Frank Islam speaks with Prof Mohan Munasinghe, Sri Lanka's pre-eminent voice on sustainable development, climate change, energy and environment | Washington Calling - video Dailymotion

South Asia Monitor

Frank Islam speaks with Prof Mohan Munasinghe, Sri Lanka's pre-eminent voice on sustainable development, climate change, energy and environment | Washington Calling

Transcript

00:00this is frank islam chairman and ceo of fy investment group and your host of watching

00:21calling where we interview leading voices from business and politics and explore topics that

00:27impact you the viewer today we have a distinguished guest who's a noble peace prize winner with

00:34algor and he is a distinguished he's fantastic he's a shining city upon a hill

00:40and you know i'll go boss personal content is one of my best friends

00:46mohan monasinghe is a world-class sri lanka noble prize co-winner professor mohan monasinghe was

00:53educated royal college undergraduate of the engineering faculty at prr denia university

01:01he passed his ba honors and ma degree engineering from cambridge he's also obtained a professional

01:07degree in electrical engineering from massachusetts institute of technology which is mit in 2019 the

01:14president of sri lanka awarded him the highest national honor for a highly contribution for

01:22for his highly contribution to sri lanka and the world thank you for coming to our show and welcome

01:28to our show sir you are a distinguished guest thank you very much indeed for your very generous

01:37introduction uh and it is my privilege and pleasure to be on your show uh which which is very widely

01:46which reaches actually a worldwide audience so thank you very much for inviting me so you shared the

01:522007 nobel prize prize with former u.s vice president algor and whose boss president clinton is one of my

01:59best friend with the intergovernment panel on climate change the only sri lankar to have shared in a

02:08noble prize 18 years later has your work been worth in terms of the current climate crisis

02:15well i would say let's start with the nobel peace prize it was unexpected but gratifying

02:22my first reaction is why us since there are so many others who are just as deserving

02:28it certainly enhanced my global profile and granted me a platform to share my views on sustainable

02:36development climate change and peace however it was a challenge to simplify these complex ideas to

02:43reach a wider wider by the audience since this was a departure from the technical speeches which i

02:50normally give also post-nobel activities consumed a lot of my time and i had to neglect my own

02:58intellectual development while spending too much time on media interviews and public speeches

03:05but basically i have learned to balance my time more sustainably and productively among research public

03:13appearances travel family and social life and it's been worth it uh i think i balance three elements in

03:24the domain of the mind uh the domain of the body health and then social and family life for friends and

03:33other communities i also think that it is my personal mission to pass on the torch to the next generation

03:42very well said very well said sir pass on to the press on to the next generation of the people

03:50your torch yeah exactly i would say basically that my generation owes an apology to future generations

03:58because we are leaving them a world that is more damaged divided and dangerous but i have faith in the

04:04youth to lead the way forward if they learn from the past and do not repeat that

04:10if they learn from the past now my question to you you have a children right yes i do and and you have

04:20a wife yes who's very who's a brilliant as i understand well she's a former sri lanka tennis champion and

04:29has won medals in asian games and all kinds of things so she's also very successful in her own way

04:35professionally now see lanka is very small country yes that is correct small but hopefully a nice place

04:45to live and uh will uh will be able to i think uh do well in a turbulent world in the future we'll talk

04:57about one way to put it that's a very well said so president trump has called the climate crisis a hoax

05:04even bill gates has now said it is not necessary to take alarmist view of the of the climate crisis what's

05:10your reaction to that what do you think of this well uh let me uh i think that was a not a question

05:25which uh which uh which was in the list you gave me but nevertheless uh let me just say that from my

05:33point of view i've worked with the intergovernmental panel on climate change for

05:40three decades where which involves uh literally tens of thousands of the top climate scientists

05:50and also development scientists as well as uh many other disciplines and uh our collective finding our

06:00collective wisdom is that climate change is in fact real it has been it is caused by excess of uh greenhouse

06:11gases carbon specifically which have been put up there in the atmosphere during the the process of human

06:20development over the last especially over the last uh 300 years since the the industrial revolution

06:29the second key point and i'm summarizing a huge body of results in a very summary in a very short way

06:40uh the second key point is that if we persist and climate change uh gathers momentum

