People-friendly Technology to Reduce Global Warming

One important area that was not discussed in this week’s Human Security learning module on climate change, but which has received much recent media attention, concerns the crucial role of technology in the struggle against global warming. More specifically, an increasing number of observers (for example, Andrew Revkin from Dot Earth ) have argued that the UNFCCC framework pays insufficient attention to the vital role that new technology will need to play to if we want to radically reduce global carbon emissions without seriously crippling our fossil fuel-dependent economies. As Jeffrey Sachs argues in the latest Scientific American issue states:

Technology policy lies at the core of the climate change challenge. Even with a cutback in wasteful energy spending, our current technologies cannot support both a decline in carbon dioxide emissions and an expanding global economy. If we try to restrain emissions without a fundamentally new set of technologies, we will end up stifling economic growth, including the development prospects for billions of people. The key is new low-carbon technology, not simply energy efficiency.

Economists often talk as though putting a price on carbon emissions—through tradable permits or a carbon tax—will be enough to deliver the needed reductions in those emissions. This is not true. Europe’s carbon-trading system may or may not have modestly reduced emissions, but it has not shown much capacity to generate large-scale research nor to develop, demonstrate and deploy breakthrough technologies. At the margin, a trading system might marginally influence the choices between coal and gas plants or provoke a bit more adoption of solar and wind power, but it will not lead to the necessary fundamental overhaul of energy systems.

With this focus on climate change technology in mind, I began wondering what insights Human Security might offer to this discussion. The general (and admittedly vague) answer might lie in the notion of Human Security advocacy for the development of demand-side technologies that would serve the millions of people in the developing world, linking environmental and developmental concerns. Yale Global Online‘s Margot Cohen writes about “a small stove with big ambitions” (the photo above is borrowed from the article) which I thought provided a potential example of what a “people centered” technology might look like.

The invention of a tiny stove in India demonstrates the link between reduced carbon emissions and improved health – and how technology can contribute to slowing climate change. Global energy giant BP is producing and marketing Oorja, which means energy in Hindu, a small pellet stove that produces substantially fewer emissions than the traditional wood-burning stoves so common throughout India. In developing the stove, BP ran models by rural consumers. A team of businesswomen based in villages sell stoves and fuel made of agricultural waste products, while also offering BP advice on promoting other energy products to rural India’s millions. The multinational corporation does not expect to earn profit on the product until 2010, and the very poor cannot afford it, but the small stove still points to a new direction. In wealthy and poor countries alike, efforts to control climate changes will require innovative and affordable alternative-energy products, combined with meticulous grassroots marketing campaigns in order to change old habits.

While I am sure there are other (and perhaps better) examples of new technologies focusing on the environmental, energy and health needs of the developing world, the “diverse portfolio of actors” involved in the development, marketing, and distribution of this product appealed to my Human Security proclivities.

Any other ideas out there on how the Human Security model might guide us in staving off climate change disaster?