By Shriraksha Mohan
We’ve recently seen that almost every summer has been the hottest on record. Rainfall patterns have become erratic, and droughts, fires, and water shortages pose risks to life. The primary causes of these climate changes are deforestation and increased fossil fuel use. Usually, the poor and marginalized communities are most affected by climate catastrophes.
There are no isolated climate systems. Ecological imbalances in one part of the world impact weather patterns elsewhere. So, climate change must be tackled on a global scale, while being sensitive to local conditions.
Geopolitics of Climate Change
The United Nations Climate Change Convention was established at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. It proposed several principles to climate change adaptation processes. One such principle is CBRD – Common But Differentiated Responsibilities.
The CBRD principle acknowledges that all nations share a common obligation to address climate change; however, not all are equally responsible for causing climate change. The developed, industrialized countries have contributed more to global warming than have the developing countries.
It must be accepted that addressing climate change should not and cannot happen at the cost of curtailing economic growth in developing countries or in poorer communities within developed countries. In some underdeveloped countries and communities, poverty, lack of basic necessities, and economic insecurity may unravel the social fabric before climate catastrophes and ecosystem collapse does.
Therefore, the right approach to climate change adaptation is to embrace a universal outlook, but with locally appropriate “boots-on-the-ground” action. “Universal in spirit, regional in approach.”
Redefining Growth
Economic growth in high-income households is characterized by material overconsumption. On the other hand, in many mid-income and low-income households, economic growth barely satisfies people’s basic needs.
Economic growth, motivated by maximizing profits, has led to over-extraction of the planet’s finite resources, biodiversity loss, and destruction of natural ecosystems, contributing to climate change. There should be a dynamic balance between economic growth and the mitigation of climate risks, and balanced growth should occur within the biophysical limits of the planet. There should also be progressive utilization and rational distribution of resources to promote greater equity and justice, with resource use constrained by environmental protection laws.
The goal of economic growth should be to create favorable circumstances for human beings to develop their potentials in all three realms of their existence — physical, mental and spiritual — while safeguarding ecosystems. If this paradigm of growth were to guide economic development, growth would no longer be associated solely with material growth, and this could alleviate stress on natural ecosystems.
Decentralized Economy Principles as Policy Tools for Climate Change Adaptation
Prout is a social philosophy that gives importance to economic decentralization and economic democracy. Prout proposes a set of principles that define economic decentralization and a set of requirements that define economic democracy. These principles and requirements are primarily intended to guide policies, plans, and programs to build self-reliant local economies and promote balanced growth and economic empowerment, but they would also have beneficial implications for climate change adaptation.
Principles of Decentralized Economy
- Local people control the local resources of a region.
- Production is based on consumption, not for profit.
- Local cooperatives produce and distribute essential commodities.
- Full employment of local people in local cooperatives and economic enterprises.
- Regulation of local markets by removing non-locally produced commodities.
Requirements of Economic Democracy
- Minimum requirement of life must be guaranteed to all.
- Increasing purchasing power must be guaranteed to every individual.
- The power to make all economic decisions must be in the hands of the local people.
- Outsiders must be strictly prevented from interfering in the local economy.
Local Economic Autonomy for Climate Resilience
If we are to understand how to apply these principles, there must be a clear conception of who local people are. In the Prout framework, socio-economic regions are demarcated based on common economic issues and potentialities, similar geographical features, natural resources, and shared sentimental legacy of the people. Those who have merged their socio-economic interests with the socio-economic interests of such regions are considered the local people of those regions. Race, ethnicity, caste, and creed play no role in determining who the local people are. Nor are migratory populations considered to be local.
Local people are likely to have intimate knowledge of the local resources, the characteristics and needs of their communities, and people’s aspirations. Local planning bodies made up of local people are best equipped to make economic decisions. Therefore, economic planning at the basic grassroots level is the most effective way to plan an economy.
In adapting to climate change, locals who are affected by climate change disruptions should create plans to secure their economic interests, assess climate risks, and determine the infrastructure needs. The natural resources of a region — land, water, flora, and fauna — should be managed by the local planning bodies, with the support of their immediate governments, to ensure that these resources are properly employed to build climate-resilience.
Another important effect of relocalizing the economy and shifting economic power to local people is that it prevents privatization and commodification of natural resources by corporations or the central government for implementing pseudo-climate solutions. This occurs in many developing countries where people’s common resources are enclosed by private enterprises, with governments enacting policies that legalize private use of forests, marshlands, farmlands, etc., for carbon sequestration and carbon offsetting projects. These projects create carbon credits and carbon offsets that are then sold to emitters of carbon dioxide, permitting them to emit more carbon dioxide. This is a dubious and ineffective solution to fix climate change.
Fictitious commodities like carbon credits and carbon offsets create claims over nature by private entities. The indigenous people who are a part of these natural environments are dispossessed and displaced in this process. Governments, in some instances, enforce the rights of private entities on people’s resources. Local natural resources must be guarded from misuse in these neoliberal, profit-oriented pseudo-climate solutions. Local planning bodies must be empowered to determine the best use of their natural resources. Local governments must play a supportive role by enacting strict laws to guarantee the rights of the local people over their local resources.
Economic development plans made by local planning bodies, with climate adaptation policies embedded in them, should be oriented towards maximizing local well-being. In a Prout system economic activities are intended to meet the basic needs of the people first, and not merely to satisfy mindless consumerism. Earning reasonable profits is permissible, but this should not be the goal of economic activities.
Jobs that create public assets to increase the resilience of communities to climate change should be prioritized. These jobs might include construction of water conservation and harvesting systems, climate-resilient agriculture, food storage systems, irrigation projects, afforestation projects, and flood control.
In a Prout system, purchasing capacity is a measure of how a person’s needs can be met by their income. Purchasing capacity does not merely depend on the wages received by workers. It also depends on the stability of prices, easy availability of basic requirements in a socio-economic region, parity between production and consumption, and periodic increases in wages in accordance with time, place, and person. All these factors are considered to determine purchasing capacity, which then becomes a measure of real well-being. Local economic planning should increase the purchasing capacity of people to help them better adapt to climate change.
Role of Local Cooperatives in Climate Change Adaptation
Cooperatives can play an important role in the production and distribution of basic goods and services locally and generate employment opportunities. Cooperatives can create local jobs that can help mitigate climate risks. Such jobs could include energy production from renewable sources to foster local energy independence. Service-based cooperatives could create jobs that involve rehabilitation of communities after natural disasters. Cooperatives could also undertake environmental remediation. Such jobs would support climate change adaptation while also contributing to increased purchasing capacity for the local people.
Climate catastrophes can disrupt global supply chains and collapse transportation infrastructure. Since decentralized economic systems situate goods near the point of consumption, the provision of goods and services may be less disrupted during climate disasters. And the reliability and responsiveness of local distribution systems during disasters would contribute to maintaining people’s purchasing capacity.
Climate disasters can create economic distress and uncertainty. In times of economic distress, cooperatives help their members by maintaining full employment, so they play a crucial role in providing workers with employment and maintaining a basic level of income during climate shocks.
Regenerative Local Economies
The effects of climate change are felt by communities everywhere. Climate change is humanity’s shared challenge, and climate-related anxiety is our shared experience. Everyone is experiencing the effects of a changing and unpredictable climate. Extractive economic activity is a primary cause of this shared experience, in which nature, society, and human life have been commodified. It is time to decommodify our economies and to replace extractive economies with regenerative economies.
Regenerative local economies, which serve local people through optimal utilization of local resources and minimize human impact on nature, have an immense potential to offer a pathway for climate change adaptation.