Addressing sustainable development, climate change and COVID-19 through sustainomics

By Shailendree Wickrama Adittiya

Sustainable development is a key concept that countries as well as businesses and individuals are focusing on globally. It is described as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” in the 1987 Bruntland Commission Report.

Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by all UN Member States in 2015 and this was as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. While UN Member States had 15 years to achieve these goals, various challenges have surfaced, for instance, climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Considering the efforts made across the globe to achieve sustainability in the 21st century, it was apt that the keynote speech at the inauguration of the Research Week 2021 by the University of Moratuwa focused on sustainable development.

The keynote speech was delivered by Prof. Mohan Munasinghe on 30 November. Prof. Munasinghe is the Chairman of the Presidential Expert Commission (PEC) on Sustainable Sri Lanka 2030 Vision and Strategic Path and is a distinguished guest professor at Peking University, China.

He also received the Blue Planet Prize 2021.

At the inauguration of Moratuwa University’s Research Week, Prof. Munasinghe spoke on, ‘Sustainomics-BIGG based trans-disciplinary research to address sustainable development, climate change and COVID-19’.

Critical problems faced by humanity

When talking about sustainable development, it is important to look at the critical problems faced by humanity as the approach taken by decision-makers and stakeholders must offer solutions to these problems.

According to Prof. Munasinghe, there are many issues like COVID-19 and other pandemics, poverty and inequality, resource shortages like energy, water and food, financial sector collapse, weak leadership, unsustainable values, and climate change.

“Multiple threats are inter-related and synergistic, but we, the stakeholders – seven billion people in this planet – have uncoordinated responses. There is lack of leadership at the top level. We need more decisive action by middle-level leaders like city mayors and from CEOs. We need a robust, integrated strategy,” Prof. Munasinghe said.

He explained that if you look at an issue like poverty and hunger, there were 800 million persons in hunger in 2020, mainly in Africa and Asia. This is one in every nine persons.

“There is a concept called ecological footprint of humanity, which is the sum total of ecological resources that we need to sustain life on the planet. And 1.5 earths were needed in equivalence in 2012 to sustain the human lifestyle and by 2030, if we will continue to consume as we are, we will need almost two earths, which is quite unsustainable,” Prof. Munasinghe went on to say.

He explained that the richest 20% of the world population consumes 85% of world income, leading to questions about the resources to help the poor when the rich already use more resources than one planet. “We have 75 years of unmet goals and broken promises,” he added.

Sustainomics and BIGG

Sustainomics is an integrative, trans-disciplinary framework pioneered by Prof. Mohan Munasinghe and from it emerged concepts like balanced inclusive green growth or BIGG. These are among the key concepts when moving towards a 21st century earth eco-civilisation for a better future.

“I presented sustainomics and balanced inclusive green growth at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio and they have relevance for both short-term problems like COVID-19 and long-term issues like climate change. They can help with the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals,” Prof. Munasinghe explained.

There are several concepts that fall under sustainomics and Prof. Munasinghe explored these during his keynote address. The first core concept is harmonising the sustainable development triangle for balance and integration, with the need to protect economic, environmental and social dimensions.

“Normally, human beings have their head in the clouds, so they are watching the money trail, but we need to have our feet firmly on the ground, on the physical bases,” Prof. Munasinghe said, adding that poor leadership focuses too much on financial data and is disconnected with the real world.

According to Prof. Munasinghe, environmental externalities is the damage caused by economic activities to the physical environment. This includes outcomes like COVID-19 and climate change.

He added that further disconnect is caused by asset bubbles and poverty-inequality between economic assets and financial markets and economic growth.

“Currently, human leaders have doled out many trillions of dollars to bail out rich companies and banks. About a 160 billion is given to help the poor,” he said, adding that only a few billion is set aside for the environment.

Making development more sustainable

The second core concept is making development more sustainable.

“Sustainable development is like a mountain. The peak is covered in clouds; it is a bit mysterious. But if we slowly climb uphill one step at a time, we will eventually reach the top,” Prof. Munasinghe said. He explained that unsustainable activities are easy to identify. For instance, when we leave a room, we switch off the light.

This can be done at an individual level and the COVID-19 lesson one can learn in this context is that individual action is a powerful force. “COVID-19 showed that public health officials depended on individuals and groups to use four basic time-tested methods; avoid crowds, basic hygiene, wear masks and safe distance,” Prof. Munasinghe said, adding that, without these, the global toll of COVID-19 would be much higher.

However, individual action needs to be public-spirited.

