We need to simplify the concept of climatechange for everyone: Divya Sharma

Climate change is currently one of the most important and widely discussed topics in today’s global conversation. The increasing effects of rising temperatures around the world, together with extreme weather events and ecological disruptions, have made it impossible to overlook the significant changes that are taking place in our environment. Cities are responsible for 75 per cent of global CO2 emissions, and transportation and buildings are among the largest contributors. Divya Sharma, who is a trained architect and urban planner spoke to Abhishek Pandey, Editor of Urban Update, about urban development, climate change, gender diversity, and various other concerns. According to her, “Only a coordinated approach and action at global, national, regional, and local levels can achieve success in reaching net-zero emissions.”

WE WOULD LIKE TO KNOW YOUR VIEW ON THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN LOCAL GOVERNMENTS, BUSINESS COMMUNITIES AND OTHER STAKEHOLDERS WHICH IS VERY MUCH REQUIRED IF WE WANT TO SEE CLIMATE ACTIONS AT THE GROUND LEVEL. AND HOW DO WE INVOLVE COMMUNITIES INTO THIS PROCESS.

One thing is that the scale of change that we are striving to achieve cannot happen by only one stakeholder. It’s a multi-stakeholder arrangement through and through. Business bodies have their own responsibilities; local bodies have their own mandates and a lot of innovation can happen at a local level.

Local governments have the potential to hone their capacities to get access to climate finance, use that finance to prepare bankable projects, implement some of these projects at the ground level, at the city level and bring that change. The other important aspect of what local bodies can do is creatin competitive cities so that external investments can come to the city and these cities prepare themselves well to have the technological innovation and investment coming to them where change can be brought in as cities may not have that kind of revenue base to bring these bigger changes.

We are more than 7000 cities in India and getting that change to the three levels of cities, starting from the class one cities to class three cities or primary, tertiary and secondary cities; it’s a gigantic task and it cannot happen without collaboration. So local governments need to develop themselves to become investment-worthy and investment-ready.

Business communities provide and have the potential to bring bigger changes. For example, our work at Climate Group takes huge aspirational ambitious targets and the business communities take the responsibility of bringing that change. They also have the potential to influence some of these change makers.

When they collaborate with local governments, for example, they can bring wider change.

So, one of the aspects is, what are business communities conveying to do through their ambitious actions? What are those policies that government will have to implement and bring in for them to bring those changes and translate or transition very quickly?

The second aspect is about communities. Voice and aspirations of community is very important to take into consideration because when we are bringing such big changes which will influence their lifestyle and influence their behavioral choices, the choices that they make—how does it shift their aspirations? That’s the bigger picture.

TALKING ABOUT NET ZERO TARGETS OF COUNTRIES, THE FINANCIAL INSTITUTION OF THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES PROJECTING ALMOST 20 TO 25 PER CENT OF THEIR GDP WHICH IS ALMOST $100 TRILLION REQUIRED IN THE NEXT 30 TO 40 YEARS. SO, IT IS COSTLY UPFRONT FOR THE PUBLIC. WHERE IS THIS MUCH MONEY GOING TO COME FROM? CAN OUR NATION AFFORD THIS?

India has taken an interim target of reducing the carbon intensity of its economy by 45 per cent by 2030. Where is this money coming from? It is about the targets, it is about the ambition, it is about the will, the political will of a country to bring these changes. Nothing is impossible.

And I’m not an economist, but I know that it will make economic sense for all these countries in long term and in short term and medium term also, because we are already sitting in 2023 talking about it. We are talking about a target that has to be achieved in the next seven years.

So I don’t think that if somebody takes that ambition as a country, for example, any other country can take ambition such as that. And I don’t mean to appreciate that only India is taking leadership. We are taking leadership, definitely. But there is a lot that the Western world has to do at this moment. And only with a coordinated approach and action at the global, national, regional and local levels, can net zero emissions success be achieved.

Climate finance, for example. In COP, we decided about the $100 billion funds which has not been processed at the moment. And it is far less, if you look at some of the projections, it is far less than what is needed for all countries to come to parity where everybody can contribute equally to carbon dioxide emissions. And there is a big disparity between developing countries and developed world.

The south of the world has different financial systems, different requirements, different level of vulnerability altogether to what Western world might face. And their lifestyle is completely different from our lifestyles. We are still, per capita [emissions], very low as compared to them.

YOU ARE ALSO PART OF GLOBAL COVENANT OF MAYORS COORDINATION GROUP. SO, WHAT IS YOUR OPINION ON THE ROLES THAT INDIAN CITIES CAN PLAY? AND CAN AN ORGANISATION LIKE YOURS, ASSIST THE CITIES IN BRINGING CHANGES?

I think it’s a great leadership forum, which has the potential to use political leadership to bring in wider and bigger change. And who else rather than the politicians of today will have the influence over different stakeholders? Variety of stakeholders, that’s one thing.

The second thing is that, we have a huge task of addressing the scale and complexity of the problem of urban development, urban management and also climate resilient cities. Taken together, this complexity can very well be tackled. It can be tackled through bringing all these collaborators together that have the potential to influence like we work with big businesses; they have the potential to bring in money.

They have the potential to materialize some of the technological innovations and hence influence innovation in technology, so that transition can happen quickly. Similarly, political leadership can bring in that social movement, which can bring in that behavior change that is needed at this moment to influence people to take correct decisions, to influence policymakers, decisions makers to bring in new policies and progressive policies towards change.

