The Sustainability Challenges: Transforming a Threat to Mankind into an Opportunity for Global Progress
Date：2022-12-09
David Gosset, Founder of the China-Europe-America Global Initiative, was invited to attend the 2022 Shanghai International Public Relations Forum: “Carbon Peaking & Carbon Neutrality” Strategy and Green Development on December 8. He delivered a speech titled The Sustainability Challenges: Transforming a Threat to Mankind into an Opportunity for Global Progress. The forum was co-organized by Shanghai Public Relations Association, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Tongji University.
Speech by David Gosset
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Full Text
Ladies and Gentlemen, dear friends,
I am delighted to see that the Shanghai Public Relations Association attaches such a great importance to green development. I am honored to share my views on environmental issues with so many distinguished personalities and experts.
Our global economy is in need of a better growth, of a qualitative growth. It requires an immense mobilization of our governments, of our businesses as well as of our societies. Such a mobilization can only take place if it is triggered by a mindset change.
Combined with other social forces, among them educators, media, influencers of all sort, I am convinced that the Shanghai Public Relations Association can contribute to the shaping of this new mindset for a truly sustainable and harmonious 21st century.
We are all preoccupied by a series of immediate and severe crises that our global village is facing: armed conflict in the middle of the European continent, inflation that punishes the most those who live in already precarious conditions, geopolitical tensions among big powers that translate into decoupling, alarming economic and technological inequalities, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
In parallel, the instruments of multilateralism, for example the COP, the G20 and even the United Nations, are weakened by the divisions of the international community. It is obvious that immediate security issues distracted the Bali G20 Summit from longer term economic, social, and environmental good planning.
Some forces are even acting to simply undermine multilateralism. We have all witnessed America’s regression into unilateralism in 2017. It would be a mistake not to consider the possibility of it coming back in 2024, or after.
In such a context, there is a risk for the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss to be de-prioritized. It would be tragic since these two interconnected phenomena constitute a threat to mankind.
They do not endanger one region or one country, they imperil all of us. Allow me here to quote French thinker Bruno Latour who sadly passed away two months ago. He wrote in Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime that “the new universality consists in feeling that the ground is in the process of giving way”.
When climate change and biodiversity loss are not themselves the cause of the more immediate crises, they complicate the process to solve them.
So, let us focus on the extreme challenges of the Anthropocene, an era that is broadly defined by human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems. I also suggest that we conceive it as a dangerous moment in our collective history characterized by disharmony between Man and Nature.
Of course, the Homo sapiens is a highly successful species with its 8 billion humans. It produced languages, philosophical systems, arts and sciences, in other words, it gave birth to civilizations.
However, in its most recent development, especially in the centuries following the Industrial Revolution, this species has degraded the environment from which it has emerged.
For its own long-term benefit, mankind has to abandon destructive anthropocentrism and put back the environment in a position of centrality; it has to act as a gardener of the biosphere that is the condition of its existence.
It is widely known that because they are too dependent on fossil fuels our economic activities are simply not sustainable. Global warming forces population to migrate, disrupts agriculture, and creates also hardships for people inhabiting large cities.
The October 2022 UN Climate Change Report states that we are heading towards a 2.5 degrees warming. For the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this is simply a catastrophic level. The 2015 Paris Agreement aimed at limiting the increase to 1.5 degree.
This year, Europe was impacted by its worst drought in 500 years, and the US and China were also deeply affected. Pakistan has seen its worst flood ever, killing almost 2000 people and bringing estimated losses worth US$ 40 billion. The floods were caused by heavier than usual monsoon rains and melting glaciers that followed a heat wave. Nigeria suffered also from floods that displaced 1.4 million people. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme, Nigeria faces a high risk of hunger.
The list could sadly go on. One should remember that changes in climatic conditions have been linked in the past with falls of entire civilizations like those of the Maya or Angkor.
While we all understand that we need to halt our addiction to fossil fuels, the reality is that in 2019 84% of primary energy consumption came from them. Although renewable energy from sunlight and wind has become increasingly available, it is, in my eyes, a massive transition towards green finance that would be conducive to reach a net-zero economy.
By some estimates, reaching net-zero by 2050 would require investments amount to $9.2 trillion annually. This is two times the GDP of Japan, the world’s third largest economy.
Private financial institutions, asset management firms, pension funds, Multilateral Development Banks have to act taking into account the imperative of sustainability. This has to be done without greenwashing. The Net-Zero Banking Alliance is certainly a progress but it currently only represents 40% of global banking assets.
Aware of the crucial role of capital, we made green finance the key theme of our second dialogue in the framework of the China-Europe-America Net-Zero Transition Platform, a mechanism that my colleagues and I have established. We will continue the effort, and you are all welcome to join the movement.
