Growth and sustainability

S I mentioned in my previous column (“Yes, Karen, CO2 does cause global warming,” March 7), The Manila Times’ editorial on March 2 (“Climate change focus needs a rethink”) sparked my interest because I find a great deal of the world’s approach to dealing with climate change and even communicating about it to be highly problematic. More specifically, the topic of the editorial reminded me of another, somewhat similar bit of news from last year that seemed to back The Times’ editorial’s assertion that climate change is being put in the wrong context by the big institutions driving climate action, at least as far as developing countries are concerned.

The subject of the editorial was the implications of the most recent World Bank Country Opinion Survey, which it conducts annually among its client countries in order to assess what their main concerns are and their perceptions of the World Bank’s work. In the survey, the respondents, who were government officials, civil society representatives, academic and business experts, and media people, were asked to rank 17 general concerns in order of importance. These include education, health, food security, employment, climate change and public governance. Climate change was not among the top concerns; education, health and food security were, in that order. In fact, climate change only ranked 11th.

The result, while somewhat surprising, was not evidence of “the refusal of many developing countries to be bamboozled into joining the hysteria over climate change,” as Smog Karen proclaimed in his March 5 column. The March 2 editorial certainly did not say that because neither the World Bank report nor any of the developing-country respondents surveyed for it said it. If he had read either — it was pretty clear from his March 5 commentary that he only got about halfway through the editorial before he ran out of gas — Smog Karen would have realized that. But, of course, that would have confounded his opportunity to bark as the climate change parade rolls on, and he would have had to pick a different topic, perhaps his lonely crusade to change the name of the country to something even more awkward and less catchy than it already is.

As I am on vacation, both this column and Thursday’s were written several days in advance, and I have not had the opportunity to see what his response to my giving him a well-deserved public scolding may have been. Did he air his wounded feelings again by pretentiously claiming he’s just trying to “air both sides of the debate” that only actually has one side? Or did he accuse me again of being a foreign agent and threaten to petition Congress to throw me out of the country?

I shouldn’t be curious about it, but I admit that I am. And besides, my handlers at the Illuminati and the Trilateral Commission will be expecting a full report.

But I digress. The recent World Bank survey rhymed with a study published in the journal Nature Sustainability last August, in which climate policy researchers from around the world were asked about their views on economic growth in the context of climate action. Specifically, they were asked whether they favored “green growth,” that is, pursuing a positive growth strategy that incorporated decarbonization and other climate action; “agrowth,” or policy of being neutral on growth; or “degrowth,” the reduction of economic activity to meet sustainability goals.

What the study found was that there was a sharp contrast between developed and developing economies. Degrowth is still somewhat of a radical idea, and so it was preferred by no one, although support for the notion was strongest in Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries outside of the European Union and North America (38.9 percent) and in the EU (36.2 percent). The biggest percentage (45 to 50 percent) of respondents in the developed world — the EU, North America, and the “other” OECD countries — favored the “agrowth” policy.

The countries in the “developing” world, by comparison — grouped into “non-OECD other” (which includes the Philippines) and the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) — heavily favored the “green growth” strategy, about 57 percent in both cases while having very little appetite for the “degrowth” strategy. The respondents in these countries — and remember, these are climate policymakers — agreed the most with the statements, “continued economic growth is essential for improving people’s life satisfaction” and “economic growth is necessary to finance environmental protection.”

These results align with those of the World Bank study, and the message from all of them, which the March 2 editorial correctly divined, is that for countries that have not yet achieved comfortable, “First World” circumstances, a choice between prioritizing climate action or prioritizing growth cannot be made; it has to be both. And the developing world knows better than anyone that it has to be both because countries like the Philippines suffer outsized consequences from climate change. Ignoring it or, as Smog Karen willfully misinterpreted it, “refusing to be bamboozled into joining the hysteria over climate change,” is not at all an option because climate change will undo whatever progress might otherwise be made.

All of these neatly round back to the point the March 2 editorial was making. The developed world may have the luxury of viewing climate action in isolation as a refinement to infrastructure, industry, social systems, energy systems and food systems that already exist in a mature state. For everyone else, however, climate action must be integrated with and complementary to the development of those things. That is why climate change, as a standalone issue, is not given the apparent priority it should be by developing economies because it is simply inapplicable in that context. It needs a different approach and a different message.