What do India, Indonesia and China have in common?
They are the three largest developing nations.
At the climate talks in Glasgow and Dubai, and for sure also later this year in Baku, intellectually lazy negotiators and commentators speak as if the West is leading the world on the environment.
They get it dead wrong. Europe was leading, ten years ago. Now it’s time the West starts learning. Asia is leading.
India, Indonesia and China do not focus on climate only as a problem. Their leaders Modi, Xi and Prabowo see climate as an opportunity. Taking climate action make economic, not only ecological, sense. They can create jobs and prosperity, leave poverty behind, by going green.
Ola, the Uber of India, captures this in a fun slogan “Tesla for the West, Ola for the rest”. They believe they can make high quality, low cost, electric scooters and later cars, capturing global markets.
China had few stocks in the old automobile industry. When Western car makers were sleeping or even cheating on their emission records, China built the world’s dominant electric car ecosystem. BYD recently overtook Tesla as the largest electric car brand. CATL is the lead electric battery maker. Last year China passed Japan as the number one exporter of cars. Going electric makes perfect business as well as environment sense for China.
For the first time in human history there is a green pathway to prosperity.
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There is much talk of reforms of the global financial institutions. There has been a lot of ideas about reform of the UN also. Not one meaningful reform has happened over the last decade. The world’s largest nation, soon to become the world’s third largest economy, India, is not even on the UN security council. Anyone looking for Indonesians in the UN or global institutions need to mobilize the CIA to find them !
Reforms need support, but they will be slow, if at all they happen.
Erik Solheim – I was minister of International Development of Norway for nearly seven years. We brought Norwegian aid to 1%, the highest in the world. But if development assistance was what created prosperity some African nations would be the most developed countries on earth. India, Indonesia and China, add Korea, Singapore or Vietnam, have received very limited aid. They have got access to markets and developed strong domestic states and industries. What would Korea be without Hyundai and Samsung? This is also how the green transformation will happen this century.
The fast way to green developments run through private investment and the carbon markets, voluntary or not. This money is much larger and a lot more flexible and fast than aid. Any developing nation is best advised to build on domestic strengths and to tap into these capital flows.
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