Here, the fact that China and the European Union show good coordination level is encouraging. In 2020, both parties set up a working group dedicated to identifying a “Common Ground Taxonomy”. The comparability and interoperability of taxonomies across jurisdictions are key to the identification of environmentally sustainable investments.
Besides, carbon pricing is rightly hailed by economists as one of the most cost-effective tools to decarbonize our economies. As of October 2022, there are 68 direct carbon pricing initiatives implemented in 46 national jurisdictions around the world. The increasing centrality of this policy instrument as shown by COP27 is a good sign.
Green hydrogen has certainly a huge potential in the energy mix of the future, but I personally believe that nuclear energy is also a powerful tool to achieving the decarbonisation of our economies. Home to 53 nuclear power units, and with 23 units under construction, I consider that China is making the right choice, a truly strategic positioning.
The success of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a project in which China, the EU, Japan, Korea, Russia and the US are involved, could become also a source of progress. The work on nuclear fusion in Hefei is also promising.
Artificial Intelligence can contribute to climate change mitigation through energy efficiency or by reducing emissions from transportation, industry and agriculture. By improving our ability to predict extreme weather events, AI can also help us adapt to the impacts of climate change.
It is obvious that technology to fight climate change is available. At the global level, what is still lacking is the collective awareness, will, and effective mobilization beyond rhetoric or posturing. And much beyond the 30 000 participants of the COP27.
The fight against climate change and global warming has to be coupled with the protection of biodiversity. The sixth mass extinction of species that is sadly taking place in the Anthropocene is much higher and faster than at any time in human history.
We, collectively, are global superpredators. The executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), Anne Larigauderie summarizes the situation: “We are currently, in a systematic manner, exterminating all non-human living beings.”
The COP15 biodiversity conference offers the world an opportunity to reach a major agreement to protect nature. It has to be a success reminiscent of the Paris moment.
We are all affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Let us not forget that the IPBES has established links between biodiversity loss and the increase in pandemic risk factors.
The World Leaders Summit Action on Forests and Land-use in 2021 can be considered as a success on the path to fight deforestation. The Forests and Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP) that was launched at COP27 commits to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. It is another step into the right direction.
The Anthropocene is also marked by water scarcity. Half a billion people in the world face severe water scarcity all year round. Actions are needed so we reach the 6th UN Sustainable Development Goal: clean water and sanitation.
Besides the availability of technology to tackle environmental challenges, another source of hope is the fact that China is on the path towards green development.
Due to the size of its population, of its economy, due to the extent of its international projection, China’s actions have global consequences.
In 2020 while addressing the UN General Assembly, President Xi Jinping announced that China will aim to hit peak emissions before 2030, and carbon neutrality by 2060.
The Report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China stated that the country has in the past decade acted “on the idea that lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets”.
For the years ahead, this same report affirms that China’s modernization is “the modernization of harmony between humanity and Nature”.
It has also to be noticed that the report insisted on the necessity for China to keep a global mindset: “We must maintain a global vision. The Communist Party of China is dedicated to pursuing happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation. It is also dedicated to human progress and world harmony”.
Therefore, it is my conviction that China’s own mobilization for green development can serve as a catalyst for a broader mobilization. A very concrete example is the Electric Vehicle market. In 2021, 52% of the sales were made in China. In this field, China is simply showing the way to go.
The intelligence of Homo sapiens allowed the rise of civilizations. Its wisdom should take it always closer to one global ecological civilization. Such a global ecological civilization would constitute a progress of considerable significance.
For such a transformation to become a reality, both a profound mindset change and renewed international cooperation are prerequisites.
In the triptych China and the World that I had the honor to produce over the past three years, it appears clearly that source of global progress in our century depends very much on Sino-Western synergies. It is certainly true in the field of ecology.
Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you positively receive my message: yes, it is possible to transform what is a threat to mankind into an opportunity for global progress. The effort of re-harmonizing the interactions between Man and nature starts now in our minds, in our decisions, and in our actions.
At the 2009 COP in Copenhagen, developed countries agreed to mobilize 100 billion US dollars a year by 2020. They are still failing on this. The concept of “loss and damage”, the idea that rich countries having emitted the most planet-warming gases, should pay poorer countries that are now suffering from climate disasters, is one of the core principles of climate justice.
Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, in his remarks to the opening of COP27 rightly affirmed: “Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish. It is either a climate solidarity pact – or a collective suicide pact.”
An ecological civilization established at the global level would take us closer to a community of shared future for mankind, or to use a classical Chinese concept, closer to the Great Harmony - 大同.
It is the vision of this Great Harmony coming from the depth of the Chinese civilization that inspires my remarks today.
Thank you for your kind attention.
