Starts at 37:00 Session One:
Political and Strategic Issues Challenging International Climate Action
Erin Sikorsky Panelist - Director International Military Council on Climate and Security, Consultant Defense Science Board Washington
Question:
The greatest power competition and the negative or the impact of this on climate action and energy transition?
Erin:
I was asked to speak about the intersection of great power politics and the energy transition, as well as climate action and I was really glad that it was framed that way because i think too often in intern AAL security circles or political circles sometimes climate and geopolitics are seen as separate. Sometimes I have policy makers ask me questions about how do you rack and stack that? Do you put climate above great power competition? Do you put it below? I think about the two together is really important because I don't think you'll achieve goals as a nation, competition with other states if you don't bring climate in and you won't achieve climate goals if you don't understand what's going on in the rest of the world. I sometimes call climate change or the energy transition a shaping force on the geopolitical landscape, because there isn't any topic that you might work on or care about that won't be affected in some way.
There's actually a professor from Brown University, a guy name Jeff Colgan who calls this the altered landscape view of looking at climate and the energy transition, he calls at a pervasive background condition that is intrinsically connected to most other areas of interstate competition and cooperation and I think that's a really important framing for this conversation, so with that in mind I had three points I wanted to make about where I see these issues today on the world stage and things as we look forward to the future. We need to keep in mind, the first one won't be a surprise to anyone in the room and it's quite a big part of the conversation. As we move through the energy transition we'll have a have a new set of winner and losers, so alot of assumptions that are baked in to foreign and security policy around the world, will need to be questioned or challenged as we recognise how these winners and losers are changing.
As you probably know the oil and gas production is going to become more concentrated primarily here in the Middle East, the estimates that we see a production rise from 25 to 40% by 2050 in the region and then in other countries where you know oil and gas plays a key role in the economy but it's much more expensive to extract we're going to see an increase in volatility in those places so countries like Angola and Nigeria for example where you're going to have a huge increase in production costs, yet they're heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports, seeing a decrease in demand it's going to cause a lot of a lot of turmoil and challenges as those countries think about managing that transition and one thing I'll note here is that, as Arena was pointing out as the opening speakers we're in a moment where we're already experiencing many climate hazards around the world so as we're moving to this place of new winners and losers and countries having to manage the shift away from oil and gas they're also dealing with extreme weather events on a regular basis right that are interrupting in some cases renewable energy deployment, we've seen this with Hydro Power in some places where countries are facing droughts, nuclear also is facing some of these challenges when you don't have water right, you can't run nuclear plants, it's a double whammy for states and they're going to have to figure out how to navigate especially as these extreme weather events intensify.
The second point I wanted to highlight in addition to new winners and losers, we're also going to have competition in New Frontiers and here I'm primary talking about getting access to critical minerals that are needed for renewable energy and the batteries, the energy transition and here all analysis suggests that to move as rapidly as we want to through the energy transition, the demand for critical minerals is going to greatly outstrip the supply and so trying to gain access to those minerals not just the minerals themselves but obviously the processing facilities which is the hard part is going to be in an increase in competition as we know China dominates refining capabilities for things like Cobalt, Lithium and Graphite also for some niche minerals like gallium and germanium and they've leveraged this control to take action on the world stage in terms of power competition in July 2023 they inserted export controls on gallium and geranium and that's a tool they have in their toolbox, in this great power competition. The US is looking at new efforts to break the Chinese dominance they've developed the us-led minerals security partnership but then you've also have countries like Brazil and India and South Africa part of the BRICS+, they are very well positioned as well to try and leverage their critical minerals for influence. My center did a study last year looking at lithium deposits that have discovered in Cashmir and examining the geopolitical consequences of such a discovery there, why you have the tension between India and Pakistan over that region and who gets access to those resources and how is that developed in a way that doesn't exacerbate the competition. So I think there's alot of places like that where you will have emerging and new dynamics, really you're going to see countries who are jockeying to set the rules of the road in these New Frontiers.
Places like the Artic, deep seabed mining as well, I think those are all areas we could talk about more.
I think it is really important not just to take the competition we've seen over fossil fuels and overlay that onto the minerals competition and they are the same right, we're talking about different types of critical resources, sources, stocks versus flows frankly right critical minerals are stocks and oil and gas are flows and so the dynamics are not the same and I think some of the conversation you see in the United States in particular about worrying about critical minerals dependencies, it needs more careful thought about because it's different to oil and gas.
The third point, perhaps a more positive point is that competition you know geopolitical competition, competition between great powers doesn't mean that all progress is impossible on climate action and the energy transition, I would argue that coordination, we we would prefer it right, we were happy to see the Sunnyland Statement between the US and China the collaboration but it's not a prerequisite for progress and I think there are some opportunities when you think about things like a race to the top, right of competition over building new Renewable Energy Technologies, gaining that access can help the climate and the transition and fit in a competitive landscape and I think with the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States and the framing of that gives an example of that kind of potentially healthy competition in the context of the climate crisis, I also think it's possible even in a competitive environment and again as the Sunnyland Statement shows that you can find places of mutual National interest between countries right, I think for both the United States and China they recognise the risk that climate poses to their own Nation Security and so they both want to move towards decarbonisation in a way that allows for some operation even when competition is the larger context.
Question: Concerning the critical minerals competition and you also mentioned deep seabed mining which as we know is a bit of a jurisdictional problem because it doesn't really belong to anyone, so could you please shed some light on your thinking in that regard?
Erin:
I think because it doesn't belong to anyone that's where we are seeing lots of jockeying to set rules of the road now right there's a process to try and set some rules for deep sea bed mining bit it's been going quite slowly and there are some indications from companies that they're not willing to continue waiting for that process. We also see that I think China has really taken the lead and trying to secure rights to different places partnering with other countries to secure those rights and to position itself to be ready on deep seabed mining when the opportunities arise, I mean it's something that's talked about alot in the Arctic as well I frankly think I mean of all the places to mine the Deep Seabed the Arctic is the hardest and most complicated and not the place you would do it first. That said I think again when it comes to climate and environment issues we see China having a very long-term strategic approach to thinking about it and so they are already thinking about if anyone's going to be positioned to do it in the Arctic, I think China will be, so I see that as a space of competition and agains who's going to be the one to set the rules.
Question: To follow up on Steven's question how would you compare that to the space domain, space mining and in terms like thinking about the global commons in general and there are no jurisdictions there either?
Erin:
I think there's actually alot to be learned from the two different domains and I know there have been effort, I mean pre pandemic I was at a conference in the UK on exactly this topic where you were looking at building rules of the road in space as well as the deep seabed, I think with space it's even more complicated because you have the private sector playing such a role, as you do the deep sea bed as well but you kind of need State support to manage that um and I think those two areas will be areas to watch and it's a place where competition in other domains will spill over, so those are high on my list of places that policy makers should really be paying more attention.
Question:
How many more cops will we have until we reach the point that is great power competition is going to eradicate every liberal effort or every multilateral effort and the second part of that question which is in line with the first question, when you look at Germany for example is really focusing now on eradicating the production of combustion motors which is at the heart of German economy or if we look at overregulation in Europe isn't this going to harm us? I'm from Belgium so, Europe isn't going to harm us compared to other competitors and when will we stop investing in climate solutions because this is basically making us weaker compared to others?
Erin:
I think on the first one Ill point to something that one of my other panelists noted is that cop is one of the few places where you actually gather people from all over the world together to have these tough conversations. So I would argue that despite being at the one of the highest moments of great power competition in recent decades it's still a place where you can come and have those conversations which makes it all the more important and you saw the methane announcement, you've got China and the US there talking about those things together. I think there are areas of climate action where there are co-benefits a competitve world and I would give the example frankly of climate finance, I think that's a place you know when I talk to policy makers in the United States and say if one of our stengths in this competition is our allies and partners are demanding greater investment in climate finance from us and so if we want to strengthen those relationships with allies and partners we should heed that demand not only that but by strengthening those countries through investment in finance right through building adaptation and resilience those countries will then be better able to step up if we need to ask them for something so I think there's a way in which these issues are connected.
The second question I worry about the domestic political shift we're seeing in counties in Europe, Germany, in the Netherlands with their recent election in Sweden some of this push back and I think it's complex and more politics than it is technical on terms of the transition piece.
Second Session Starts at 2:13:33
Increasing Stress of Extreme Conditions, Extreme Climate Conditions Directly Amplify Existing Tensions over Resources both Domestically and Across Land and Maritime Boundaries
Question:
One of the prominent topics is the water and politics many people are taking about it so can you kick off on your reflections on this aspect to be specific what are the impact of the climate change on existing future transboundary water issues?