According to Prof. Munasinghe, the speed of viral transmission and high population densities underline human physical interconnectivity, interdependence and vulnerability. During a disaster like the pandemic, sustainable values like greed, selfishness and extreme competition are especially harmful and destroy social capital.

“During a disaster like a pandemic, you cannot have greed, selfishness, and extreme competition. It is disastrous,” he said.

It comes down to personal choices as well and persons must harmonise themselves before trying to harmonise the earth. This considers dimensions like one’s personal life, work, health and social life. At a corporate level, these efforts include CSR and sustainability accounting.

Transcending boundaries with innovation

The third concept presented by Prof. Mohan Munasinghe is transcending boundaries of sustainable development with innovation and fresh ideas. The COVID lesson one can learn here is the need for a trans-disciplinary, integrated, systems-based, coordinated, long-term analysis of interlinked issues.

“You have to transcend disciplines because sustainable development has many diverse issues all the way from social justice and values to biological and physical resources. And sustainomics tells us we need to use all these disciplines; Philosophy, sociology, politics, economics, engineering, natural sciences and so on,” Prof. Munasinghe said.

He also explained the difference between multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary. Multidisciplinary is when individual experts from different disciplines coordinate efforts to varying concepts and methods to complex problems. Interdisciplinary is when a multidisciplinary team seeks to achieve a synthesis by breaking down the barriers among various disciplines, usually at the final stages of analysis.

Trans-disciplinary, which is the approach used in sustainomics, is when an interdisciplinary team seeks to synthesise new concepts, methods and models before applying them to a complex problem, by combining knowledge from various disciplines.

According to Prof. Munasinghe, it is important to transcend stakeholder boundaries to build cooperation for sustainable development between businesses, government, and civil society, with these entities working together, as opposed to a big business crushing civil society and government, leaving no space for sustainable development.

“You need to integrate all policies into national sustainable development strategy, so you have to make decision-makers see that the pandemic, for example, and climate change are part of national sustainability development policy,” he added.

Re-focusing on social values and issues is another COVID lesson in this context and Prof. Munasinghe emphasised the importance of replacing unethical values that drive unsustainable development.

The current model of unsustainable development is driven by unethical values, he said, adding that unethical values like greed, selfishness, corruption and violence have resulted in an economic model of mal-development.

According to Prof. Munasinghe, unsustainable growth based on debt, extreme market forces, poverty, inequality, and over-consumption has caused environmental debt, with sustainable pollution and depleting natural resources.

What is needed is a balanced asset triangle of natural capital, built capital and social capital that supports sustainable development.

Using the analogy of a champagne or martini glass, Prof. Munasinghe said the present system is one where the environment is the narrow base, while the poor is the stem and the rich is the bowl. A disaster like COVID-19 can easily tip it over.

Green growth makes the environmental base bigger, giving the glass more stability.

BIGG changes the shape of the glass, so that the environmental base is wide. The bowl starts narrow and widens slightly at the top, with the poor at the bottom, the rich at the top and the middle class in between.

The fourth core concept presented by Prof. Munasinghe is the full-cycle application of integrative tools from data to practical policy implementation. The COVID lesson here is to pursue transformative path to sustainability by implementing via a balanced inclusive green growth (BIGG).The BIGG path calls for urgent changes needed to restore present unsustainable global systems that may collapse, harmonising economic, environmental and social goals for full sustainable development.

Digital technology

There is no doubt that digital technology has changed the way we approach critical issued faced by humanity as well as concepts like sustainable development. During his keynote speech at the Moratuwa University’s Research Week, Prof. Munasinghe looked at how digital technology guides us to BIGG path of 21st century.

“Digital technology can help us achieve this global vision by focusing on gross national happiness and wellbeing, not only material growth or GNP,” he said, adding that this can be done if we follow the 17 SDGs.

There are several impacts of digital technology on sustainable development and Prof. Munasinghe spoke about these impacts in terms of social, environmental, and economic aspects.

Social gains in this context look at more employment and income, especially for the poor, increased participation and empowerment, and greater access to information while social risks include exclusion of poor and increasing inequality, the use of internet information for destructive purposes, marginalisation of indigenous knowledge and reduction of cultural diversity through IT development.

Environmental gains include more efficient production and resource use and improved technology for pollution management. In terms of environmental risks, Prof. Munasinghe spoke about how growth and uncontrolled consumerism leads to more pollution and natural resource use. He added that digital technology hardware production and disposal itself is material-intensive and polluting.

Looking at economic gains, there is increased productivity and growth and a greater variety of goods and services, but economic risks include widening gap between rich and poor, greater risks of macroeconomic instability, and more competition and risks for firms.

