Whether it is the G20 meetings, the United Nations (UN) sessions, or the World Economic Forum as it is now in Davos, one of the most important international agenda items in recent years is climate change and environmental issues. We asked our questions to Erik Solheim, who is known worldwide and has undertaken duties in this field. Having served as a Minister in Norway between 2005-2012, Solheim was the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) between 2016-2018. Erik Solheim, who is currently the President of the Green Belt Road Institute, is also a person who knows China and India well. Therefore, Erik Solheim’s distinctive feature is that he is an expert who knows both Western countries and Asian geography closely.
“We do not have to choose between economy and ecology”
Mr Solheim thank you for your time. We can start with our first question. How do you evaluate the green deal in general, which is often voiced in the western countries? Do you think that the western countries have the potential to implement this deal for the benefit of all humanity?
Yes absolutely. I am very optimistic and that is because I believe we are at a complete change of paradigm in the world. In the 20 century those goals were only about development. If you asked the people in almost any country whether they wanted to develop or they wanted to care about the mother earth, they would have wanted to develop first. There was still a choice until very recently, because there was no way for a rapid development if you did not use coal, oil or gas. That is what happened in the UK which started the industrial revolution, and then moved on to the USA Germany Japan, Korea, Türkiye to China and to every country. So everyone has based its development on fossil fuels. But now in the 21 century, solar energy and wind energy is cheaper than coal everywhere in the world. So we can rapidly move to the green technologies and to a green and clean future without the loss of jobs, instead we will further gain jobs and prosperity. So we do not have to choose between economy and ecology, we can get both. And that makes me very optimistic about it. In the 21 century we will find a way to a new green development.
“Ukrainian war will supercharge the renewable revolution”
Okay but I think we have a new situation right now as well. What impact do you believe the Ukrainian crisis have on the transition to energy? Because we see now that other European countries have other roadmaps and plans like LNG etc.
I mean you are right in the short term there may be a little bit of backsliding, but in the long run the Ukrainian war, horrible as it is, will supercharge the renewable revolution. Why? Well Europe wants to be independent of the fossil fuels from Russia. How can we do that in Europe? We can only do that on basing our development on European resources. And the sun happens to be European, the wind is European, hydropower or the green hydrogen, all these are European resources. So in order to be energy-independent, Europe would want to move towards all domestic resources and those are all green. By the way nations such as India China, Middle African or Latin American nations are not boycotting Russia, but still they have a huge problem with the enormous volatility in the oil and gas market with skyrocketing oil prices. Look at India for example, they import 100% of their oil and gas. If they can replace oil and gas with solar, they can drop the amount they spent on import and save a lot of money in the state budget, that can be much better used in education. So it is a complete win win for India to base its development on solar and wind rather than import oil and gas. So yes Europe wants to be independent of Russia and rest of the world also want to be independent of the volatile oil and gas market, so we will see a supercharging of the renewable revolution.
Political economy will save the world, not diplomacy
In the past and also recently UN climate summits have been criticized for failing to provide any concrete results and for being unable to reach tangible conclusions. So in this regard how do you rate the COP 27 this year. It was determined to establish a loss and damage fund during this summit. Is it realistic and applicable?
I think focusing on diplomacy is wrong. It is not diplomacy that will save the world, it is the political economists and the decisions taken by key political leaders and by the main companies of the world. That is where I see the progress. Last year in Glasgow, there was a big quarrel, some European negotiators were even crying on Tv because they did not get things done their way. Their quarrel was whether they should face out?? or down??. This was only a small difference in semantic and had no implication outside the climate talks, but people were still crying as if it was a major defeat. The reality was it had over the world outside the diplomatic circles. This year in Sharm al-Sheikh the developing world has won a principle victory. For the first time North America and Europe has accepted that they had a historical responsibility for the damage caused on the developing nations. And we are partly responsible for example for the enormous floods in Pakistan this year, and for the droughts that hit East Africa and we should pay reperation for these. So it is a principle victory for Asia Africa and Latin America. But the reality is that there will be hardly any money coming from this serious victory. The larger funds needed for development is still in the private investment and the carbon market and not in the global funds. And these funds also tend to be very bureaucratic and slow, hardly helping Africa or India or Latin America. So those developing nations and the two biggest developing China and India, almost exclusively focus on how they can create the domestic conditions for green growth and they will succeed. If you focus on climate talks and these global funds institiutions instead, you will see limited progress. So let us shift the focus and not be so concerned about diplomacy and be more concerned about political economy.
We need three forces: Citizens, governments and businesses
In this regard the roles of the giant companies are also much debated. So who do you think is the future of the world at the hands of the governments or the companies?
Obviously we need both. When you want to see progress you need three forces. First is the citizens because without them there is nobody that demand changes from companies and from political leaders. You need governments to regulate the markets and set the vision. But the change at scale, a change in technology that we really need, can only come from businesses. And the good news is that in most of the world today businesses are well ahead of political leaders. Business is currently much greener than politics. One example is Ikea, the furniture giant in Europe, is far ahead of any government in Europe, when it comes to a recyclable economy. Danish Orsted company made a complete transition from being a 100%oil company to being one of the biggest wind energy producers in the world, which is again far ahead of any government. In the US, Microsoft has promised to compensate all the emissions of the company history, which no government has done anything like it. And lastly Indonesia slowed deforestation, which is due to good policies by the government but it is also due to the paper pulp and palm oil giants in Indonesia have understood they need to change. One of the biggest paper pulp company, the Royal Golden Eagle has zero deforestation value change and they are even a major protector of the rainforests in Indonesia and they can sometimes do better than governments because they have fire brigades and helicopters to protect these rainforests. So, while of course you find some companies that destroy the world, overall businesses are a force of good and all political leaders are ahead of governments when it comes to understanding the green transition.