Sherry:
I'm going to start a little bit broader and we'll get to the transboundary water issues, almost over 25 years ago now I was serving as the first deputy under secretary of defense for environmental security in the United States Department of Defense and in 1997 I sent the first US Department of Defense delegates to COP3 in Kyoto and we were not having conversations like this at that time. It was a completely different type of event, it was just the government negotiators and the focus was on emissions reduction not the geopolitics, the politics and not even really the energy transition or the actionism that we see so front and center here so much has changed in the last quarter of a century in this space. My experience in the United States integrating environmental considerations into and factors into the United States Department of Defense in the military which 25 and 30 years ago was a lot about cleaning up contamination at bases and then dealing with air and water improving air and water quality around military activities and the environmental consequences of war and conflict which any of you who work in the field know all too well. In the 2000s in 2007 I organised the first group of US generals and admirals to address the National Security implications of climate change, at the time, that was not a field that was well known now there are many people working in climate security. I think you heard on the last panel from my colleague Erin Sikorsky, who now leads the center for climate security, I chair the board of that organisation, I helped found that whole organisation and the field and in 2007. I spent a year with generals and admirals and climate scientists like Jim Hansen and others and after a year of kind of learning the science we produce really the first report on the National Security implications of climate change, we characterised climate change as a threat multiplier. Since then there has been a recogition in the US, around the world in NATO in particular, the NATO Secretary General is here about climate change as a threat multiplier for instability, both initially we thought more INF fragile regions of the world bit now it's very clear it's a disruptive force all around the world even in stable economies. We call them the three multipliers of climate increasing heat drought, sea level rise, extreme weather events, Perma Frost Thorn collapse in the Arctic, flooding, ocean acidification we could name more are all aggravating other instabilities, we face in society whether it's fragile governments that creates conditions where terrorists can further take hold because people become food and water insecure. So we have seen the confluence and convergence of climate and National Security now that's the threat multiplier side of it and this was explained very well. I am very excited about the triple net zero nuclear activities going on here and other transition efforts.
But lets talk a little bit about water and transboundary water agreements around the world and many of the important Rivers around the world are governed by transboundary water agreement, from the Maog to the Euphrates to the Colorado and Beyond most of them were made in an era before we really understood the effects of climate change so most of them don't take into account evaporating water levels from heat, many of them don't take into account overuse and over withdrawal of water by the original user so even in the United States we see a lot of competition and sort of local conflict about how the water of the Colorado River which supplies much of California is going to be allocated, but this is true in many places now around the world. I'd say the good news on transboundary water agreements is that often the agreement and the people who make use of the shared water resource become the people who care about improving its management and there are opportunity multiplier is the engagement at the local level the fact that this is all happening here and more and more people. I came here, I walked through the sustainability pavilion and if you haven't done that yet, I highly recommended it. It explains this mission to save the planet.
When you think about transboundary water arrangement it's working to develop tailored local solutions with people who are from the region with those who have also maybe additional data early warning systems that's why the trends work. My think tank, I mean a lot of think tanks now, I see it's a lot of its AI power too, you could go in and go to some of the hubs and see how some of this is going to be taken to the next level. Next level will enable people to make better local decisions that can improve resilience of course then it all about what values you bring to it.
How can you converse your water resources having more transparency obviously water sharing has been part of the political dynamic of every region whether domestic or transboundary for you know, from time memorial, there were many improvements happening in water sharing agreements you know between Jordan, Israel and Gaza until the new war erupted and obviously that's not happening now. But there are other regions where from the Makong to Lake Chad for example where there have been significant improvements in recent decades because people are dedicated to understanding and better allocation of those resources.
I'd say the main thing in the future is to bake it, to integrate the climate change into those agreements those that we will be able to make smarter local decisions.
Sherry:
On the energy transition and frankly I agree that you know we need to be mindful of not trading one set of geopolitics on energy, the geopolitics oil and gas for new geopolitics on renewables and supply chains in rare earth, but we already live in a world full of geopolitics so we need to understand how to secure those supply chains transitions energy transitions are long, you know oil was first discovered in the mid 1800's in the United States and it was first really developed in this region perhaps even a little but later. So an energy transition has been at least a hundred years we've had nuclear energy going on almost 7 years now. So now we are on the cusp of next generation nuclear, so we are in the middle of a great global energy transition which will be ongoing. We need to be mindful and careful about how we secure the supply chains and not make increased risk and vulnerabilities and ensure they are environmentally sound. Which is not always so easy to do. I think we have opportunities to address those risks if we're clear eyed about them, we understand how we're sourcing those minerals and materials and then we look as much as possible to acquire our new energy as a distributed local energy source with the smallest emissions footprint possible.