In terms of potentially economically-disruptive technologies, Prof. Munasinghe identifies 12 such technologies, of which eight are digital technologies. These are mobile internet, AI, IoT, cloud technology, blockchain, advanced robotics, autonomous vehicles and drones and 3D printing.

The other technologies are advanced materials, next generation genomics, energy storage, and renewable energy and advanced fossil fuel tech.

However, Prof. Munasinghe points out that COVID lessons show that sustainable urban habitats and lifestyles can be created using digital technology and points to the use of better risk analysis and management.

Sustainable consumption under BIGG

BIGG uses innovative methods and there are three key BIGG sustainable production concepts proposed by Prof. Munasinghe based on ideas from workshops on business sustainability for CEOs and senior managers of top multinationals.

These are sustainability and triple bottom line is the wave of the future, resource use efficiency is a win-win starting point, and ethical values are key to long-term sustainability.

In terms of sustainable consumption and production, Prof. Munasinghe suggests looking at CO2 hotspots along the supply chain, which could help make production more sustainable. Sharing data on the lifecycle analysis of CO2 emission hotspots along the supply value chain, Prof. Munasinghe showed that in Sri Lanka’s tea industry, retail has 47% emissions because of packaging. In Sri Lanka’s garment industry, 65% emissions are from raw material production.

Looking at orange juice transported from Brazil to UK, the hotspot is transport, which is by ship, with 47% emissions. In milk produced in UK, 76% of emissions are from raw material production.While presenting solutions to these issues and challenges, Prof. Munasinghe also looked at the future.

“Future sustainable cities, if they are well planned, are more resilient, reduce harm to human lives and biodiversity. They will be cooler, with lower climate change impacts, reduce air pollution, reduce risk for water and vector-borne diseases,” he said.

However, climate justice itself is not a case of penalising the poor. In terms of energy, for instance, Prof. Munasinghe social equity and affordable energy.

According to Prof. Munasinghe, raising energy prices will meet economic and environmental goals but not social equity goal, because high price will deprive poor of basic energy needs and worsen energy poverty. Block pricing structures with a subsidised minimum use block for poor homes provide a practical compromise among conflicting goals.

What can we expect in Sri Lanka?

Concerns about issues like COVID-19 and climate change as well as sustainable development are shared by countries across the globe, but it is important to look at the situation in Sri Lanka and Prof. Munasinghe spoke about BIGG on a national level, integrated trans-disciplinary study.

“In 2017, [former] Sri Lanka President Sirisena fulfilled his UN pledge made two years before by appointing a Presidential Expert Commission to write this report; Sustainable Sri Lanka 2030 Vision and Strategic Path,” he said.

The Commission was chaired by Prof. Mohan Munasinghe.

“We had 40 Sri Lankan experts, no foreign experts. We looked at the three clusters; economic, social and environmental. We looked at all the sectors that are important.”

These sectors include agriculture, education, energy, health, marine and fisheries, transport, urban and physical plan, and water. They also looked at several cross-cutting issues like citizenship values and ethics, gender, international relations, poverty and inequality, and youth perspective.

“While it is not a political or detailed national plan, the basic framework for 2030 vision was practical and solution oriented, both report and team-thinking are integrated, and the ultimate goal is to build national consensus for sustainable development,” he said.

The framework had an aim: By 2030, Sri Lanka hopes to become a sustainable, upper middle income, Indian Ocean hub with an economy that is prosperous, competitive and advanced; an environment that is green and flourishing, and a society that is inclusive, harmonious, peaceful and just. We will follow the middle path based on BIGG.

As we approach the end of 2021, Sri Lanka is looking at a period of eight years to create a thriving economy, green environment, and inclusive society.

Prof. Munasinghe acknowledges potential surprises like climate change, pandemics, environmental crises and resource shortages, social unrest, terrorist and conflict, economic crises, and technological disruption.

“However, innovative thinking will build resilience against shocks and help us survive in a dynamically changing world,” he added.

The future

Considering all these factors, it may seem like all hope is lost. However, Prof. Munasinghe ended his keynote address on a more positive note.

“I have an optimistic final message for Sri Lanka and the world. We have multiple interlinked global problems. It is a serious challenge for us all. Pandemics, economic crises, poverty, resource scarcities, conflict, climate change, and so on. These problems can be solved together with trans-disciplinary research if we begin now. Sustainomics and BIGG show us the way to make development more sustainable one step at a time,” he said.

Achieving this requires governance systems at all levels to be transformed to deal with multiple crises in an integrated way. This includes managing post-COVID recovery to support sustainable development.