India Risks Major Climate Disasters Says Vinod Thomas
A Global Indian Times Interview
By Cherian Samuel*
August 30, 2023
Climate disasters, which are rising in number and causing greater damage, must be linked to carbon emissions says Vinod Thomas. This is similar to connecting the global pandemic outbreak in 2020 to the COVID-19 virus, he writes in his book Risk and Resilience in the Era of Climate Change.
Also, he adds, the teaching of business and economics needs to be revised to factor in the failure of businesses and governments to tackle the spillover damages from economic activities like global warming. Thomas advocates implementing preventive measures, and not just steps in coping, in order to build resilience. Recovery from a climate-related disaster is not just about returning to how things were but building back better, he notes.
Thomas, 74, is a Senior Visiting Fellow at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, and a Distinguished Fellow in Development Management at the Asian Institute of Management, Manila. His current areas of work are climate change, sustainable development, disaster risk management and resilience building.
Earlier he was Senior Vice President, Independent Evaluation, at the World Bank Group, Washington D.C., and Director General, Independent Evaluation, Asian Development Bank.
Thomas is the author of 17 books, including The Quality of Growth; Climate Change and Natural Disasters; Risk and Resilience in the Era of Climate Change and Economic Evaluation of Sustainable Development (with Namrata Chindarkar). He earned an MA and PhD in economics from the University of Chicago and a BA from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.
In a conversation with Cherian Samuel, Thomas discusses his latest book, India being on a knife’s edge, his interest in climate change and his career and school years..
Global Indian Times: What prompted you to write Risk and Resilience?
Vinod Thomas: Climate change represents the biggest disconnect between scientific knowledge and policy actions we have known. That makes for the urgency to tackle climate change before it is far too late. Scientists warn that we are already at the tipping points for no return in a rapidly unravelling situation.
To be sure, there are many other “wicked problems” like the pandemic or the 2008 financial crisis. In a classic case of a wicked problem, namely the tragedy of commons, overfishing depletes the stock dangerously. In that case, Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom found that natural forces supported by institutional arrangements, pursued by governments and global and local agencies, can ameliorate the problem of overfishing. Similarly, vaccines were found for COVID-19 and the global financial crisis of 2008 was addressed.
But runaway climate change can present a conundrum of the worst kind, as global warming and extreme weather destabilize energy supplies, which coupled with demand for more cooling, prompt more fossil fuel use, driving up effluents and worsening the crisis. This could call for circuit breakers that stop the downward spiral, and requires coordination among countries to help avert a full-blown catastrophe.
GIT: Where do things stand in India?
Thomas: As rising temperatures grip the world, India is under extreme stress. At the knife’s edge of disasters.
Ranked third in the world among 50 nations for vulnerability to climate disasters, India has been battered both by extreme heat and unprecedented floods. Also, by one estimate, India is the fourth worst hit on climate migration.
By 2030, climate disasters could hurt India’s economic growth – by as much as 4.5% of GDP, according to the Reserve Bank of India.
Raising the stakes for India is the fact that it is also the third largest carbon emitter in the world, after China and the US. Far greater effort is needed by all major emitters if climate disasters were to be ameliorated.
Polluting fuels comprise some 80% of India’s energy use; coal alone is more than 50%. This picture needs to change and change fast.
India has set a target date of 2070 for net zero carbon emissions. But this goal is extremely timid and maybe too little and also too late.
India also needs to sharply raise the emphasis on averting the worst impacts of floods and storms, droughts, and heatwaves. Adaptation ranges from expenditure on drainage systems and coastal embankments to spending on retrofitting buildings and making them more climate-proof. It is also worth remembering that these funds ought to be approved ahead of disasters in order not to lose time with financing approvals after a disaster strikes.
While such a shift in the prioritizing of defensive and proactive resilience building is necessary, it is also politically difficult because the rewards of such future investments are not necessarily visible immediately, but accrue over time. Therefore, politicians find them less attractive than ones that have immediate payoffs. In this situation, I point out in my book that a groundswell of public opinion is needed to pressure politicians to act.
GIT: What triggered your interest in climate change?
Thomas: For decades, I have felt that the environment was the Achilles heel of global development efforts. While drafting the 1991 World Development Report of the World Bank, I sought to include the environment as a key chapter with the title “The Challenge of Development.” But the Bank’s Chief Economist and Management felt otherwise, citing that the next year, 1992, was being devoted to the Environment. Later, as the World Bank Country Director for Brazil, 2001 to 2006, I made the environment a third pillar of the Country Strategy, in addition to growth and social development - though there was strong opposition.
For me a trigger point was an exchange that took place 15 years ago. In 2007, when I led the Independent Evaluation Group, a report was issued on the World Bank Group’s performance regarding projects that tackled natural disasters. One of the findings that caught my eye was that in the previous three decades, hydrometeorological events (floods and storms) had increased significantly, but not geophysical ones (earthquakes and volcanoes). Further analysis showed the relationship of the former to greenhouse gas emissions. Given the rising projections for emissions accompanying economic growth, the writing on the wall was clear.