Question:
Logically the new trade routes that comes out from the climate change create new opportunities for countries, I'm talking about the Northern Sea route, so let's go to the future since they are opening some opportunities for those countries to improve their economics. What about the conflicts, what will the future conflicts that will result from the climate change with those new logistics routes?
Sherry:
If we talk about the Arctic and the Northern Sea route which hugs most of Russia's long coastline, this is going to be the next big global geopolitical challenge.
I mean when I was in the Department of Defense at the end of the cold war, I led a program with Russia and Norway called Arctic military environmental cooperation and we were working with the Russians to reduce the environmental impact of their denuclearising their country in particular the Norwegians at the time were very worried about leaking Russian submarines that might contaminate Norwegian fishing grounds. We jointly developed a TK to safely offload liquid waste streams from sunken Russian submarines to be stored inland and we did a number of things to sort of share environmental practices among militaries in that era, that was an era of great cooperation. It was an era when the Arctic Council was established of the eight Arctic Nations 1996, obviously that era has long since passed. Today Russia doesn't participate actually in the activities of the Arctic Council and we often speak as this region becoming one more zone of competition and potentially future conflict, than of cooperation. Putin has big ambitions to accelerate transport across the Northern sea route that's been somewhat slowed by the war in Ukraine and some of the shipping routes have kind of more going more towards Asia, from Asia across to ports in Europe like rearm, nonetheless it's true you see more and more navigation across the Northern Sea route, China too has Arctic ambitions in its first formal Arctic policy in 2018, China declared itself an Arctic stakeholder a new Arctic power and that routes across the Arctic might even be shorter than shipping through this region and therefore be more climate friendly. I take that to mean it's still very difficult to navigate even as the Arctic opens because sea ice is retreating and temperatures are rising, permafrost is thawing it's still a very difficult transit and most of it is destination transit today most of it is about extracting energy from Yamal or potential you know and other resources in the Arctic as opposed to shipping across the Arctic that of course will over the coming decades change, as that change happens there will be increased risk. First there will be increased risk of shipping accidents of oil spills and oil spills are difficult to clean up in any location, they are probably very particularly difficult to clean up in Arctic waters, they're vast, remote, not well understood, so these are some of the concerns.
I think China, you know that we have the other major resources in the future in if we're talking trends here decades, hence fish, because as climate change, temperatures war global fish populations are migrating towards both poles. So today the fisheries, let's say between Norway and Russia are highly abundant as the cod has moved into that region and in other area parts of the world fisheries are overfished and becoming depleted, so this is also our Ocean Future is very important.
I sometimes think China's future Arctic ambition is about the fish that they will eventually be available in the central Arctic Ocean which today is covered by a moratorium, but that only runs for about another decade and when those fisheries are viable it could be a whole new world.
The statements made in the media about Iran building a military base are false, this language is required to start AUKUS negotiations, classify the documents and strategically move America into Tasmania.
I am again going to outline the new language which will be applied to water resources, using the single source of truth and the value transfer system.
The New Economics of Water - Launch of Global Commission
Safe clean reliable water resources play a critical role to safeguard the health and well-being of people, support the growth of industries, economies and ensuring a plentiful agricultural food production and preserving our natural environment today. The global commission on the economics of water was launched a year ago.
Question:
Addressing all the complex interconnected issues including climate, energy, energy, food, land use, health and water. How does this fit in the wider set of systems?
Professor Johan Rockstrom
It's really significant at this Davos meeting this year how the food crisis is really at the center of our discussions, we're discussing challenges of the climate crisis, we're discussing nature but we're missing that being and the determinant whether we are going to have any chance of mitigating climate waters behind it any chance of handling the climate, food crisis requires massive investments in fresh water, the health outcomes for humanity behind it is fresh water security to avoid conflicts is a large extent amplified and put at risk because of fresh water so this is the missing piece in large parts of our policy and our economic discussions just to give you a few examples of the evidence we have here. That currently when India is forced to close its borders to export of wheat when we see the food crisis in Kenya these are water scarcity and heat related impacts which come through climate change and ecosystem change which then impacts on water scarcity which has immediate impacts on food security in these regions which then can trickle over even into crisis.
