Climate action's new frontier: Circular economies and 15-min cities

The New Global Possible: Rebuilding Optimism in the Age of Climate Crisis

by Ani Dasgupta

Published by Disruption Books 

230 pages ₹1,933

 

The Assembly elections for India’s second-largest state by population concluded this month. In the high-decibel campaigns, many issues figured but climate was not one of them. This, however, does not mean the people don’t care; in fact, surprising many observers, the changes needed in people’s lives are not contested. Yet, across India, while city dwellers are hugely reluctant to change transport, dwelling and other norms to avert climate disaster, people in peri-urban and rural areas find no reason to fight climate change needs. Politicians are shrewd; any divisions and they would have exploited the climate agenda but there are none. India’s late urbanisation might possibly be the best insurance to work on policies to enable a sustainable transition.  

“The stories illustrate the messiness of real progress, with meaningful steps forward, never moving in a straight line but often in a tortuous squiggle,” was the phrase that jumped out from Ani Dasgupta’s The New Global Possible: Rebuilding Optimism in the Age of  Climate Crisis. 

 

Mr Dasgupta is the President and Chief Executive Officer of World Resources Institute (WRI), one of the largest global think-tanks on climate issues. The book he has written seeks to weave together the history of the climate movement over the past few decades and within those the role WRI has played in it. As he frankly admits, plenty of voices of WRI leaders went into each chapter.   

The advantage of such retelling is often not encouraging. The chapter on business, for instance, makes a telling point. “Corporate action on climate issues also continues to be uneven and unpredictable. And for that to meaningfully change, we need government action.” It is, in fact, noticeable that as technologies for measuring good and bad actions have improved dramatically, such as the GreenHouseGas Protocol, the level of interest among the spoilers has dipped.   

The WRI, unlike most other think tanks, has a massive industry linkage, and the author argues that the lack of enthusiasm among companies is because the government or regulators do not make the costs count. For instance, part of the GreenHouseGas Protocol includes Scope 3 Standards, which break down emissions across the value chain into 15 categories of activities. But the protocol also adds that to extract data with the required level of granularity entail heavy costs for the companies.   

As the chapter notes, when the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a new climate rule in 2022, a push toward improved regulation seemed possible. However, “when it was finalised two years later, in 2024, requirements for companies to disclose Scope 3 emissions — which were present in the initial proposal — were noticeably absent”. As of now this is where climate- related arguments in the Western world are stuck. To the extent that governments are responding to pushbacks from segments of the electorate not convinced of the climate agenda it is a valid argument.The book also makes the cogent point that reliance on voluntary action in this context doesn’t help create an even playing field. “Ultimately, the companies taking the most ambitious action do not feel like they are being rewarded — in fact, in the current economic system that prioritises profits, they may face penalties. Meanwhile, the businesses that ignore such imperatives face no penalties”.  

This is where eclectic approaches from countries like India may need to be noted. A push towards a circular economy as Mr Dasgupta notes, could go a long way. “Rather than fighting to outbid each other for virgin materials on the world stage, countries have an opportunity to build their own circular economy by recapturing used materials. According to the Energy Transition Commission, half the lithium, graphite, and cobalt supplies we will need are already out in the world, sitting in junk drawers and landfills.” This is a good argument cleaving away from the binary of yes-no about the role of fossil fuels.   

Re-engineering cities is another option. Many of the approaches suggested here are possible, particularly in the congested cities of the South. Municipal zones are not the place for dogged political fights. As the example of Ciclovia in Bogota, Colombia, and of Raahgiri in Gurugram, India, indicate, these can show results very quickly. Those seem to be the trigger for other cities to copy those. The authors estimate nearly 90 cities and towns in India have experimented with the Raahgiri concept. The concept is that no one should have to travel more than 15 minute in a city between work and residence. That notion may appear utopian— but away from contested national-level climate action, these ground-level initiatives offer far more promise.