Finding Your Space for Climate Action
Excited to announce I’ve been selected as a Fellow at Climatebase starting this March, engaging with and learning from the top global professionals in climate science, policy, technology, and financing alongside other mission-driven Fellows from all over the world in the cohort. Looking forward to bringing these ideas in ongoing professional advisory engagements and more.
A long history for all of us knowing the problem
Many of us have been engaged in politics, business, and, most importantly, the science of climate change all our lived experiences. Massive textbooks adorned our home on environmental science and global warming was taught in our schools in Pakistan. In undergrad at McGill was my first exposure to the very real tensions between facts presented in An Inconvenient Truth and the teachings from senior economics courses on natural resources and the environment.
Upon graduation, Pakistan suffered then the worst floods it ever experienced. Many of us got together and rallied around fundraising efforts, media conversations, and political engagements in Canada. We had to act. It didn’t matter that we were all relatively broke in the economy of 2010.
Fast forward, the most inspiring book I have read on this topic came from a deep frustration back in 2017. I was in a leadership role in the international development space and was observing the obvious ridiculousness of almost every other program claiming climate-effectiveness. Green-washing was running wild. And yet, as someone who wasn’t a climate scientist and only an avid reader of the science, I had no way of contextualizing and ranking the practicalities of all these ideas.
It was a couple of weeks later that an article on Vox came out about Project Drawdown — mind was on fire. Now this book that applied all the rigor of the science, the artfulness of scalability assumptions and cost-effectiveness, and simplified about a hundred solutions in rank-order for readers.
My mind was on fire. This was fantastic. I loved all of it. Energy systems, food, education, and more were tackled. This is how I’m used to reading/seeing things in countries — systems. But also grounded in a reality of practical effectiveness.
That said, the intent of the book was to attempt to provide reasoned answers to tackle the *global* carbon emissions problem. It had limitations, understandable ones. What should Sierra Leone, Barbados, Kenya or Pakistan do? Sit and wait for the big emitters to act? What if they don’t? What then? How should the global majority plan? What can they do politically, socially, technologically, and more all while already being some of the most affected countries on the planet?
I’m hopeful the above questions are answered, by each country and collaborative region as necessary, with the rigor of science, social activism and politics working in tandem, financing alignment with country-led plans, and the right solutions emerging to minimize damage and improve agency, economic power, and movement locally.
Stepping in and up, a little bit more
Back in 2022, I was invited to give a guest lecture at McGill University around the connectedness of social business, impact, and climate change. It was a wonderful experience getting to engage with young minds from many backgrounds. The session was supposed to be ninety minutes, but went on for close to 2.5 hours. Such was the engagement in the classroom and honestly, I was happy to keep going.
While the energy was incredible and there was virtually no disagreement around climate change, unlike when I was in undergrad, there was still no understanding yet on how different nations, class structures, politics, and need come into consideration for thinking through the practicality and ethics of responsibility and action. I remember asking if the responsibility for a small-holder farmer in Kenya should be the same as a student in North America.
My view is that small-holder has virtually no responsibility other than taking care of their loved ones best they can. But I was met with a reasoned opposition. While the responsibility is significantly more for a student in North America, everyone has a responsibility to tackle this issue. Canada being a petro-state itself is not lost on us of course.
I do not believe they were wrong even as we disagreed, yet I left knowing that we all need to try and focus our efforts where they have the most impact given our sphere of influence, however we choose to increase or evolve our spheres in our lives, given our personal responsibilities and constraints.
I know that the problem is driven by and the solutions need to primarily be implemented by the biggest aggregate emitters and those with economic power, we need to remember that we are ultimately connected. Demand / supply in one place is connected to another, and of course, as is oft repeated, there is no Planet B. No country should fall back to feeling they cannot act in response, even if the responsibility is greater elsewhere. We have to hold our global and local elites accountable to facts, there is too much room for personal gain at the expense of others. Remember, a tree-planting exercise was attempted at scaled in Kenya, so was the implementation around the deregulation of logging.
Where I am today
I have been lucky enough to learn from several organizations in the private sector as well as among non-profits, international and local, in using technology to enhance the agency of under-served communities in farming and food security as well as understanding energy systems in multiple countries.
It’s rarely the lack of solutions, it’s almost entirely the lack of political will, the unjust exercise of power upon countries and peoples globally who are already the most affected, the misallocation of financing, and concerted, contextualized urgent action together, backed by financing without agendas in tow.
I broadly think of climate solutions as needing to answer the following buckets in one way or another:
Inclusive decision-making: What makes us believe we’re safe within a 1.5C target, that we’re already shooting past? What is the variation on that average by geography that is acceptable to these decision-makers? How does that average vary by season in countries? What does that average imply in terms of glacial melt, flooding, rains, land degradation, migration, and more? I’m learning more and more on this topic through my role on the Board of Legado and engaging with civil society organizations in Kenya.
Technology that works: Are we paying attention to which institutions and funders are promoting which technologies, their practical viabilities for scaled implementation, and affordability or profitability relative to volatile carbon prices, government subsidization, and private financing? What technologies and solutions are being invested in disproportionately relative to their promise (ahem: DAC)? How do we effectively utilize Nuclear alongside renewables without making it the central solution and minimizing risks to rural and urban communities? What about satellite imagery that can exactly measure carbon and methane emissions for real-time accountability and improve the carbon market?
Financing: How do we make sure financing pursues the right solutions, providing the right safety nets, private sector investment, and growth, for practical, realistic solutions? How do we minimize elite capture and extraction, green-washing, and ultimately disempowerment of local populations? What are sufficiently practical domestically led accountability and tracking mechanisms we can develop? How do we also attract more right-fit financing to our countries?
Global and regional collaboration: COP has lost quite a significant amount of credibility over the years. While I am no expert as to why, the leadership offered in driving COP by petrostates, increasing presence of lobbyists from fossil fuel companies, and the immense air travel that it facilitates, year on year, offering a platform to just about anyone, is troubling. The Paris Agreement is in itself faltering into the background of irrelevance. Remember, borders are a human construct. Regional blocs can also improve negotiating hands. There is no way out of this for anyone without these collaborations manifesting efficiently and productively. What can we do better?
I’d love to hear perspectives, counterpoints and disagreements, and additions on the above and more.
In the meantime — here’s to continuous learning, engaging with top minds and the most energized of individuals in our spaces, and implementing solutions at scale to create a Thriving Future for our planet.
