Why climate change is no more a threat, it is our reality
And what we can do to deal with it
Co-authors: Avni Agarwal & Karan Kumar
Note: All views expressed in this post or across the author’s social feeds are their own and do not represent the opinions or official position of any entity whatsoever with which the authors have been, are now, or will be affiliated.
It’s 2021–101 years from the roaring twenties, nine years from our estimated target of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and one year into what colleagues are calling the ‘transition twenties’. The time to transition our intention into action that has lasting, meaningful impact is now. So far though, a vast chunk of the narrative hasn’t been able to convey the very real and tangible effects of climate change in our lives. The phenomenon is most often designated a ‘threat’ with ‘looming’ dangers…
The language we see today around the climate fallout, is deceptively (and mostly unintentionally) distant: evocative despite not being articulated through lived experience. People today, whether they know it or not, feel the effects of climate change in their everyday lives. They might not know it because the effects of climate change are spoken of in the context of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, carbon dioxide equivalents, rising temperatures, sea levels, and glaciers far and few melting away. These are important and urgent issues to talk about, but how each of these could be understood in our local contexts and everyday lives is often missing from the dominant narrative.
Apart from the missing link of the impacts to urban everyday lives, the narrative certainly doesn’t consider the contexts of vulnerable populations, who have lesser access to resources and basic services such as water, electricity, formal jobs, and shelter. These vulnerable populations have other challenges to overcome every day, and increased GHG emissions don’t necessarily make their priority list of issues. But failing crops, drought, a lack of ground water, and respiratory disorders among other issues, do.
This is exactly why we need to move the dominant narrative around climate change from a ‘looming threat’ to the world, to our ‘reality’ — and contextualise that narrative to drive action. Especially because its impacts are disproportionately experienced across the world and even within countries, where each of us has a differentiated responsibility based on our ability to act.
Though news reports today might say it’s all doom and gloom, we are still not able to act as urgently as we need to.
In the last few years, we have seen a rise in private sector commitments to sustainability, increased public and policy-level engagement on issues around climate action. We’ve also seen greater push and demand for climate action by civil society, non-profits, citizens, philanthropy and other similar actors for a move towards a new economic system that places equal value on financial profit, social equity, and environmental sustainability.
One of the key reasons these tide-changes in private and political thought are unable to become tangible transformations is the very fact that they are changes in high-level theoretical thinking that have limited scope in terms of action: necessary but wanting.
Fundamentally, the more we commit with uncertain, distant goals of transformation — the more we will delay our need to act.
What we really need is for each of us to lay down a practical, inclusive, and accountable pathway so we don’t slack-off, but tap into the opportunity that a transformed narrative presents.
Imagine this — by 2029, if the world has not met its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), do we rehash them as we did the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)? Of course, there is a lot more nuance and data (linked to further reading) to understand how effective the MDGs were, between 2010–15 the world did see some significant changes for the better regardless of attribution to the goals. And perhaps the SDGs have been designed keeping in mind the shortcomings of its predecessor and can help us actually make concepts of climate action accessible to all in a solution-oriented manner with its focused targets.
All said and done, as current and future custodians of the planet, the one thing we have learnt so far working with a range of stakeholders from policy-makers and communities on the ground to social entrepreneurs and investors is this:
All our efforts must be solution oriented.
Simple, effective, but a point each of us tends to forget when we need it the most. Especially since the solutions to most of our problems exist, and the means to make them a commercial reality do too.
To move these from niche to norm we need a good hearty mix of trust, risk-tolerance, and a view for the long-term — at least seven generations into the future, according to some. These are not easy things to need and they’re not things you can pick up from the vending machine on your way to work. They’re hardcoded ideas that have to be removed and replaced; and we believe a way for that to happen is by changing the prevalent narrative we have today to one that urges us to act by:
- Recognising that our problems, like the cyclones and droughts, are being caused by a changed climate
- Weaving the science of climate change contextually into the language we use and the way we attribute cause and effect to impact
- Educating ourselves and contextualising how each of us is impacted by climate issues
- Highlighting the differentiated responsibility of certain socio-economic groups to act ambitiously and channel more of their resources to make up for those that cannot
- Changing our thinking to realise that tackling climate change is possible today by incorporating climate action into all spheres of our lives — that climate action can be taken in small, medium, and big steps; from using a green search engine all the way to influencing our policy-making to switch to green industries
Changing this narrative, however, will have to accompany action from a range of actors, and while these are not new ideas, some ways we can act today include:
The circumstance is not the best, yet we are hopeful. Pragmatism with a dose of optimism keeps us going and our hope is that together, we will be able to redesign the system we created and make it better.
The Earth is not dependent on us. For 4.56 billion years it has existed, thriving in whatever conditions it endures — climate fluctuations and mass extinctions are natural, and scientific evidence proves this. But the magnitude of fluctuation and the rate of loss is what our unsustainable actions have increased manifold. By our own devices, we have created ‘conditions that are not conducive to life’ and realising that we are the ones dependent on the earth for its abundant resources and hospitable environment will hopefully pave the way for us to act better, smarter, faster, and together.
We leave you with one last note — through this pandemic we have seen the importance of self-preservation, so let’s ask ourselves: is the current unsustainable, and unjust system helping our collective self-preservation in the long run? Self-preservation is our key to survival, and if we flip the narrative on its head, it may also be the key to open the floodgates for green finance, ambitious action, and equitable change.