06:50basically sea level rise also temperature rise which is uh close to one point three percent compared to the

07:00norm now and if it is if it reaches one point five percent we will be getting into the danger zone i

07:08understand that with the current trajectory of emissions that we now have we will probably be aiming for

07:16three percent of degrees uh by the year um at the end of this uh century so uh the that is not a very good

07:29prospect and it will mean that we will have quite severe impacts and there is an element of climate

07:38injustice here because the people who suffer the most will be the poorest and the disadvantaged

07:46mainly in the developing countries but also the poor in the richer countries that's a true statement very

07:54well why is it injustice because it's the rich who put the uh carbon up there and it's the poor who will

08:01suffer the most but i will offer a ray of hope and we'll discuss that hopefully in the next question

08:08that is if we follow the path of sustainable development and something i called balanced

08:16inclusive green growth then we can solve not only the climate change issues but also the other problems

08:25that beset we set us like poverty and hunger and ill health and all the other issues that face us

08:34together you're an engineer as well as a economist and you went to mit as i understand

08:40yes uh cambridge was my first uh port of course so to speak that's where i did my engineering

08:49mit was more into physics and then i went to mcgill uh and concordia where i uh concordia that's in arwa

09:01that's an arwa that's that's in montreal actually uh well it's close to montreal yeah arwa right yeah

09:10so i've done not only engineering and physics but also uh economics development economics so it's a

09:20blend of uh discipline you are a you are a shining city upon a hill in in sri lanka and all over the

09:29place all over the world can you briefly explain the framework that you have developed that applies

09:35chance disciplinary thinking to make development more sustainable also what do you think of the

09:42novel idea of millennium consumption goal right i would let me start by saying the two 2021 blue planet

09:53prize jury who awarded me that prize said that sustainomics and something called balanced inclusive

10:02green growth bigg for short were in fact seminar contributions to sustainability thinking uh let's

10:13review exactly what it says as briefly as possible i originally proposed this framework at the 1992

10:23u.n rio earth summit and to make development more sustainable the core concept to understand

10:31is that there is a sustainable development triangle which we must harmonize what is the triangle we need

10:39economic prosperity to raise the poor out of poverty we need environmental protection

10:46and we need to socially share the benefits through empowerment and inclusion so economy environment and

10:53society this triangle is also the basis for the 17 sustainable development goals which were university

11:01adopted in the u.n in 2015 and then the bigg model which i mentioned uh i think that bigg

11:12is the way to implement the 17 sustainable development goals and um i think uh some countries have

11:25started this process but uh we are uh a little behind on the sustainable development goals because partly because of

11:37covid 19 but also because of geopolitics which we can get into if you like later on okay so you awarded the

11:48highest national honor by the president of the sri lanka for your contribution to sri lanka and the world

11:57as a small country of 20 million people how do you see sri lanka's place in the world today

12:03well let's start uh the sri lanka award um i think that was received because i served as a senior advisor

12:16to every government for the past four forty years pro bono uh and uh it is uh not so much to do with

12:25sustainability but just service to the country uh on the question of uh the position of sri

12:33lanka and this organization called asian geopolitical sustainability and peace council expect which we

12:42formed uh quite recently i think what we feel is the sri lanka commands one of the most critical geostrategic

12:56positions because it's uh stride the um busiest sea lanes of communication between east and west

13:08so we at this organization called expect within sri lanka can leverage its position to enhance our diplomatic

13:20influence in a very beneficial way for the world i think we can work with other asian countries to

13:27strengthen our collective interest to pursue both regional and global stability sustainability trade and

13:35of course peace but uh i would um caution that at this time the uh economic geopolitical center of gravity

13:51is shifting away from the west towards asia and the strategic competition between major powers uh is uh

14:04interfering with the um our progress towards uh what we call the earth eco civilization of the 21st century

14:16where we will have achieved sustainability we can go into that a little more if you like but there is a

14:23transformation underway from a unipolar world to a multipolar world so before it was western dominated

14:33uh i would say basically u.s and nato led now there are multiple centers of power and uh in a way

14:45is a step forward i believe towards uh progress uh peace prosperity and sustainability but the transition

14:55will be a rocky one so you are the president of the newly established asian geopolitical sustainability

