Dear readers,
I write this newsletter once every month or so. It features my reflections on the deployment of creativity to making the world’s economic systems (and by extension social and to some extent political systems) more inclusive and, therefore, fairer. That sounds like a tall order – and it is!
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At the Harvard Business School and Harvard’s Mittal and Salata Institutes, a team of faculty, students, and accomplished visiting practitioners (entrepreneurs, activists, former politicians) are working on climate change in South Asia in the best tradition of a vibrant research and teaching university.
One of the most persistent divides in the climate community lies between the views of the so-called Global North and the Global South. Simply put, the developing world feels unfairly put upon. Pollution is primarily the consequence of the developed world having exhausted its so-called carbon budget to live comfortably, with the developing world now being told that if it follows the same path the environmental disaster will consign us all to oblivion. And, oh yes, the developed world won’t pay for the developing world to find another way.
A few months ago, The Economist had a screaming headline pointing to this unfairness – that the vast majority of funding for addressing climate change is directed to so-called mitigation to reduce further environmental decline . And precious little is directed toward adaptation - helping the poorer countries live with the reality imposed upon them by their more prosperous brethren.
Much of the work on the ground in poorer countries is being done by non-profits with grassroots familiarity and connectivity. But one mistake I worry about is the implicit assumption that science and technology might play less of a role in adaptation than it clearly does when we think of high-tech solutions for the rich. For example, material science matters a great deal in finding ways for poorer habitats to deal with rising, but also fluctuating, water levels. And judicious use of sophisticated and inexpensive sensors can help create nearer-real-time adaptation to climate exigencies to which the poor are more vulnerable.
The adaptation and mitigation debate shows up when pursuing other “big hairy audacious goals” (BHAG), for example, dealing with aging. Just last week, I ran into this issue at Harvard. On the mitigation end is cutting-edge scientific research, pursued by Harvard Medical School’s Sinclair Lab, which specializes in the biology of aging. Meanwhile, on the adaptation end is another research project led by the renowned psychiatrist and medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman, seeking to find better ways to care for abandoned elders in China (a country which, while not exactly poor, has certainly gotten old before it has gotten rich). A sobering presentation by Arthur is here.
Of course, I overstate this for rhetorical effect, both in case of climate change and aging. The rich also have to adapt to rising water levels and heat stress, and to the consequences of aging as we live longer and the poor embrace science when they can. But the rich-poor divide is real and stark, and differential access to science will exacerbate it.