Climate dangers also appear on several fronts, all at once, one aggravating the other. For South Asia, the forecast of sea levels, along the coast, rising by 30 centimeters over the next 30 years—as much as the increase in the previous 100 years—is worrying.
When the sea-level rise coincides with land subsidence from excessive withdrawal of ground water, it is a recipe for sinking cities, something which is already happening in Asia. Since many of these cities like Mumbai and Jakarta are major financial centers, forecasts of the danger have gotten media headlines. There are other silent killers as well, like the rising influx of migrants within and across countries, forced to migrate due to the impact of climate change, which will also strain the cities.
Vinod Thomas
GIT: What shaped your career journey?
Thomas: My first interest in a professional career, after studying economics, was human welfare, which invariably stresses analyzing inequities and the plight of the poor. The economist’s tool kit is fundamentally about generating rapid economic growth that tackles poverty and welfare.
But having sharpened my understanding of growth and poverty, it became clear that unless growth was environmentally and socially sustainable, all else was going to fail. Climate change turned out to be the quintessential case in point.
My wife Leila Thomas - though a familiar name in Kerala, she is from the Philippines - has had a big impact on my own ways of thinking and acting in relation to problem-solving. For example, Leila sees the value of converting big problems into more manageable parts, in combining the big picture with specifics, and in seeing the global together with the local.
GIT: Where did you grow up? Your early life and school years?
Thomas: I grew up in Trivandrum, Kerala, attending Model School, and completing Pre-Degree at Mar Ivanios College. I come from a family of teachers, with both parents being University professors; my father, P.T. Thomas, in English literature; my mother, Chinnamma Thomas, in Zoology; and my sister, Malini Verghese, a Professor of Pathology, retiring as Principal of Calicut Medical College.
There was something simple about life in Trivandrum; you knew everyone you ran into at the public library, at Church, at sports, and at the market. You could do whatever you wanted, and I did, from music to elocution, debates, and cricket.
But there was always that legendary emphasis on academics, and what was expected of you by families and friends. Dr Abraham Verghese, the author and a professor of medicine at Stanford University, said at an orientation at a school attended by my second son Aman: “In Kerala, there are only four professions: you are either a Doctor, an Engineer, a Lawyer, or a Failure.” But in my case, it turned out quite differently. For some reason, my family encouraged me to study Economics.
Indeed, Aman did become an engineer and now works in the San Francisco Bay area. Our elder son Milan is an economist at the Asian Development Bank.
GIT: Any teachers in India who inspired you and how?
Thomas: I graduated from St Stephen’s college, Delhi in 1969. Today, decades later, a group of us still keep in regular contact, exchanging stories and reflections almost daily. A teacher we remember often is N. C. Ray, an economics professor. Looking back, it was not just the analytical rigor and pedagogy of his classes that were remarkable, but the fact that he also knew and understood the strengths and weaknesses of each student and tailored his teaching and assignments accordingly.
I also have the greatest regard for T. L. Verghese, an economics professor at Mar Ivanios College Trivandrum. Professor Verghese made the “dismal science” come to life and nurtured my interest in helping solve socio-economic problems.
Though he did not teach me directly, I consider T. P. Sreenivasan my first college professor. He served in the Indian Foreign Service, including as India’s ambassador to Austria. We developed an informal association and working relationship. I recall sending him a draft of a thank you note I wrote to the class. Sreenivasan edited it, with the first revision being the change of the title from “A Vote of Thanks” to “A Handful of Flowers.”
There were also many teachers at Model School who had a great impact; in particular, Sukumaran Nair and Prabhakaran Thampy who offered unconditional support and encouragement to me and other students.
GIT: Lessons learned? Failures?
Thomas: In my professional life, I may have combined doing what was expected with what the Hollywood singer Frank Sinatra labelled, “I did it my way.” But I had to pause from time to time, and I would second guess how it would have been if I just did it my way.
At the World Bank, for example, as Director General of the Independent Evaluation Group, I made the call on the development ineffectiveness of the World Bank Group President Paul Wolfowitz (2005 to 2007) or concluded that the Bank’s widely used Doing Business Indicator was deeply flawed. But I have also wondered that I should not have softened the substance of the message.
GIT: Future Projects?
Thomas: The lasting conclusion and the lingering frustration from this current project on climate risk and resilience are the parts played by human preferences, including lifestyles, and teaching of economics and business, particularly the single-minded focus on GDP and profits. I would like to understand better these dynamics, which seem to be in the way of human and planetary wellbeing.
*Cherian Samuel, a writer based in suburban Washington DC, retired as an evaluator from the World Bank. He earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland.
FOR MORE UNIQUE STORIES ON INDIANS AND INDIA:
For access to stories each week email: gitimescontact@gmail.com
or follow via LINKEDIN or TWITTER or FACEBOOK
(c) All rights reserved. Copyright under United States Laws