We have today a situation where we are impacting on the globe hydrological cycle at the planetary scale and it all manifests itself into abrupt changes at the regional scale so today for the first time ever we need to consider fresh water as a "common good" for all of humanity. Because the way we manage land impacts on evaporation which in turn regulates the amount of rainfall, which means that we currently are in a situation that we are ourselves changing the rainfall on the planet earth. A few examples here the South American Monsoon which is to a very significant extent impacted by the level of deforestation in the amazon rainforest because water evaporates and flows in atmospheric rivers downwind and generates rainfall securing for example fresh water in Sao Paulo we have the same situation the South East Asian monsoon and the West African monsoon, but also the implications on heat waves, droughts and significant impacts on water scarcity in temperate regions of the world for example when the town of Litton was town was hit by tremendous heat waves last summer in 2021 and then burnt down two weeks later because of the water scarcity and dryness, caused by that drought event so overall, we today are in a completely new situation with regards to threats of water to human well-being and development and now we need to put the economics of water not only in terms of monetary values but also in terms of governance in terms of recognising water as a commons that we now need to manage as a broad systems approach that's why this commission is not only necessary but urgent to take this challenge on.
Question:
Talk about the new economics required for the economics for water?
Mariana Mazzucato:
A report will be coming out which I'm sure we will get to is going to be called the review on water as a common good and that word common good is actually a radical word because in economics we have notions of the public good it sounds good because the second word is good but it's really framed more as a correction for something the private sector is not doing and what water is a common good requires is an objective of what we can actually do together. What's interesting is that when we have objectives especially during urgent periods think of what you know we just lived through a health pandemic with all these covid19 recovery plans not in all countries but also war where all of a sudden money literally comes out of the woodwork after we were told there was no money. Money challenges we tend to only do that mainly with military industrial complex kind of problems, so one of the issues is if water is as urgent of a problem as some of the top climate scientists like Johann have been telling us by the way for many years, we're just starting to listen now, how do we turn it into an urgent problem and the numbers are quite astounding. An intersectoral we shouldn't see water as a sector but water as a common good means it has to be seen as cross-sectorally across many different kind of solutions across sectors as different as nutrition and construction everything but also in terms of coming back to the new economic thinking it means seeing the role of government which is so important, it's not the only actor but it's a key actor as a market co-creator and a market shaper in the system so the policies themselves need to be framed in terms of shaping and not market fixing because that's just going to patch up the system and central to that is this kind of getting rid of this public-private divide this is going to require huge amounts of collaboration, huge amounts of co-investment and finance and how to actually design that with the common good lens is one of the really innovative things that this group is going to provide and lasty we shouldn't forget that even though urgent you know periods make us kind of create money and do things that we weren't doing before sometimes that speed can also create problems, things can kind of pass by because someone just kind of presses on the speed of the speed pedal and that's where we have to be careful because issues of equity and justice are incredibly important so one of the things that are going to be you know key is in terms of the voices that we're bringing to the commission but also not using fluffy language like 'we're all in this together' actually there's going to be some real changes that will have to be made to business models to way governments work to the way they relate one to another and to the fact that so many voices haven't been at the table even with the climate to be honest we haven't brought many different voices to the table so issues to make sure this is an inclusive approach is equitable and has justice at the center is also part of the common good framing.
Professor Johan Rockstrom:
Not only have we not focused on economics of water when we have focused on water, we've only focused on drinking water, domestic water and that is roughly 150 liters per person per day which is what the wealthy are using and at the United Nations the human rights on water has been set that number to 50 liters per person per day, but the challenge is that you know a few percent of our daily needs of water because the big consumer of water is our food and for an adequate diet for an adult human being the estimates today are that we need something in the order of 3000 liters of water per person per day three cubic meters three tones of fresh water that is the massive amounts of water that go through rainfall into soils and are used by the crops in order to produce all food, all energy, all biomass, all nature, is the big role of water so this is one of the big challenges that we're taking on so it's not only the economics of water it's the economics of ALL water it's water for economic development not only water for human health it's all these challenges.
Tharman Shanmugaratnam
This was an initiative in the first instance of the Dutch government, they are co-chairs together with the Pakistan government of 2023 Water conference, and just to illustrate how important that water conference is it's not just another conference, it's the first UN water conference in 46 years, which given the gravity of the issue is very unfortunate it just hasn't received the attention it deserves for something that's really in the bloodstream of economic life and human life it just hasn't received the attention it deserves and the commission that was formed is not just another commission and the report we're coming out with is not just another good interesting report it is really aimed at mobilising action, mobilising changes in government, mobilising finance and mobilising the scale up of technologies and solutions that can appeal can enable everyone in every corner of the world to have access to clean water, clean drinking water, safe sanitation and is only going to be possible if we take action, not just where local problems arise but if we take action globally, the people on this panel are co-chairs of this commission, it's closing the trilogy that started with the report on climate change and the report on biodiversity, water is a part of that trilogy, it's part of the trilogy for reasons of science as Johan was explain because we're not going to solve the climate crisis if we don't solve water, we're not going to solve the food crisis or the energy security crisis if we don't solve water, so we have to look at the global commons not in siloed terms but as a complex set of interacting challenges, they're all one big challenge but we've got to address them in parallel and water has been the most neglected of these issues so we're going to take a fundamental reload, the commission is going to be advancing the new science, the new economics, the new governance structure required, the new financing approaches required and the new ways in which technologies can be spread everywhere in the world affordably so that everyone so that everyone has access to clean water and so that the planet can sustain itself and the basic insight that Johan and Mariana was talking were talking about that when problems arise, even in Texas or anywhere else, it's not because something went wrong in that local area it's because something is going wrong globally, something went wrong globally, so we've got to address this at the global level and it means fundamentally a few shifts in the way we think about this in international governance and national governance, internationally we should stop regarding this matter of delivering aid whether it's aid to Sub-Saharan Africa or to countries in South Asia or Latin America, this is about investing in global common, the global commons, for the common good of all including the rich countries, because what we do in Africa or anywhere else s for the good of all countries and all societies, so it's about not aid but core investment we've got to pull together our resources, invest effectively to solve this problem so that's the first shift in thinking, the second shift of thinking is we've got to find ways in which water although it's a right of everyone to have access to water and it's one of the essentials of life is not something that we say the private sector can't get involved in or that markets can't work, can't be used to work, we've got to find ways in which we mobilise private resources within regulated markets to address the public good to address the common good and we're going to find ways in which the public sector operates on a disciplined basis and on a financially sustainable basis it means valuing water but it means thinking not about public and private as two separate worlds, two separate economic or financial worlds but working together and that's fundamental because we're not going to be able to raise the finance required without this deep public private collaboration and at the end of the day it is as Mariana says about equity, but it's not just equity in the traditional sense, we should all be very deeply worried when a significant part of humanity doesn't have access to clean water and their lives are affected, but it's also equity that goes hand in hand with self-interest everywhere in the world because if we don't solve those equity problems we're all going to be affected and that's what it means when we say it's what it is now a global commons issue, equity and self-interest come together but we want to solve the water problem just like when we want to solve the problem of the climate crisis they go hand in hand and that shift in thinking is also necessary.
Mariana Mazzucato:
Can i add something just based on what you just said, did we actually manage to vaccinate everyone in the world, no. So highlighting water as a global common and what it means to work together and see it both out of that kind of global commons perspective but also the self-interest perspective because it doesn't have that parallel it's not only important, but it's also important because we haven't managed to solve those problems but which had similar attributes and water is something that people understand, climate change is a bit abstract, some people, some people understand it really well, some understand it a bit, some just don't understand it, water, every kid knows how important it is to have water when you are playing football and you're thirsty you need water so there's also something about really getting citizen engagement around this and really in some ways experimenting with this notion of the common good can we actually deliver this time in ways that we have failed miserably other times and hopefully we won't keep failing on the other things.
Tharman Shanmugaratnam:
Maybe just to add a further point on the costs of all of this, at first glance it may sound like this is costly because you're going to have to raise a lot of more money the world will have to spend about 300 billion dollars per year in order that low- and middle-income countries can solve this problem, that the technologies can be scaled up so that everyone has access to clean water and safe sanitation, that sounds like a lot of money, but we today waste far more than 300 billion dollars there's the economic cost of what's happening today is far more than 300 billion dollars the neglect of water costs far more than 300 billion dollars so all this is about governance systems how do you value water, how do you stop the wastage, how do we improve farmers' incomes using drop irrigation and other techniques, it's actually about saving money but you've got to mobilise resources in order to invest in the technologies in order to save money and allow people to have better livelihoods I mean to just to give two examples, a very large amount of water globally is wasted every day in the way in which municipal authorities run water utilities, a phenomenal wastage of water because not being valued priced or valued properly, plus the systems of governance are not in place as a result another example is a result of a lack of access to easily accessible water in villages across a large part of the developing world, people in parts of the world spend a few hours every day going out to get water or firewood every day, if you can make it accessible imagine what they can do with that time, so there's a huge loss of livelihoods that comes out of what's a very inefficient system of managing water, stop the wastage, help people have a better livelihood quite apart from a better quality of life so when we think of cost, yes it'll cost something and the world has to pay for it but we're actually going to gain a lot in economic terms which means individual lives communities lives will be much better off net, we're going to be saving money.