Information technology and renewable revolution must be combined
Another topic is the so-called 4th Industrial Revolution. It is said that these revolution offers a potential to create an economy driven by environmentally friendly technologies. How do you see this potential becoming the reality in terms of employment opportunities etc? So how can environmental sustainability coexist with social and economic sustainability?
The 4 Industrial Revolution had mended an absolute revolution in information technology, in biotechnology and in the energy market into renewables. These combined is a shift in global industries of the same magnitude as the 1 Industrial revolution in the UK and the 2 in the USA with railroads and the 3 with internet. It is an enormous transformative change for the world. For sure there are problems here. We do not know whether this will create more or less jobs, and that is a critical issue. The IT revolution can also be used for negatives such as hate crimes on the internet as an example. So there are need for regulating the market, but overall it is enormous potential force for good and of course if you merge them with more Informational Technologies, it can improve the energy efficiency a lot. The Chinese company Huawei for example, is using its high tech hardware to improve its solar panel output up to 10-15 percent. The same company also uses drones to increase the agricultural output for the farmers with using less fertilizers and less pesticides, so that you get more yield with less harmful substances. So a merger of IT and renewable revolution has an enormous potential for taking the world to much greener fashion in the 21 century. This is also a great opportunity for Turkiye to create more jobs in the renewable industries. The solar energy potential in Turkiye is huge throughout the year. Some parts of Turkiye is also very dry. You can use these new technologies for planting trees with drones. These are the huge opportunities of the new technologies.
“China is totally dominant in all green technologies”
As everybody agrees China plays an important role in the fight against the climate change and you are well- aware of the practices of China in that aspect. So it would be an important topic to discuss further. What is the proposal of the Green Belt and Road Initiative? The term Green Marshall Plan was also adopted by some British officials to describe this project in the meanwhile.
I find it extremely interesting to find that two biggest develoing countries china and india have the same attitude. They look into this climate change both as a threat to their nations and as an enormous opportunity. Neither China nor India have a traditional car industry for instance. So they can simply leap a step forward into the future. And half of the all-electric cars and all sold in China. There is also fast moving into electric mobility. In India, there is a company called Ola, which has set up an electric scooter factory in a record time, and their slogan is ‘Tesla for the West, Ola for the rest’ meaning that they believe that they can even produce electric vehicles much cheaper than the West. Both China and India see this as an enormous opportunity for creating jobs and prosperity and economic growth, and China is well ahead of India, even if that’s moving in the same direction. China is totally dominant in all green technologies. We need to get up very early in the morning in Europe and North America if we want to compete with China. 82% of all solar panels in the world last year were produced in China, and 70% of all electric batteries were produced in China. Yes, you buy an American car, but the battery is made in China, and the battery is 50% of the value of the car. And Belton Rd. which is the Chinese institution for cooperating with the rest of the world, with Europe and Turkey, for instance, through the Silk Road, through Central Asia, but also with Africa and Latin America, has enormous potential for providing Chinese green investment to the world, but also for people to people’s contact and learning. Yes, China can learn from other countries, but of course more and more the rest of the world needs to learn from China.
“All of us can jointly create an ecological civilization”
Another issue in China’s practice is the ecological civilization idea. How would you evaluate this idea and can you maybe compare it with the Green Deal? Where do the Green Deal and so-called ecological civilization converge and divide? This is I think also interesting to understand.
Obviously, the Green Deal in Europe or North America and the ecological civilization is almost the same. What I love about the concept of ecological civilization is that it is a positive concept because most environmentalism in the past was about the negative and avoiding the negatives. I mean basically, economists said, ‘we want to develop’ and they wanted to get all people rich and moved into the middle class. Then they would have to be some destruction of the environment. And then the environment is like ‘no, that’s not acceptable.’ But now you can call positive and enthusiastic vision for the future with more jobs and prosperity, better health and livelihood for people, and better protection of others all at the same time. That is to me what the ecological civilization is all about, a vision for the 21st century, which is green and people-oriented, rather than the old vision which was like you move ahead without any consequences for the ecology, and then you create a very divided society. It’s a positive vision that we should all embrace. There’s always a reluctance in the West to use a concept that was developed in China. But back in the early days of climate talks, Bolivia called a slogan which was Mother Earth. Then people in the West said that this is so dangerous, very dangerous because it comes from the ideologies of Bolivia and Bolivia is a left-wing government, I mean, with the roots in the indigenous culture in Bolivia, so we should avoid that concept. But the difference between Mother Earth and the Islamic or Christian attitude was that you should protect what God or Allah has created. It has no difference. And all of a sudden, Barack Obama started using the concept of Mother Earth, and then everyone said, ‘this is all fine, no problem.’ And the same here. We should embrace this concept which comes from China, the ecological civilization, and we should jointly create it. China, America, Europe, and Africa or India, all of us, can jointly create an ecological civilization. It’s such a positive concept.