WHY IS GENDER DIVERSITY CRUCIAL AND HOW DO WOMEN LEADERS INFLUENCE CLIMATE RELATED DISCUSSION? ADDITIONALLY, I WOULD APPRECIATE YOUR INSIGHT ON THE FACT THAT IPCC CAME VERY CLOSE TO ELECTING ITS FIRST FEMALE CHAIR IN 34 YEARS WITH RESEARCHER THELMA CROOK NARROWLY MISSING BY 21 VOTES. HOW MIGHT THESE OUTCOMES HAVE DIFFERED HAD A WOMAN BEEN ELECTED?

I’ll first start with what we are doing here at Climate Group. At Climate Group we have constituted an EDI committee which is about Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. It not only talks about gender, but it also talks about how people understand the diverse cultural backgrounds, their traditional backgrounds and learn to work with them, but also learn what they bring to the table. The more the diversity on the table, the better the decision would be.

In Climate Group, 50 per cent of the regional leaders are female. Our percentage of female employees in Climate Group is far more than the male colleagues. Almost 75 per cent are female colleagues.

Females are inherently better managers and are value driven in whatever they do. They do not see things most of the time from power perspective; they see things from collaboration perspective. They have the openness and strength to come forward and share their lived experiences. The policies that a female would make around a specific issue will definitely have some lived experience that she might have seen or experienced herself and it makes all the difference.

There are so many examples where women are at the hem of affairs and have brought significant changes in the system, in policy and in implementation of any program. The one that comes to my mind right now is the female municipal commissioner of Surat. She has done tremendous work on climate resilience.

WHEN WE TALK ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE, THERE ARE SO MANY JARGONS AROUND THIS CONCEPT. SO HOW DO WE SIMPLIFY THIS CONCEPT AND WHAT ARE SOME EXAMPLES YOU WOULD ADVISE ON BEHAVIORAL CHANGES THAT THIS GENERATION SHOULD ADOPT?

We need to simplify the concept of climate change for everyone. Not only for this generation. Also, to bring behavioral changes, we need to declutter the concept of climate change. Behavioral changes are important once we first start to realize why these changes are necessary. For example, the usage of plastic; we know that it takes ages to degenerate. And yet, the productions of plastic haven’t come to an end. We also know about ocean and sea waste and what it is doing to the health of the oceans.

So, I think the core of all these issues is within the humans itself. If they can bring in these changes and think about everyone, think about even the plants and the animals and insects, I think that all these problems will be solved.

WHAT ARE THE KEY CHALLENGES IN WASTE MANAGEMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS IN INDIA, AND HOW CAN POLICIES AND BEHAVIORAL CHANGES HELP ADDRESS THESE ISSUES?

For several years now most of the municipal corporations have implemented waste segregation. That is very important because some of the things that are easily biodegradable can be then taken forward. We can also produce energy from the waste now. Because of the modern living, we are using a lot of packaged items and it is a lot of plastic that is generated from Indian households. Some of the behavior changes around waste segregation need to be inculcated and it is very simple. There has been a lot of awareness generation that has happened. But the behavior change is the important part of it.

The other thing is that in a country like India, where there is a variety of population that may or may not understand the nuances of what does plastic degeneration means. We need to bring out the message that is clear and very simple to understand that it is not good for the environment. It is not good for the health of the rivers from where the drinking water comes.

It is not good for the oceans as it might poison the aquatic animals and therefore it might poison the food that you are eating. For a long term it is not good for the earth itself because where will all this go? That is why traditional ways of living, traditional ways of our wastes is important. Did you know that Indian households traditionally were zero waste households? If you go back a few decades, we were zero waste households but look at our households now. In the wake of modern living, our households are really very wasteful households.

The other important thing is resource efficiency. Let’s say the use of water. You can make very clear distinctions and comparison between how we used to store water and how we used to recycle water in the earlier days. None of the water from the kitchen was wasted.

Coming back to the question, awareness is important and so does policies. Awareness also directly influences your demand and the type of demand you’re making. It’s correlated and therefore policies are important as well.

I THINK THE AWARENESS IS VERY MUCH IMPORTANT. HOW DO YOU THINK GOVERNMENTS OR THE STAKEHOLDERS CAN INCULCATE BEHAVIORAL CHANGES IN PEOPLE?

There’s a great part that government is already playing at several fronts. At several level policies do help to shape market, to shape demand and people’s choices but there are also other ways and important stakeholders that are required. And certain things can be unveiled into the curriculum itself and we are doing that already. For example, school curriculums have taken into consideration the importance of environmental awareness which did not have much importance back then.

This has led masses to come together and become aware about what’s happening in the world, what’s happening to the earth, how global warming has happened, what does it even mean? This also has to be translated and sold through mediums such as newspapers, media outlets etc, as they play a very important role. The third thing that I would like to say here is that leaders also play a very important role in shaping public opinion. Popular leaders are also in social media. They do have an important role to play here as well and they’ve been influencing a lot of our choices.

I think partly this is also a task that some of these people can do and have a greater role to play because they have the reach to the audience that the scale can be impacted, the scale of change can be impacted. It is no less than a movement that one has to create at this moment if we want to bring in change at scale and at pace. Both of these things are important because the scale is huge and the pace is very important.

WHEN WE TALK ABOUT CLIMATE RELATED ISSUES, DO YOU THINK THAT WOMEN, CHILDREN, AND ELDERLY HAVE DIFFERENT POLICY REQUIREMENTS?

Yes, definitely. Like we say that there is multi-sectoral collaboration that is needed in planning effective cities, planning better management cities or providing climate resilience.

Some of these vulnerable communities, whether you call it gender-based vulnerability, agebased vulnerability, or income class-based vulnerability—they have very important role to play. So when we prepare climate resilience strategies, we not only talk about infrastructure, we also consider about governance and policy, those vulnerable communities in a specific city context that needs to be looked at. We also spoke with fishermen when we were working in the coastal cities. Their livelihood depends on fishing and if there is a change in sea level rise or any other extreme events taking place, their livelihood gets affected.