Sustainable Development Goals

Lord Rees of Ludlow Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Rees of Ludlow (CB)]

My Lords, it is good that this debate has focused both on what the UK itself is doing to remedy the shameful inadequacies within its own border with regard to justice and poverty and the even more challenging global issues confronting less-developed nations. The local and the global aims are emphatically not misaligned with each other. I would like to highlight some measures that we should take in our own national interest which are also highly cost-effective ways to help developing nations. I will then make a few remarks in the context of Africa.

The phrase “sustainable development” gained currency in 1987, when the Brundtland commission on environment and development defined it as,

“development that meets the needs of the present”—

especially the poor—

“without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

We all surely want to sign up to this and aspire that by 2030—and even more so by 2050—there will be a narrower gap between not only the rich and poor within countries such as ours but, more important and challenging, between the lifestyle that privileged countries enjoy and what is available to the rest of the world.

There is a depressing gap between what could be done and what is actually happening. Offering more aid is not in itself enough, because stability, good governance and effective infrastructure are needed if these benefits are to permeate the parts of the developing world where they are most often needed.

Developing countries need to leapfrog directly to a more efficient and less wasteful mode of life than ours, not mimic the path to industrialisation that Europe and North America followed. For example, they can leapfrog directly on to mobile phones without ever having had landlines. New technology will be needed, but it must be well directed and well motivated. It will involve a great deal of innovation to meet the actual challenges.

Even more than the other goals, goal 13—to control the rate of CO₂ emissions—requires a concerted effort by all nations, developed and less developed, to avoid the risk of tipping points that could lead to runaway changes with disastrous consequences for us all. I emphasise that this offers a special opportunity for a nation such as the UK, as well as a special obligation. It is a challenge for us in the UK to meet the goal of cutting CO₂ emissions ourselves—and especially to meet the very stringent target we have set ourselves for 2050. In our own national interest, we need to accelerate the development and deployment of all forms of low-carbon energy, as well as other technologies where parallel progress is crucial, especially storage and smart grids.

However, technical progress of this kind is even higher in priority for countries such as India, where more generating capacity is urgently needed; where the health of the poor is jeopardised by smoky stoves burning wood and dung in their homes; and where there is therefore pressure to build coal-fired power stations as the cheapest option. The faster the alternative clean technologies advance, the sooner their prices will fall. They will become affordable to developing countries, which can then leapfrog to clean energy.

That is why an encouraging outcome of the 2015 Paris conference on climate change was an initiative from Sir David King and others in this country called Mission Innovation. It was launched by President Obama and the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and was endorsed by the countries of the G7 plus India, China, and 11 other nations. It was hoped that they would pledge to double their publicly funded R&D into clean energy by 2020 and to co-ordinate their efforts. This is a modest target. Presently, only 2% of publicly funded R&D is devoted to these challenges. Why should the percentage not rise closer to spending on medical or defence research? Incidentally, Bill Gates and other private philanthropists have pledged a parallel commitment.

This is a win-win strategy for the UK. We contribute only 1% of global CO₂ emissions. However—historically at least—we have contributed far more than 1% of the world’s innovations. If we can indeed pioneer new and improved clean energy technologies, it would amplify and leverage our national contribution to tackling global climate change. We need not just better ways of harnessing solar and wind energy but complementary storage technologies such as batteries and hydrogen, as well as—in my view—fourth-generation nuclear and even fusion, where we have special expertise and potential.

I have focused on energy, but there are other sustainability goals where UK expertise can help not only our own country but can offer a substantial boost to much larger populations in the developing world, helping them to meet the same goals. We should be evangelists for new technologies in those other sectors, especially biotech, to provide better health, more intensive agriculture and engineering innovations.

The need is aggravated because of the world’s expanding and more demanding population. Fifty years ago, the world population was about 3.5 billion. It is now about 7.6 billion. The growth has been mainly in Asia, and it is now fastest in Africa. The number of births per year is now going down in most countries. None the less, the world population is forecast to rise to around 9 billion by mid-century. That is partly because most people in the developing world are young, are yet to have children and will live longer. Doom-laden forecasts made 50 years ago by, for instance, the Club of Rome, proved off the mark. As it has turned out, food production has more or less kept pace with rising population. Famines still occur, but they are due to conflict or maldistribution, not overall scarcity. To feed 9 billion will require further improved agriculture with low-till, water-conservation and GM crops and perhaps dietary innovations, such as converting insects, which are highly nutritious and rich in proteins, into palatable food and eating artificial meat not beef.

Demographers predict continuing urbanisation, with 70% of people living in cities by 2050. Even before then, Lagos, Sao Paulo, and Delhi will have populations greater than 30 million. Preventing megacities becoming turbulent dystopias will be a major challenge to governance and, of course, an engineering challenge for infrastructure. Demographics beyond 2050 are uncertain. It is not even clear whether there will be a global rise or a fall. Declining infant mortality, urbanisation and women’s education trigger the transition towards lower birth rates, but there could be countervailing cultural influences. If, for whatever reason, families in Africa remain large, then that continent’s population could, according to a UN projection, double again by 2100 to 4 billion. Nigeria alone would then have as big a population as Europe and North America combined.

Optimists say that each extra mouth brings two hands and a brain, but the geopolitical stresses are surely worrying. Those in poor countries now know, via the internet et cetera, what they are missing. They are less fatalistic about the injustice of their fate, and migration is easier. Moreover, the advent of robots and the reshoring of manufacturing mean that still-poor countries will not be able to grow their economies by offering cheap skilled labour, as the Asian tiger states did. It is a portent for disaffection and instability. Wealthy nations, especially those in Europe, should urgently promote prosperity in Africa, and not just for altruistic reasons. It is not only a moral imperative but a matter of self-interest for fortunate nations to promote greater equality by direct financial aid and ceasing the current exploitative extraction of raw materials, and by investing in infrastructure and manufacturing in countries where there are displaced refugees, and where there will be huge numbers of climate refugees in future, so that they are under less pressure to migrate to find work.

If the benefits of technology are to be spread worldwide, there will need to be lifestyle changes for us all, but they need not signal hardship. Indeed, all can, by 2050, have a quality of life that is at least as good as profligate westerners enjoy today, provided that technology is developed appropriately and deployed wisely. Gandhi proclaimed the mantra, “There is enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed”. This need not be a call for austerity; rather, it is a call for economic growth driven by innovations that are sparing of natural resources and energy.