15:03and peace council a colombo a colombo based think tank that is the center on finding a greater voice for sri lanka

15:13so my question to you is what are the goals and objectives this new new think tank what are you trying to accomplish

15:23well firstly i think uh from a sri lankan point of view we want uh sri lanka to benefit from its geo

15:37strategic position as i said and uh play a more active role in um in building a more peaceful and

15:49sustainable and prosperous world but also as i mentioned it can ease the critical transition that

15:58is taking place uh basically if you look at gdp the bricks plus group brazil russia india china

16:07south africa and other countries uh generate 44 percent of global gdp whereas g7 the western coalition is

16:17only 27 percent and this disparity is growing so this economic transition of power from west to bricks

16:28is underway but there is some resistance from the west uh as you can see there are all kinds of

16:38direct wars economic sanctions and even occasionally military force so this is not conducive

16:46to promoting uh sustainable development and i think expect by mobilizing asian nations and particularly

16:56south asian nations can ease this transmission transition and if you look at the i mean i give you

17:04one statistic which is quite startling global military expenditures are more than two trillion dollars

17:12not billion two trillion two thousand billion dollars per year whereas the amount of money that we spend

17:19for anti-poverty programs is less than 110 that amount so we are spending 10 times more to destroy

17:27rather than to save and i think the global south which uh is actually supporting the bricks uh would like

17:37that transition to a multipolar world i think uh this is uh the the way to go and expect uh can help to make

17:47that trans transition so that the global south in particular can better protect their sovereignty and

17:56dignity they can forge their own road map uh to follow not only economic prosperity but environmental

18:07protection and social inclusion and development according to that sustainable development triangle

18:16and sri lanka can also play a good role what do you think of sri lanka's ties with the trump

18:22administration has it been affected by the by the trumpian tariffs in any way

18:26uh well uh let me uh hedge my answer a little bit here because i am not uh privy to uh the discussions

18:43between government and uh and between governments other than uh reading reading what you read in the

18:54newspapers about negotiations on tariff levels um i don't think mr trump as he pursues his uh geopolitical agenda

19:08will pay much attention to to sri lanka at all uh and so i would focus a little bit more on

19:17on basically asia and how asia can play a role uh in this uh what is going on here so uh first is

19:32i think uh if you look uh if you look at remember the uh recent shanghai cooperation organization

19:45summit which is in early october in tianjin china there was a photograph of prime minister modi of india

19:55president shi of china and president putin of russia talking cordially and enthusiastically and

20:03they reached uh some important uh agreements now this is asia working together and they will have

20:13a a a a very big role in the world uh that is emerging uh i would say that last

20:23uh two weeks later after this seo summit i attended a scientific summit as a follow-up meeting also in

20:34tianjin and we discussed some technological and other cooperative mechanisms uh there were 400 or more

20:44participants senior decision makers from government international organizations were renowned scientists

20:51including nobel laurels and also business and other leaders and we were all talking about how asia in

21:00particular but the whole world can cooperate to go forward now another personal

21:07anecdote that i can mention that in late september uh in mumbai india this is i met governor phil

21:17murphy of new jersey leading a u.s delegation to a high level u.s india talking about the governor of

21:24new jersey yes yes yes i do know him yeah personally yeah we had the cordial discussion on liberating

21:31business and train between us and south asia okay to promote global sustainability and peace

21:38so i must tell you government government governor uh governor murphy is a leading democratic contender for

21:46the 2028 u.s presidential election and clearly set out an alternative cooperative u.s global geopolitical

21:57strategy that is in sharp contrast to the confrontational tariff and trade policies pursued by

22:03president trump so uh i would say i'm a little more hopeful seeing these developments that have happened

22:11recently in asia that we might actually uh have uh in a few years uh move to a better uh more peaceful

22:21prosperous and sustainable world that's my own feeling i don't know where sri lanka will stand but i hope

22:30that we will be an honest broker a bridge that's a good way to put it that's a good way to so that's

22:36our show until next time this is frank slumber for investment group wishing you a great week and thank you

22:42thank you very much

22:53you

Frank Islam speaks with Prof Mohan Munasinghe, Sri Lanka's pre-eminent voice on sustainable development, climate change, energy and environment | Washington Calling

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended