learning appears to be in place here.

Yet, we are still hoping that climate justice can be achieved. That green objectives can be combined with social justice objectives. We invite you to share your abstracts with us for the panel we are organizing at the EADI conference in 2020. The deadline is on December 15. If you would like to read more background information on this topic, you are welcome to consult our working paper.

About the authors:

pasfoto DJ Koch

Dirk-Jan Koch is Professor (special appointment) in International Trade and Development Cooperation at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, and Chief Science Officer of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His latest publications include Is it time to ‘decolonise’ the fungibility debate? (2019, Third World Quarterly, with Zunera Rana) and Exaggerating unintended effects? Competing narratives on the impact of conflict minerals regulation (2018, Resources Policy, with Sara Kinsbergen).Pasfoto.jpg

 

Marloes Verholt is researcher at the Radboud University Nijmegen. She researches the unintended effects of international climate policy. With a background in conflict analysis and human rights work, she views the climate change debate through these lenses.

Whose climate security? Or why we should worry about security language in climate action

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The climate crisis is becoming an international focal point, and budgets for climate change mitigation and adaptation are getting larger. At the same time, debates on ‘climate security’ involving some of the most powerful actors globally can be discerned.  We need to ask ourselves, our governments, and corporations some difficult and counterintuitive questions: does much-needed action on climate change have harmful environmental and social effects, especially for marginalised groups living in and of water, land and forests?

Questions of environmental and social justice around climate action are not new: we know that climate mitigation and adaptation measures are not benefiting everyone equally[1]. Essentially, this is caused by climate interventions being built on growth imperatives, assigning (monetary) value to nature, and thereby including it in the neoliberal economic system. This approach overlooks the complex relations that humans have with nature, including spiritual and social bonds, and how nature is linked to livelihoods.

Matters get even more complicated when we add ‘climate security’ to the equation. In recent decades this frame has gained ground among some of the most powerful persons and institutions globally, for example the US Defence Force and Shell. The idea they promote is pretty straightforward: climate change causes erratic weather patterns, making areas less inhabitable due to scarcity of resources that in turn leads to conflict and migration. This would lead to instability locally, at the state level or even internationally, and as such poses security threats – to humans, but also to nation-states and even the international order.

But this premise of climate security, which has recently been placed on the agenda of the UN Security Council, is highly contested. From a political ecology perspective, it is regarded as Malthusian in the sense that the political choices related to natural resources are ignored. By asking key questions such as who owns what, who does what, and who gets what, the power dynamics around natural resources are thrown into sharp relief. Researchers and activists argue that there is need to be more concerned with how ‘policies to deal with the effects of climate change’ lead to conflict, rather than the effects of climate change itself.

And this climate security framing could mean that security actors – the military or security corporations – also get involved in formulating those policies. That for example may just lead to the militarisation of hydropower dams and forest management. This has also been observed within nature conservation around poaching, now referred to as ‘green wars’. Several authors have warned these matters need much more attention.

The various understandings of conflict

I became engaged in these topics through my professional position at the Dutch Research Council (NWO). I am working on research programmes funded by some of the larger development donors in northwestern Europe, such as one that was indeed concerned with the impact of climate policies on conflict. This programme sought to enhance an understanding of how climate policies may incite conflicts, such that the knowledge could add to more ‘conflict-sensitive climate action’. Seven research projects were funded that focused on conflicts around water, land and forests that were part of climate policies.

The launch of the programme had brought me to a seminar at the Circle National des Armées in Paris, where military actors that focused on security formed the majority.  And I was asked to engage with the Planetary Security Initiative, launched by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also populated with military and governmental actors and security think tanks who in turn engage with corporations that are seeking stable contexts. These actors tend to see conflicts as (sudden) eruptions of violence that lead to death and injury, and possibly even war.

Throughout the process of implementing the programme, it occurred to me that those actors that I was engaging with had a different understanding of ‘conflict’. The donor representatives were impatient that the research did not seem to contain their idea of what a ‘conflict analysis’ should be and that typically results in a conflict typology to help categorize different conflicts.

The researchers in the programme, however, were speaking of conflicts as elements inherent to society, shaped by dynamics of power – as politics. Conflicts thus are not considered as ‘events’, but rather as a ‘process’ through which conflicting interests occur. According to such an understanding, conflicts are not the domain of the military or security actors, but are rather ‘a clash of interests, values and norms among individuals or groups that leads to antagonism and a struggle for power’.

Militarisation of climate action?

It is evident that these different readings of conflict may have implications for how, and by whom, climate responses are formulated.

When considering climate as a security threat, military and security actors could well become part of the formulation of responses to climate change, which would have major implications on the power dynamics around the natural resources involved.

It could, for example, lead to militarisation of hydropower dams, wind turbine parks or forest protection.

And that gives us reason to be worried. Experience with militarisation of anti-poaching efforts as part of nature conservation shows that this may lead to the normalisation of violence and has devastating consequences for people living with wildlife. As such, it could become possible for vested interests to dominate, while the interests of marginalised groups living in and of water, land and forests could be sidelined.

This blog thus calls on researchers and activists to increase understanding of these matters in the hope and anticipation that collectively we may gain greater understanding of these matters and as such contribute to more environmentally and socially just climate action. Because acting on the climate we must, but not at the cost of marginalised natures and humans.

Footnotes

[1] Already in 2012 the term ‘green grabbing’ was coined: appropriation in the name of the environment, including effects of climate interventions. Numerous examples are available, for example on the shift to renewable energies. Windmills, solar panel fields and hydropower dams that were erected have led to land and ocean grabs, with resource users being expelled. In fact, for those energy sources it is not always clear that they are ‘green’ to begin with. Their negative impact on the environment and ecosystems are widely recorded for instance in the  Environmental Justice Atlas. In addition, conservation and regeneration of forests is a common mitigation and adaptation strategy. And it does feel good and tangible to plant or preserve a tree to compensate our consumption-guilt, no? That is essentially the starting point of the UNFCCC’s REDD+ programme. But vast amounts of research document the natural as well as social damage caused by REDD+. It has, for example, led to exclusion of forest dwellers in decisions on how to manage the forest, that are the provision of their livelihoods. They have also often not shared in the benefits that REDD+ projects should bring them. And in some instances areas have actually been deforested, precisely because climate funding has assigned monetary value to the trees and land.

About the author:

Corinne Lamain is a part-time PhD Candidate at ISS, where she studies the interrelations between climate finance mechanisms, climate securities and socio-ecological conflicts in the Eastern Himalayas.

On the Racist Humanism of Climate Action

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Mainstream climate change mitigation and adaptation policies are imbued with neocolonial discursive constructions of the “other”. Understanding how such constructions work has important implications for how we think about emancipatory and socially-just responses to the climate crisis.

In her 2016 “Edward Said Lecture”, Naomi Klein made the case that “othering” is intimately linked to the production of the climate crisis. Borrowing from Said’s Orientalism, Klein defines othering as the “disregarding, essentialising, [and] denuding the humanity of another culture, people or geographical region”. She argues that this is much needed for justifying the sacrifice zones necessary for fossil fuel exploitation, and for refusing to protect climate refugees.

In these ways, othering permits letting off the hook the neoliberal and neocolonial structures of domination that are largely responsible for climate injustice.

Constructing people as not-fully-human, not part of “us”, or as threats—internal enemies, foreign agents, terrorists, obstacles to development, and the like—is a common strategy for legitimising repression against those who resist extractivism and dispossession. Indeed, compartmentalising populations into those who need protection and support, and those who can be sacrificed for the sake of the “greater good”, is what theorists from Michel Foucault to Achille Mbembe saw as the fundamental function of racism, originating in European colonialism. Similarly, Frantz Fanon defined racism as a global hierarchy based on the “line of the human”, which created a distinction between the zone of being (the human) and the zone of not being (the sub- or non-human).

At the same time, the workings and reach of othering go beyond what Naomi Klein suggests. Discursive constructions of populations or territories as “other” are also mobilised to include them within the reach of government action and control. This is typically the case with populations or territories that are constructed as “in need of improving” that, as anthropologist Tania Murray Li has shown, have long underpinned colonial and development interventions. These constructions are no less racist and colonial than those justifying the “need to sacrifice”, yet they are intermeshed with a humanitarian or humanist “will to improve” the other, a reactivation of the imperial discourse of the “white man’s burden”.

Image 1. Mural dedicated to Edward Said, Palestine, 2016. Unknown author. Source. Wikimedia Commons

Climate Action and Othering

We claim that this ambivalent mobilisation of othering—oscillating between improvement and sacrifice—also characterises mainstream responses to the climate crisis, imbuing them with a neo-colonial and, at heart, racist ethos. Policies for mitigating climatic changes, adapting to them, or governing climate-induced migration, require prior discursive work to frame targeted populations or territories as problematic or deficient, through narratives that stress vulnerability, underdevelopment, and victimhood. At the same time, these interventions are associated with effects of dispossession, environmental destruction and the production of surplus populations and sacrifice zones, and must therefore rely on othering to justify letting such populations die.

Mitigation and green extractivism

Think of climate change mitigation, and its purported goal of shifting away from fossil fuels by aggressively expanding industrial-scale renewable energies and electric automobility. Environmental movements and researchers have demonstrated abundantly that this strategy is problematic. They denounced the dispossession effects of “transition mineral” extraction and large hydropower projects, and the “land grabbing” associated with wind and solar energy generation and biofuel plantations. Such industrial-scale solutions follow a “green extractivist” logic that aims to appropriate as much resources, energy and profits as fast as possible from a territory, irrespective of the social and ecological impacts. As such, they produce dispossession and sacrifice outcomes similar to those of fossil fuel extraction (and don’t fare a lot better in terms of CO2 emissions, as Alexander Dunlap has shown).

Compared to the old, “grey” extractivism of dirty coal and oil, such projects are cast as necessary not only for the improvement of otherwise “underdeveloped” territories and peoples, but also for saving the planet from catastrophic climate change—as research by activist and writer Daniel Voskoboynik demonstrates in the case of lithium. The more urgent and necessary the improvement, the more acceptable the sacrifice, and the more “selfish and irrational” the resistance.

Adaptation and vulnerability

Climate change adaptation is another case in point. While emanating from ostensibly disinterested concerns with the adverse effects of climatic changes upon “vulnerable” groups, it draws upon and reinforces images of the other as both in danger and potentially dangerous. This manifests itself in adaptation policy documents—for instance, by the EU—which construct Africa as a climatic “heart of darkness” of unruly environments, failed institutions, and backwards populations, ready to flood European borders with unwanted migrants.

This type of representations depoliticise vulnerability. They separate it from colonial histories and previous rounds of capitalist dispossession and neoliberal restructuring that created or exacerbated people’s “lack of adaptive capacities” in the first place; and obfuscate the historical responsibility of colonial states and capitalists in the global North for generating the majority of greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, adaptation interventions seek to make “target” populations responsible for managing the adverse effects of climatic changes, receiving limited assistance (in the form of debt and corporate investments) conditional on their willingness to go along with a pre-packaged plan.

The “improvement” of populations and territories targeted by adaptation programmes has no room for redressing development-induced dispossession; rather, it is expected to work through the dispossession itself. As Markus Taylor shows in the case of adaptation policies in Mongolia and South Asia, urbanization and proletarianization of rural populations, which result in poverty, indebtedness and loss of access to their means of production and livelihood, are framed by the institutions like the World Bank precisely as a way of reducing small farmers’ vulnerability to climate change, while also freeing up rural space for more mechanised and capital-intensive agriculture.

Climate-Induced Migration

Discursive constructions of the climate migrant exemplify how the two forms of othering (to “sacrifice” and to “improve”) are deployed in overlapping and contradictory ways. A common way in which othering operates in this context involves the separation between “good” and “bad” migrants. For instance, Andrew Telford has shown how EU and US policy reports on climate-induced migration often represent Muslim and African migrant populations as threats, as racialised others with a potential for radicalization and terrorism.

At the opposite end of the “migrant-as-threat” trope stands the image of climate migrants as victims, which is apparently benign but nonetheless problematic. Victimisation involves representing those vulnerable to the effects of climatic change as powerless and resource-less. This disempowers communities by obscuring the adaptation strategies they already practice. At the same time, it bolsters neo-colonial imaginaries of a silenced other with no agency who, driven by desperation, “easily becomes the unpredictable, wild ‘other’ that threatens ‘us’”—in the words of geographer Kate Manzo.

Image 2. Global Climate Strike in Melbourne, Australia. September 2019. Credit: John Englart. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Othering and the Adaptation of Capital

Despite their stated aim to mitigate and adapt to disastrous climatic changes, mainstream climate policies are explicitly envisioned as avenues for furthering capital accumulation.

This is obvious in the case of industrial-scale renewables, dominated by transnational energy corporations seeking to expand their markets and diversify their production. But it also applies to the increasingly privatised and financialised business of adaptation, presented as creating opportunities for profit-making and rent extraction. For instance, a report released in September 2019 by the Global Commission on Adaptation—a private-public partnership led by the UN, World Bank and Gates Foundation—calculated that “investing $1.8 trillion globally” in climate change adaption until 2030 “could generate $7.1 trillion in total net benefits”.

What’s more, climate policies are motivated by a geostrategic concern with security. This points to a continuation of the post-WWII “development project”, which was motivated by the threat that newly decolonised populations might turn to communism or Third World anti-imperialism. While the political coordinates have changed, “climate-related development” functions to a large extent as a way of containing the “excess freedom” of surplus populations: stopping them from becoming unruly, or migrating to rich countries (in larger numbers than capital needs).

Taken together, the current choreography of policies and interventions that make up the “climate action” framework can be seen as a way to preserve global capitalist class power in the face of the ongoing climate catastrophe. Othering in this sense is central to the “post-political” governmentality of climate change, a key tenet of which is, for Erik Swyngedouw, “the perceived inevitability of capitalism and a market economy as the basic organizational structure of the social and economic order, for which there is no alternative.”

Alternatives

A central implication of all this is that plans for radical socio-ecological transformation—including Just Transition or Green New Deal frameworks—should not reproduce a colonial logic whereby peripheries (primarily) in the global South are treated as pools for resource grabbing and carbon dumping, or as sites for salvation-type interventions that dismiss frontline community action and priorities. As climate justice activists advocate, there can be no decarbonisation without decolonization.

Challenging the neocolonial and neoliberal government of climate change entails affirming the ability of the subaltern to “speak”: recognising and reasserting the “pluriversality” of “non-Western” socio-environmental knowledges and praxes should be foundational to climate justice. We must be mindful, however, that—as the Aymara theorist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui has argued—there is more to decolonization than discursive emancipation.

Recognising ontological multiplicity must go hand in hand with the critique of material power asymmetries and global unequal (ecological) relations. Decolonizing means, primarily, giving back the land to indigenous communities and reasserting the sovereignty of formerly colonized peoples, including access to and control over natural resources and other means of production and reproduction—as part of globally connected struggles attacking the material and ideological bases of racial-patriarchal capitalism and imperialism.

This blog was originally published in Undisciplined Environments, and is based on a longer, open access article published in the journal Political Geography. The article first appeared on Bliss on 13 October 2021.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

Diego Andreucci is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Juan de la Cierva Social and Political Sciences Department at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

 

 

Christos Zografos is a Ramón y Cajal Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

Pakistan floods show why adaptation alone won’t help prevent climate disasters

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Despite Pakistan’s growing number of adaptive measures, mostly in the form of foreign investments in its water and agriculture sector, recent floods all but destroyed this South Asian country. In light of this, we should critically discuss whether taking adaptative measures can really help Pakistan (or any country) prepare itself for climate change-related disasters that are becoming increasingly unprecedented in magnitude and scale. Radical climate action that moves beyond adaptation is needed to truly protect vulnerable regions and communities from catastrophic events, writes Isbah Hameed.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2022/08/30/1119979965/pakistan-floods-monsoon-climate

“A catastrophe of epic scale”

The enormity of the floods that recently swept across Pakistan as a result of abnormally heavy monsoon rains has left the country baffled. Vast swathes of land were submerged, millions of people were displaced, and their belongings and property were destroyed. The devastating floods affected over 33 million people, displaced over half a million people, and claimed a thousand lives, with losses estimated at more than 40 billion euro according to the government of Pakistan. In the wake of the disaster, a state of emergency was declared, and Pakistan’s national climate change minister called the floods “a catastrophe of e­­pic scale“. Right now, massive relief work is being carried out by government organizations, national and international NGOs, and private institutions to help this flood-stricken country recover.

No-one can tell exactly how long it would take for the millions of displaced people to go back to their homes and how long it will take the country to get back on its feet following the social, ecological, and economic losses that it has suffered. Much uncertainty remains, also about what to do next. What’s clear is that any optimism that might have existed about the effectiveness of adaptive measures to increase the country’s resilience to the effects of climate change was swept away by the floods. The sheer magnitude of the floods, which simply washed out the country from Kashmir in the north to Kotri in the south and even beyond, leaving one-third of the country under water, made it clear that adapting was simply not enough to protect it from the floods. So what can be done to better protect it from future climate change-related disasters?

 

Swept away by the floods

As one of countries most at risk of climate change and its effects, dozens of adaptation strategies have been identified by Pakistan in its Nationally Determined Contributions1 (NDCs) that form part of the Paris Agreement. Most of the adaptation strategies are in the water and agriculture sectors and include water conservation measures, improvements to irrigation systems, the strengthening of risk management systems for agriculture, a move toward climate-smart agriculture, and the improvement  of emergency response systems as adaptation measures. In addition, Pakistan’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP), which focuses on “building resilience to climate change”, is already in the making with the support of UNEP. These plans are helping identify technical, institutional, and financial needs of the country in integrating climate change adaptation into its medium- and long-term national planning and financing.

The measures taken by Pakistan hinge on international investments and funding because it  is already facing many challenges on economic and political fronts; climate adaptation is an additional task to comply with along with already existing developmental constraints. But measures taken or promoted so far to help increase its resilience to floods and climate change in general seem ineffective as the recent massive floods engulfed the country and, with it, all efforts to prevent this from occurring. It simply implies that no adaptative measure at all would practically be commensurate with disasters of this scale, at least in developing countries.

 

Asking the right questions

Adaptation is widely promoted by international institutions as a way in which to mitigate the effects of climate change, and the call for more adaptive measures to be taken has been strengthened in the wake of Pakistan’s recent floods. However, floods in general and these floods in particular due to their destructive potential can lead us to ask whether adaptation alone can really help countries minimize the damage caused by such disasters. The question is not which specific measures should be taken, which sector should be targeted first and most intensely, or in which ways international donors should be persuaded to pledge money for these measures. Rather, it is more plausible to ask to which degree, at which scale, and for how long the undertaken adaptation measures can help climate change-affected countries to remain unyielding in light of extreme weather events that may come to challenge even the most resilient environments.

Unsurprisingly, the idea of adaptation can thus be misleading given the enormity of such disasters, because it’s simply not enough. This suggests us to ask why adaptation is being promoted, if proven to be ineffective, and by whom. Indeed, adaptation and its technical underpinnings have already been criticized by academic scholars2 for being apolitical and for being unable to address the root cause of the climate problem. But the focus here is on what can be done if adaptation doesn’t work, especially given the inherent unpredictability of the scale of future events taking into account the complex feedbacks of the climate system. Is it wise to invest in and engage human and global capital in designing and implementing adaptation strategies that won’t be effective? I don’t seek to answer these questions in this article, but wish to show that we need to start talking about this both as scholars and as policymakers.

 

A wake-up call

In light of the recent events in Pakistan, one should ask whether adaptation should be considered a way forward at all. The case can help us shift our attention to what international institutions are and should be doing to address the root causes of the problem instead of advocating adaptation. These disasters are a wake-up call to the world that more radical measures are needed; reducing greenhouse gas emission and adapting to soften the blow of climate change is not enough. COP27 is set to take place in Egypt in November in parallel with Pakistan’s post-disaster recovery efforts. It will be significant to see what will be discussed and what future line of action will be proposed at the conference following this devastating event.

  1. A Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) is a climate action plan to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts. NDCs are at the heart of the Paris Agreement which aims to hold the global average rise in temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, preferably limiting the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius; thus avoiding the projected rise from 2.9 to 3.4 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. Signatories to the Paris Agreement are required to establish NDCs and update these every five years.
  2. Adaptation strategy as a response to climate change is being criticized by many academic scholars for example, Siri Eriksen et al (2021), Aaron Atteridge &Elise Remling (2018) have discussed that adaptation strategies tend to reinforce existing causes of vulnerability, and also redistribute and create new sources of vulnerability rather than reducing them.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

 

Isbah Hameed is a doctoral candidate in the Political Ecology Research Group at ISS. Her research is focused on studying the socio-political implications of embracing Climate-smart agriculture as an adaptation strategy in Pakistan.

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“Nothing about us, without us!”: Disability inclusion in community-based climate resilient programs. A case study of Indonesia

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In design of climate-resilient programs for community development, there is growing awareness of the benefits of gender assessments, but it is far less common that disability is considered. The meaningful inclusion of people with disabilities can reveal their knowledge and capacities to contribute, and result in more contextualised and socially-just responses to climate change.

Caption: Plan Indonesia and PERSANI staff in hybrid workshop to provide recommendations for the Guidance on assessments for climate-resilient inclusive WASH. Photo credit: Silvia Landa, Plan Indonesia (2020)

Climate change poses huge challenges for the wellbeing of individuals and communities, especially those reliant on their local environments for subsistence. As the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2021 report demonstrates, we are experiencing changes to our climate at an unprecedented scale and intensity. There is growing awareness that the impacts of climate change are not merely biophysical, but embedded in social processes. To varying degrees of success, non-governmental organisations and local governments are mainstreaming climate resilience in their community development programs. In designing programs, it is important to involve diverse community members in assessing climate change impacts and finding solutions, including those who are often marginalised.

The catch-cry of disability rights organisations of “nothing about us, without us” draws attention that all people have the right to self-determination and to have a say in development outcomes and policy that affects them. This blog provides three arguments for inclusion of people with disabilities in community-based climate-resilient programs, with a case example from Indonesia.

Improving community sanitation in Manggarai district, Indonesia

Together with Yayasan Plan International Indonesia (Plan Indonesia), Institute for Sustainable Futures – University of Technology Sydney (ISF-UTS) conducted a research-practice project to collaboratively inform how Plan Indonesia addresses the impacts of climate change on their inclusive sanitation program. In 2019, ISF-UTS and Plan Indonesia co-designed and trialled seven participatory methods/activities to assess how climate change affects water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services, and gender and social inclusion outcomes.

All activities considered inclusion of marginalised groups and people with disabilities, but the assessment of climate impacts on sanitation accessibility was most specific in addressing disability inclusion. Adapted from the WaterAid “How to conduct a WASH accessibility and safety audit” guide, this activity identifies: barriers that currently affect sanitation accessibility; how climate extremes can potentially worsen and create new barriers; and how the community and local government can help people overcome barriers.

The activity was piloted in Manggarai district in the central part of Flores Island, Indonesia. In recent times there has been increasing intensity of rainfall, causing landslides, floods, and soil erosion. Increasing seasonal variability, longer dry spells, and more extreme weather events were also noticed by villagers, and have been in line with climate change projections for the region. The case shared below shows three benefits of inclusion of people with disabilities in climate change assessment for inclusive WASH programming.

First, people with disabilities are likely to experience climate change impacts most severely. Their vulnerability to climate change is linked to multiple disadvantages they experience. For example, people with disabilities globally are disproportionately represented among the poor, have higher levels of unmet health needs, and are twice as likely to be unemployed. Due to these differentiated impacts, their voices are critical for identifying the issues so they can be addressed. For example, in Manggarai, we met with a young woman, with a physical disability, who told us about accessibility issues with the lack of ramp and handrails at the public toilet. To access the toilet, people needed to step across a drain, which fills and overflows during heavy rain.

Second, people with disabilities are routinely excluded from education, jobs, leadership roles, and often denied the opportunity to contribute to public forums. Through including people living with disabilities in community decision-making on climate-resilient programs, they have an experience of being treated with dignity and respect. Through meaningful participation, there may be growing awareness of the actual capacities and contributions of people with disabilities to their community. This helps to shift their position and perception from being an aid beneficiary, to an agent driving their own development, with perspectives worthy of inclusion.

As a result of the inclusive design of the participatory activities, people with disabilities in Manggarai joined the assessments, and other participants created space for them to voice their concerns. In one village forum, an elderly man with disabilities was vocal in requesting assistance from government. A Plan Indonesia team member reported, “we talked about how people with disabilities can have a voice and be heard, using Pertuni (disability people’s organisation) as an example. We want to try changing thinking about people with disabilities as charity recipients, so they can also be empowered and involved in the community”.

Third, drawing on information gathered from a diverse range of community members of different ages, genders, ability levels, and occupations can inform new pathways forward for surviving well in the face of climate change, and possibly positive transformation. This approach pays attention to contextualised and place-based knowledge on the changing environment. Inclusive programs are more likely to be effective, sustainable, and align better with the values of communities.

The community assessment revealed the difficulty of accessing sanitation facilities in challenging weather conditions, such as heavy rain and drought. Learning about experiences of people with disabilities and their carers could then be used to help identify solutions that could be implemented by the community or the government. For example, in all villages, community members suggested using collective funds and labour to build toilets, and provide support to facilitate equal access to water and sanitation for people with disabilities.

Benefits of disability inclusion

Through this case study of a WASH program in Indonesia, we can see the benefits of people with disabilities participating in climate-resilient development programming. Representation of people with disabilities can contribute to a breakdown in negative stereotypes and misconceptions of their capacities. The meaningful inclusion of diverse perspectives ensures a nuanced and contextualised program that benefits all community members with an inclusive outcome.

Although the empowerment and leadership of people living with disabilities is critical in responding to climate change, external assistance is also needed. With the perspectives and needs of people with disabilities in mind, development actors can work alongside disabled people’s organisations, and provide more targeted support for climate change resilience and adaptation.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Tamara Megaw is an ISS alumnus who graduated in 2015 from the MA program in Social Policy for Development. After graduating, she worked in global education at Nuffic NESO Indonesia and then consulted for Transnational Institute. Since late 2017, she has worked at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University for Technology Sydney (ISF-UTS) on research related to development effectiveness, gender equality and social inclusion.

Anna Gero is a Research Principal at ISF-UTS. Anna is a climate change and disaster resilience leader and specialist with over 13 years’ experience in the Asia-Pacific region.

Dr Jeremy Kohlitz is a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) researcher at ISF-UTS with interests in climate change impacts on equitable WASH service delivery in the Asia-Pacific region.

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On the Racist Humanism of Climate Action

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Mainstream climate change mitigation and adaptation policies are imbued with neocolonial discursive constructions of the “other”. Understanding how such constructions work has important implications for how we think about emancipatory and socially-just responses to the climate crisis.

The Atacama salt-flats in Chile are a hotspot of lithium extraction, a major source of conflicts with local indigenous communities over access to water. Credit: Bachelot Pierre J-P. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

In her 2016 “Edward Said Lecture”, Naomi Klein made the case that “othering” is intimately linked to the production of the climate crisis. Borrowing from Said’s Orientalism, Klein defines othering as the “disregarding, essentialising, [and] denuding the humanity of another culture, people or geographical region”. She argues that this is much needed for justifying the sacrifice zones necessary for fossil fuel exploitation, and for refusing to protect climate refugees. In these ways, othering permits letting off the hook the neoliberal and neocolonial structures of domination that are largely responsible for climate injustice.

Constructing people as not-fully-human, not part of “us”, or as threats—internal enemies, foreign agents, terrorists, obstacles to development, and the like—is a common strategy for legitimising repression against those who resist extractivism and dispossession. Indeed, compartmentalising populations into those who need protection and support, and those who can be sacrificed for the sake of the “greater good”, is what theorists from Michel Foucault to Achille Mbembe saw as the fundamental function of racism, originating in European colonialism. Similarly, Frantz Fanon defined racism as a global hierarchy based on the “line of the human”, which created a distinction between the zone of being (the human) and the zone of not being (the sub- or non-human).

At the same time, the workings and reach of othering go beyond what Naomi Klein suggests. Discursive constructions of populations or territories as “other” are also mobilised to include them within the reach of government action and control. This is typically the case with populations or territories that are constructed as “in need of improving” that, as anthropologist Tania Murray Li has shown, have long underpinned colonial and development interventions. These constructions are no less racist and colonial than those justifying the “need to sacrifice”, yet they are intermeshed with a humanitarian or humanist “will to improve” the other, a reactivation of the imperial discourse of the “white man’s burden”.

Image 1. Mural dedicated to Edward Said, Palestine, 2016. Unknown author. Source. Wikimedia Commons

Climate Action and Othering

We claim that this ambivalent mobilisation of othering—oscillating between improvement and sacrifice—also characterises mainstream responses to the climate crisis, imbuing them with a neo-colonial and, at heart, racist ethos. Policies for mitigating climatic changes, adapting to them, or governing climate-induced migration, require prior discursive work to frame targeted populations or territories as problematic or deficient, through narratives that stress vulnerability, underdevelopment, and victimhood. At the same time, these interventions are associated with effects of dispossession, environmental destruction and the production of surplus populations and sacrifice zones, and must therefore rely on othering to justify letting such populations die.

Mitigation and green extractivism

Think of climate change mitigation, and its purported goal of shifting away from fossil fuels by aggressively expanding industrial-scale renewable energies and electric automobility. Environmental movements and researchers have demonstrated abundantly that this strategy is problematic. They denounced the dispossession effects of “transition mineral” extraction and large hydropower projects, and the “land grabbing” associated with wind and solar energy generation and biofuel plantations. Such industrial-scale solutions follow a “green extractivist” logic that aims to appropriate as much resources, energy and profits as fast as possible from a territory, irrespective of the social and ecological impacts. As such, they produce dispossession and sacrifice outcomes similar to those of fossil fuel extraction (and don’t fare a lot better in terms of CO2 emissions, as Alexander Dunlap has shown).

Compared to the old, “grey” extractivism of dirty coal and oil, such projects are cast as necessary not only for the improvement of otherwise “underdeveloped” territories and peoples, but also for saving the planet from catastrophic climate change—as research by activist and writer Daniel Voskoboynik demonstrates in the case of lithium. The more urgent and necessary the improvement, the more acceptable the sacrifice, and the more “selfish and irrational” the resistance.

Adaptation and vulnerability

Climate change adaptation is another case in point. While emanating from ostensibly disinterested concerns with the adverse effects of climatic changes upon “vulnerable” groups, it draws upon and reinforces images of the other as both in danger and potentially dangerous. This manifests itself in adaptation policy documents—for instance, by the EU—which construct Africa as a climatic “heart of darkness” of unruly environments, failed institutions, and backwards populations, ready to flood European borders with unwanted migrants.

This type of representations depoliticise vulnerability. They separate it from colonial histories and previous rounds of capitalist dispossession and neoliberal restructuring that created or exacerbated people’s “lack of adaptive capacities” in the first place; and obfuscate the historical responsibility of colonial states and capitalists in the global North for generating the majority of greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, adaptation interventions seek to make “target” populations responsible for managing the adverse effects of climatic changes, receiving limited assistance (in the form of debt and corporate investments) conditional on their willingness to go along with a pre-packaged plan.

The “improvement” of populations and territories targeted by adaptation programmes has no room for redressing development-induced dispossession; rather, it is expected to work through the dispossession itself. As Markus Taylor shows in the case of adaptation policies in Mongolia and South Asia, urbanisation and proletarianization of rural populations, which result in poverty, indebtedness and loss of access to their means of production and livelihood, are framed by the institutions like the World Bank precisely as a way of reducing small farmers’ vulnerability to climate change, while also freeing up rural space for more mechanised and capital-intensive agriculture.

Climate-Induced Migration

Discursive constructions of the climate migrant exemplify how the two forms of othering (to “sacrifice” and to “improve”) are deployed in overlapping and contradictory ways. A common way in which othering operates in this context involves the separation between “good” and “bad” migrants. For instance, Andrew Telford has shown how EU and US policy reports on climate-induced migration often represent Muslim and African migrant populations as threats, as racialised others with a potential for radicalization and terrorism.

At the opposite end of the “migrant-as-threat” trope stands the image of climate migrants as victims, which is apparently benign but nonetheless problematic. Victimisation involves representing those vulnerable to the effects of climatic change as powerless and resource-less. This disempowers communities by obscuring the adaptation strategies they already practice. At the same time, it bolsters neo-colonial imaginaries of a silenced other with no agency who, driven by desperation, “easily becomes the unpredictable, wild ‘other’ that threatens ‘us’”—in the words of geographer Kate Manzo.

Image 2. Global Climate Strike in Melbourne, Australia. September 2019. Credit: John Englart. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Othering and the Adaptation of Capital

Despite their stated aim to mitigate and adapt to disastrous climatic changes, mainstream climate policies are explicitly envisioned as avenues for furthering capital accumulation. This is obvious in the case of industrial-scale renewables, dominated by transnational energy corporations seeking to expand their markets and diversify their production. But it also applies to the increasingly privatised and financialised business of adaptation, presented as creating opportunities for profit-making and rent extraction. For instance, a report released in September 2019 by the Global Commission on Adaptation—a private-public partnership led by the UN, World Bank and Gates Foundation—calculated that “investing $1.8 trillion globally” in climate change adaption until 2030 “could generate $7.1 trillion in total net benefits”.

What’s more, climate policies are motivated by a geostrategic concern with security. This points to a continuation of the post-WWII “development project”, which was motivated by the threat that newly decolonised populations might turn to communism or Third World anti-imperialism. While the political coordinates have changed, “climate-related development” functions to a large extent as a way of containing the “excess freedom” of surplus populations: stopping them from becoming unruly, or migrating to rich countries (in larger numbers than capital needs).

Taken together, the current choreography of policies and interventions that make up the “climate action” framework can be seen as a way to preserve global capitalist class power in the face of the ongoing climate catastrophe. Othering in this sense is central to the “post-political” governmentality of climate change, a key tenet of which is, for Erik Swyngedouw, “the perceived inevitability of capitalism and a market economy as the basic organizational structure of the social and economic order, for which there is no alternative.”

Alternatives

A central implication of all this is that plans for radical socio-ecological transformation—including Just Transition or Green New Deal frameworks—should not reproduce a colonial logic whereby peripheries (primarily) in the global South are treated as pools for resource grabbing and carbon dumping, or as sites for salvation-type interventions that dismiss frontline community action and priorities. As climate justice activists advocate, there can be no decarbonisation without decolonization.

Challenging the neocolonial and neoliberal government of climate change entails affirming the ability of the subaltern to “speak”: recognising and reasserting the “pluriversality” of “non-Western” socio-environmental knowledges and praxes should be foundational to climate justice. We must be mindful, however, that—as the Aymara theorist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui has argued—there is more to decolonization than discursive emancipation.

Recognising ontological multiplicity must go hand in hand with the critique of material power asymmetries and global unequal (ecological) relations. Decolonizing means, primarily, giving back the land to indigenous communities and reasserting the sovereignty of formerly colonized peoples, including access to and control over natural resources and other means of production and reproduction—as part of globally connected struggles attacking the material and ideological bases of racial-patriarchal capitalism and imperialism.

This blog was originally published in Undisciplined Environments, and is based on a longer, open access article published in the journal Political Geography.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Diego Andreucci is a postdoctoral researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and a member of Undisciplined Environments. @diegoandreucci

Christos Zografos is a Ramón y Cajal Senior Research Fellow of the Department of Political and Social Sciences at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is Vice-Director of GREDS (Research Group on Health Inequalities, Environment, and Employment Conditions), and Executive Board member of the Johns Hopkins University – Pompeu Fabra (JHU-UPF) University Public Policy Centre.

Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.

 

Whose climate security? Or why we should worry about security language in climate action

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The climate crisis is becoming an international focal point, and budgets for climate change mitigation and adaptation are getting larger. At the same time, debates on ‘climate security’ involving some of the most powerful actors globally can be discerned.  We need to ask ourselves, our governments, and corporations some difficult and counterintuitive questions: does much-needed action on climate change have harmful environmental and social effects, especially for marginalised groups living in and of water, land and forests?

