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100 Environment for Development researchers in Shanghai

EfD just celebrated its 9th annual conference in Shanghai. We had wonderful lectures from prominent lecturers like Siqi Zheng (Professor Tsinghua University), Dick Morgenstern (Senior Fellow, Resources for the Future) and E Somanathan (Professor, Indian Statistical Institute). I feel proud we can attract such great minds and so many enthusiastic young researchers from all across the world. And even more proud that Professor Somanathan told me he was very impressed by the conference, which was his first. In his keynote presentation, Somanathan gave EfD conference participants an overview of microeconomic studies showing the effect of increased temperature in a number of sectors in the Indian economy. We are no longer looking uniquely at effects on agriculture. Most of Somanathan’s studies related to the cloth weaving, garment industry, steel and even diamonds (polishing). Results clearly show that absenteeism goes up and productivity down during days where the temperature is above average. Also other studies show that health costs or visits to doctors go up and days of attendance to school go down during days that are hotter than usual.

EfD is an intense place. We worked almost round the clock: with so many fascinating papers, plenaries and meetings on various topics. At the margin of the official meetings one could often see small groups of researchers who would steal half an hour out of sessions to go and sit in the café in order to discuss collaborative projects. This, in fact, -the opportunity for people who live far apart to work together on their collaborative papers- is perhaps one of the most precious and desirable opportunities for the academics. Only once did we escape for an evening of “sightseeing”. Which was a good thing because it would seem silly to visit one of the Worlds most spectacular cities without having seen anything. We were treated to a wonderful buffet on a cruiser on the river – which is a branch of the mighty Yangtse, one of the world’s greatest (said to be the source of Chinas good fortune). It was not easy to actually see much because of the smog --- we drove past some 30 kms of a forest of skyscrapers. It was both smog and eventually dark but it felt as if we were on a “promenade” past enormous and mysterious giants of modern architecture in rhombs, tetrahyders, and explicitly phallic sculptures pulsating with colors as if ready to explode like fireworks.

This city seemed to be symbolic for our situation. The dimensions of the transformation we could see before our eyes illustrates in a way the size of the challenges ahead of us. If we are to avoid very serious climate change we must transform our energy, transport, buildings, industry and food sectors as radically as these shorelines have been transformed. One wonders if it is possible but seeing what can be done in China shows that human ingenuity can go far. Ethiopia aspires to (very) rapidly become a middle-income country – maybe grow its economy at least 5 times in the next 2 decades or so – but without increasing, in fact while decreasing carbon emissions. Renewable energy offers fantastic possibilities for decarbonisation but the question is still what dramatic policies would make the Ethiopian plan feasible? (Consider just the CO2 necessary in all the steel and cement for wind and hydropower expansion).

EfD needs a dramatic upscaling of new research programs with a focus on comparative studies of climate, energy, forestry, marine and other topics. It is wonderful to see that new centres are aspiring to join the network (India, Vietnam, Colombia, Mexico and more to come) which, if they do join, would allow us to expand our vibrant world community of environmental and development studies to new regions. We have exciting ideas to start a new Master’s program – with modern (think MOOCs) technologies. Cookstoves are as important as ever to the poor – but we must also prepare for new subjects such as the limits of funding through modern finance markets for renewables in countries like Ethiopia. Solar in Africa should be the perfect hedge for a fund manager worried about stranded assets in coal (because if climate policy makes coal shares loose value – the value of solar should rise and such negative correlations is what you want to reduce overall portfolio risk). But we still have a lot of barriers to study, understand and maybe reduce before the famous “100 B$” starts flowing from Wall Street and The City, London to the new renewable industries in poor countries.

This blog is just a first little appetizer... There was so much else on fisheries, forests, agriculture and traffic in Beijing presented during our annual meeting. So please visit the EfD website and check out the program! I will end by thanking profusely the EfD secretariat and our Chinese hosts for a wonderful meeting. 

Blog post | 10 November 2015