The shift from assessing the impacts of the global temperature rise to seeking a just global energy transition paved the way for the Paris Agreement in 2015. It was a landmark agreement for global sustainable development. To the benefit of the Global South, the climate debate has since shifted from scientists and diplomats to energy ministries and business communities. The way energy has been used to improve living standards in China has contributed significantly to the progress.
The 1992 climate treaty negotiated in Rio de Janeiro was conceived as an experimental framework for reconciling economic development with environmental protection in order to harmonize the growing world economy within a finite global ecosystem. While this framework provided universal opportunities to speak, it ignored that climate instability is directly related to the consumption patterns of Western countries.
Use and Distribution, Not Scarcity, of Natural Resources
Thirty years on, resource usage by the Rest, or non-Western nations, remains below the global average. The international community, mostly shaped by ideas of the West, approaches sustainability challenges by measuring the impact of climate change on nature instead of addressing energy consumption patterns. Consequently, the best way forward to jointly reduce carbon dioxide emissions remains unclear.
Global goals don’t directly resolve challenges. They demand new forms of international cooperation. For quite a long time, multilateral institutions were placed at the center of agenda setting and finance leveraging to solve political problems rather than climate change itself. The power imbalance in these institutions, despite consensus-driven outcomes, led to restrictions on natural resource usage imposed on Global South countries. These countries were forced to resolve a problem they had not created and were hindered from advancing towards higher levels of well-being.
In today’s more equal world, the Global South has gained a stronger voice. The Asian giants, China and India, have stressed in climate negotiations that the global community needs to consider climate justice, arguing that sustainable development is about the use and distribution, not scarcity, of natural resources.
Urban Transformation and Civilizational Anomaly
Natural resource usage, dominated by energy production, now largely happens in cities. Around 80 percent of the global population will likely live in cities by 2050. Now, the urban population already accounts for about 55 percent of the world’s total population and is responsible for 75 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Within cities, the transportation sector accounts for around 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, of which about 40 percent come from the use of private cars.
Addressing climate change as a societal — instead of a physical — problem shows that it is not a global challenge but an anomaly arising in the West, which now has roughly 10 percent of the world’s population and over two-thirds of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions since the Industrial Revolution. Consequently, the scale, speed and nature of the West’s energy transition will be very different from the Rest. China’s progress in raising living standards to levels comparable with those of the West, but with much lower energy consumption, enables this comparison.
China’s experience has empowered the Global South to examine new ways of tackling climate change as part of their pathway towards economic and social development, rather than treating it as an obstacle. The Paris Agreement suggested a global temperature target, and the Sustainable Development Goals outlined an agenda, but neither said much about the necessary transformations. The focus on carbon dioxide treats the symptoms but not the cause of the problem, which is the human energy consumption.
Sustainable Lifestyles, Buildings, and Transportation
What precisely should the Global South do? Energy efficiency has the potential to reduce total demand by 2050 by one-third per unit of economic output relative to current levels, without affecting the service provided. Because around 80 percent of the world’s population is expected to live in cities by 2050, emissions will mostly come from vehicles, buildings, and food production due to massive energy demands. To do more, we have to consider how to change the way we live in cities. The fundamental shift for creating sustainable lifestyles will be to consider consumption, not production, patterns.
Another lesson relates to the way cities are designed. Building vertically, instead of spreading out horizontally like in the United States, is an indispensable strategy to provide urban services essential for well-being. New construction shapes energy usage far into the future. The buildings sector accounts for over a third of global energy consumption and emissions. The pattern of energy usage is dependent on density and size — factors shaped by behavioral norms, culture, and practices of convenience, as in the case of transportation.
In the United States, coal power generation peaked in 2007. Electricity demand has been driven by the urban residential and commercial sector since 1990. A similar trend emerged in China around 2010. However, buildings account for only around 28 percent of energy use there, compared with 40 percent in the United States, due to different lifestyles and building codes.
Transportation is still projected to remain the largest energy-consuming sector. Statistics show that for every 1,000 people, the United States has approximately 890 vehicles on the road, China has 244, and India has 34. Electrification of transportation and shared vehicles is the answer for a sustainable future. As housing and roads are part of the social system, a shift in focus from transportation to mobility represents the most fundamental conceptual change required because the automobile is such a symbol of Western civilization.
Indispensable Infrastructure
As the most visible and material-intensive component of development, infrastructure contributes significantly to economic growth, improves urban living standards, and reduces inequality. Infrastructure development is the driver of over three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions. Achieving national emission reductions generally requires decades of work that leads to saturation levels. Clearly, a single global net-zero goal discriminates against frugal countries and late developers in the Global South.
The nature, pace, and impact of infrastructure vary across countries. Even after infrastructure and related industrialization reach stable levels, consumption continues to be propelled by the economic shift toward the urban services sector, resulting in increasing levels of energy usage characteristic of Western civilization. It is essential for the Global South to focus on sustainable infrastructure, and China is supporting this development globally.
Securing sustainable development demands questioning the values, practices, and norms that constitute Western civilization, especially its patterns of resource usage, and drawing on the wisdom and practical experience of Asian civilizations.
Photo Credit: These 9 photo posters are provided by China Pictorial.
(The author is an Indian expert on climate change and sustainability who once served as a policy advisor to the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme and the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.)
