A key strategy promoted to tackle climate change, especially from the North, is to keep coal, oil and gas in the ground and shift to renewables. Which, as Thea Riofrancos argues in Foreign Policy, is fraught with serious inconsistencies even if this involves shifting the mining of minerals to the renewable energy transition to the Global North.
”Global north onshoring does not repair the forms of environmental harm disproportionally meted out in the global south”, he argues. Besides, this would create new problems which primarily affect oppressed populations within affluent countries.
A study by Centre for Financial Accountability on Delhi’s Waste to energy (WTE) plants highlights, popularly promoted solutions could be far worse as “costs to public health, money and resources make it clear that investment in waste to energy projects is an investment in public harm and is actually a waste of energy”. Which indicates the lethargy in attending to the mess in solid waste management is symptomatic of failure in urban governance.
As Bhargavi S Rao of ESG highlights in these Reuters investigations, “Communities impacted by solar parks are rarely consulted or informed about the plan or its impact”. Such transitions, Leo Saldanha points out “has become a race to the bottom in terms of regulatory relaxations as states vie with each other to attract investment”.
The stark injustice of such transitions is brought into sharp focus by Gajner’s village head Kumhar who wonders “How unjustifiable is it that the government is destroying our environment – besides denying grazing land to our livestock – and saying we are doing it for climate change?”
The study pointed out that those who present waste to energy systems as the only solution to handle India’s growing waste problem ignore communitybased recycling and composting initiatives and decentralized resource recovery programmes that have time and again proven to be more environmentally and financially sustainable. The costs to public health, money and resources make it clear that investment in waste to energy projects is an investment in public harm and is actually a waste of energy.