Questions of environmental and social justice around climate action are not new: we know that climate mitigation and adaptation measures are not benefiting everyone equally[1]. Essentially, this is caused by climate interventions being built on growth imperatives, assigning (monetary) value to nature, and thereby including it in the neoliberal economic system. This approach overlooks the complex relations that humans have with nature, including spiritual and social bonds, and how nature is linked to livelihoods.

Matters get even more complicated when we add ‘climate security’ to the equation. In recent decades this frame has gained ground among some of the most powerful persons and institutions globally, for example the US Defence Force and Shell. The idea they promote is pretty straightforward: climate change causes erratic weather patterns, making areas less inhabitable due to scarcity of resources that in turn leads to conflict and migration. This would lead to instability locally, at the state level or even internationally, and as such poses security threats – to humans, but also to nation-states and even the international order.

But this premise of climate security, which has recently been placed on the agenda of the UN Security Council, is highly contested. From a political ecology perspective, it is regarded as Malthusian in the sense that the political choices related to natural resources are ignored. By asking key questions such as who owns what, who does what, and who gets what, the power dynamics around natural resources are thrown into sharp relief. Researchers and activists argue that there is need to be more concerned with how ‘policies to deal with the effects of climate change’ lead to conflict, rather than the effects of climate change itself.

And this climate security framing could mean that security actors – the military or security corporations – also get involved in formulating those policies. That for example may just lead to the militarisation of hydropower dams and forest management. This has also been observed within nature conservation around poaching, now referred to as ‘green wars’. Several authors have warned these matters need much more attention.

The various understandings of conflict

I became engaged in these topics through my professional position at the Dutch Research Council (NWO). I am working on research programmes funded by some of the larger development donors in northwestern Europe, such as one that was indeed concerned with the impact of climate policies on conflict. This programme sought to enhance an understanding of how climate policies may incite conflicts, such that the knowledge could add to more ‘conflict-sensitive climate action’. Seven research projects were funded that focused on conflicts around water, land and forests that were part of climate policies.

The launch of the programme had brought me to a seminar at the Circle National des Armées in Paris, where military actors that focused on security formed the majority.  And I was asked to engage with the Planetary Security Initiative, launched by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also populated with military and governmental actors and security think tanks who in turn engage with corporations that are seeking stable contexts. These actors tend to see conflicts as (sudden) eruptions of violence that lead to death and injury, and possibly even war.

Throughout the process of implementing the programme, it occurred to me that those actors that I was engaging with had a different understanding of ‘conflict’. The donor representatives were impatient that the research did not seem to contain their idea of what a ‘conflict analysis’ should be and that typically results in a conflict typology to help categorize different conflicts.

The researchers in the programme, however, were speaking of conflicts as elements inherent to society, shaped by dynamics of power – as politics. Conflicts thus are not considered as ‘events’, but rather as a ‘process’ through which conflicting interests occur. According to such an understanding, conflicts are not the domain of the military or security actors, but are rather ‘a clash of interests, values and norms among individuals or groups that leads to antagonism and a struggle for power’.

Militarisation of climate action?

It is evident that these different readings of conflict may have implications for how, and by whom, climate responses are formulated. When considering climate as a security threat, military and security actors could well become part of the formulation of responses to climate change, which would have major implications on the power dynamics around the natural resources involved. It could, for example, lead to militarisation of hydropower dams, wind turbine parks or forest protection.

And that gives us reason to be worried. Experience with militarisation of anti-poaching efforts as part of nature conservation shows that this may lead to the normalisation of violence and has devastating consequences for people living with wildlife. As such, it could become possible for vested interests to dominate, while the interests of marginalised groups living in and of water, land and forests could be sidelined. This blog thus calls on researchers and activists to increase understanding of these matters in the hope and anticipation that collectively we may gain greater understanding of these matters and as such contribute to more environmentally and socially just climate action. Because acting on the climate we must, but not at the cost of marginalised natures and humans

Footnotes

[1] Already in 2012 the term ‘green grabbing’ was coined: appropriation in the name of the environment, including effects of climate interventions. Numerous examples are available, for example on the shift to renewable energies. Windmills, solar panel fields and hydropower dams that were erected have led to land and ocean grabs, with resource users being expelled. In fact, for those energy sources it is not always clear that they are ‘green’ to begin with. Their negative impact on the environment and ecosystems are widely recorded for instance in the  Environmental Justice Atlas. In addition, conservation and regeneration of forests is a common mitigation and adaptation strategy. And it does feel good and tangible to plant or preserve a tree to compensate our consumption-guilt, no? That is essentially the starting point of the UNFCCC’s REDD+ programme. But vast amounts of research document the natural as well as social damage caused by REDD+. It has, for example, led to exclusion of forest dwellers in decisions on how to manage the forest, that are the provision of their livelihoods. They have also often not shared in the benefits that REDD+ projects should bring them. And in some instances areas have actually been deforested, precisely because climate funding has assigned monetary value to the trees and land.

About the author:

Corinne Lamain is a part-time PhD Candidate at ISS, where she studies the interrelations between climate finance mechanisms, climate securities and socio-ecological conflicts in the Eastern Himalayas.

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