Question:
What does success look like at the end of this two-year initiative?
Tharman Shanmugaratnam:
So Pakistan and Northern India are now experiencing temperatures, but it's not because the people living in that area have done something grossly wrong, it's because of how the world's hydrological cycle has changed, it's a global problem and it's going to keep surfacing in different parts of the world in different ways, droughts, floods or just uninhabitable environments, the solutions exist for climate change, they need to be financed, we need proper governance and we need to scale up the solutions.
Professor Johan Rockstrom
So on the outputs and just before coming to that but just to re-emphasise the point that one has to recognise that victim number one of all the global changes, we are occurring I mean both in terms of climate change and environmental change is water, water is you know it's always too much water or too little water and the droughts and the heat waves is the first victim which then translates to human impacts so it's always through water it's quite important that one has to recognise that adapting to change in the world we live in today is about managing water what can be outcomes well we've just begun so it's too early to start listing the results of the commission but just as Mariana pointed out we foresee a new paradigm of water as a common good which has to be governed and managed as such at any scale anywhere in the world one has to reconnect to the high logical cycle because for the first time we now have some scientific evidence that we are impacting every source of water namely precipitation and that of course is something we've never had to consider before we've always been reassured that's just a gift from whoever you may refer to but certainly not something that we're impacting now we're changing it so that's number one, number two is that of course, it's a review on the economics of water and we will be looking at the value of water and considering different novel economic policy measures, which one may be for example putting some form of price on water in order to guide and give incentives but not as a price to punish, those who are poor but rather to reward those that are stewards of fresh water for the common good so this is quite an exciting moment of potentially giving finally the credit so not only are we at a position where water is not getting the importance it deserves but those who actually manage water in a sustainable way are also not getting the benefits that they deserve and then finally we are taking on a very broad perspective in this commission it's not an economic narrow commission is really about equity, about governance about management and about collaboration, I mean you can imagine, the Director General of WTO that we're also looking at virtual water trading about how can we collaborate as a world community with regards to safeguarding the flow of VIRTUAL WATER behind all the food that we trade in the world for example.
Mariana Mazzucato:
Just to add to that I mean the idea is that it will there will be both thought leadership because we do need that kind of new paradigm shift in thinking but also what we heard during our first commission meetings, we just spent two wonderful days in a retreat in Geneva, some really interesting solutions on the ground but they're just peripheral, they're like cute little experiments that someone's doing, what does it meant to scale those up, what does it mean to create a coherent systemic understanding of those solutions, as well as new solutions but that also requires you know, I see this in my areas which is economics of innovation a demand pull, you know often for example with lots of innovations they don't actually diffuse and get fully deployed without for example PROCUREMENT POLICY engaging with it as a funnel for that kind of scaling up so I think what we also want to do is to provide some really concrete advice with the policy makers but again always coming back to that public private partnership of ways to really create leverage and dynamism that catalytic multiplier effect to these solutions. We actually have more solutions in water than we do with climate but then because we don't talk about water and don't' put it front and center nothing kind of happens.
Fintech Australia - Understanding Your Carbon Score - How Data Can Help
Understanding Your Carbon Score, How Data Can Help You Make Sustainable Choices
Fintech Australia:
So if you just give me my carbon score, what the hell does that mean?
I have no frame of reference for that, I have no context, if however you use that and you can bifurcate the various sources of your life or spending behaviours where you're spending behaviours where you're having he biggest impact that suddenly becomes not only insightful, I understand which behaviours, it becomes a really effective conversion tactic, I can now cross sell you something to address that whether in fact cleaner energy, energy efficient appliance, just the more sustainable alternative to what you presently buy, so data becomes the primary step by which we can gamify this and say hey this is your carbon impact, these are the sources of it, if you'd like to reduce it, I have some really great alternatives.
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