The CEO‘s club recently invited me to speak at its annual convention probably because of the work that I have been doing in the field of sustainability. The topic I was asked to speak on was ‘Sun, Spirituality and Sustainability’. It intrigued me not because it rhymes-it is almost lyrical- but also because of the deep underlying connection among the three Ss.
The Sun is the source of all life on Earth. Many cultures around the world, especially Indian culture, recognize the Sun as the ultimate life-giver. Clearly there is no sustainability without the Sun. But what many of us fail to realize is that the sun throws on the earth more energy in an hour than we human beings, with all our profligate ways, consume in a year. So having sustainable renewable energy is not about the adequacy of energy but about our ability to convert this source of energy into clean energy affordable for all. Energy shortage is only in our minds.
Spirituality may mean different things to different people. But for me, spirituality boils down to seeing God (by whatever name we may call Him) in everything around us and to deal with everything, sentient and insentient, with the same degree of love, respect and compassion. For me, spiritually consists of recognition of this bond among all. This is the mainstay of most of the eastern religions and therefore comes naturally to us. Sustainability flows from this belief and therefore spirituality and sustainability are very closely connected. I believe that the true passion for sustainability can only flow from this deep sense of spirituality.
The actions of humanity since the industrial revolution, accentuated through the period of colonialism leading to our current model of free enterprise, have stretched the limits on sustainability – environmental, economic and social. We hardly need to talk much about environmental sustainability because climate change and loss of diversity are issues we are entrenched in daily. On the economic sustainability, while capitalism has, over the past few decades, moved millions of people above the poverty line and have clearly helped abate poverty across China, Southeast Asia and India, we can hardly claim that the war on poverty is over. The environmental and economic unsustainability also creates stress on social sustainability which is evident everywhere.
We live in an imbalanced world and radical changes are required to bring sustainability back. My belief is that we need to work on three levers to make our life sustainable: social awareness and action, technology creation and implementation, and public policy. All of them will lead to economically viable solutions. Let me touch upon these factors.
Social awareness and actions
In this case it would be worthwhile to take a long-term view to understand how societies are moving. Somebody has said “the future is already here – it is only unevenly spread.” Some of the trends that you see in the developed economies are quite likely to unfold in the developing world over the next few decades.
Two things stand out when it comes to societies in the developed world. One is the stagnation or actual reduction in the population of many developed countries. While the phenomenon of population reduction was restricted to European countries and Japan, last year for the first time, the Chinese population shrunk. Even in India in many states, the population growth rate is negative. So clearly over a period of time, our consumption levels across the world are going to go down. While this may dismay the economists, this is good news from the environmental perspective. I believe that over a few decades, we will achieve a new consumption equilibrium at a far lower level of population.
The second aspect that drives sustainability is the nature of human consumption. Here also in the developed countries, one sees a very clear movement from investment in “things” to investment in “experiences”. The desire to go for “use” versus “buy” is clearly evident. To illustrate, digitalisation is cutting down the investments in real estate, in shopping. It is also cutting down investment in new offices. The new generation would not want to own things, such as cars but to really spend on” using” them. Analysis of the US economy over the past few decades shows that in reality, the usage of most materials in that society has gone down. So there is a reason to believe that over a period, humanity will move towards a more sustainable level of consumption. I believe this is great news for the world.
I believe that unsustainability driven by unsustainable consumption will be a phenomenon for the next few decades when countries with large poor populations like ours and many others will move from a period of high growth rate of population/consumption to a low growth rate of population/consumption. The question is how we get over this period of turbulence.
Over the past one decade, there have been many green shoots of green actions in the behaviour of investors, customers and employees. But more has to be done. The key to me lies in rent (instead of buy), replacing ( the unsustainable for more sustainable – electric rather than fossil fuel vehicle) re-using (rather than discard), recycling (everything through its multiple lives), refusing and reducing (wherever the consumption can be avoided). I believe a belief in spirituality can go a long way to make this behaviour change.
Technology
Technology promises to be the true game-changer. Moving from fossil energy to clean energy, moving from wasteful use of materials to a smarter use, moving from consumption of ‘things’ to ‘experiences’ through technologies such as telecommunications, augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) – all provide great opportunities for bringing sustainability to our lives. All major industries of the world whether it is mobility, power generation, agriculture, animal husbandry, steel, cement and others offer great potential for technological changes to sustainability. I believe that technology would be the single most powerful driver to usher in a sustainable world. This will also create a lot of new green jobs and help alleviate many economic disparities. Nano technology can help build materials at microscopic scales reducing the quantum and weight of materials used. Biotechnology can help learn from life and improve agriculture, pharmaceuticals, etc. 3-D manufacturing can push production to the point of consumption and reduce wasteful production. Improved healthcare can increase lifespans and increase our productive years. New energy technologies like hydrogen and new battery chemistries can significantly reduce the usage of dirty fuels. AR/ VR along with telecommunications can help us work from home and cut down transportation. Artificial intelligence can help us improve in all areas where the ability of the human brain falls short. New fission technologies as well as fusion technologies can help give us an immense amount of clean power. As consumption levels stabilize, recycling technologies can help us extract materials from used products. Machine learning and artificial intelligence can help us track demand changes, cut down on long production cycles and save wasteful production.
I believe we’re at the cusp of an interesting world where technologies can make our lives more fulfilling and less taxing while saving the environment. Clearly, we all need to do more work in this area. And clearly in India, we have to focus on innovation not just of the jugaad type, but which is in the core areas of science and technology. Our mindset has to change from import of technology to development of technology. Our own technology development is important because our problems are different, our constraints are different and so our solutions have to be different. They can only be built here in India. Clearly there is no case for reinventing the wheel, but we may need a different wheel which can best meet our needs.
When a stabilized and entrenched world order needs to be changed, as is the case now, there is a dire need to bring a supportive public policy. We need a public policy which promotes the use of better energy while it dis-incentivizes the use of dirty energy. So much action is happening on the public policy front all across the world. The new Energy Conservation amendment Act is now working in the area of carbon trading and possibly carbon tax. Such public policies can make the new technologies economically viable. The archaic and the existing well entrenched low-cost but dirty technologies can be made expensive. Such policies along with the policies of the current government Incentives for promotion of clean enterprises are extremely important for building sustainability. At no time in the past have we seen such a concerted action from all countries across the world to do climate mitigation. The time augurs well for a good change.
I believe that using these three levers, it’s possible to build economically viable alternatives for a more sustainable future. Only economically viable solutions can be truly sustainable solutions in the long run.
I, for one, believe that we are at the dawn of a new and more beautiful world – a world where Sun, Spirituality and Sustainability will happily co-exist.
(Disclaimer: Ravi Pandit is the Chairman of KPIT Technologies. Views are personal)
