Is the climate emergency a catalyst for tech adoption?
Michael Beckerman, CEO of CRETech, features in Locale's 'Tech Equity' paper explaining how there has never been a more pressing need for the creation and deployment of climate technologies to help rapidly address the planet’s climate crisis at scale, as we face a dire scenario of breaching the 1.5°C limit as set out in the Global Climate Paris Accords of 2015.
Against this backdrop, the World Economic Forum (WEF) states that the climate crisis is deeply imbalanced, in that the poor are disproportionately affected. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sums this up: “climate change and poverty are inextricably linked, and tackling one problem helps the other.” Developing countries are likely to be impacted more severely both in regards to the toll on human life and suffering, as well as the relative impact on their economies.
According to the World Bank, around one-tenth of the world’s carbon emissions are emitted by low income countries, albeit they face the most dire consequences of the ravages of climate change. Since the 1980s, they have experienced eight fold more natural disasters in the past decade. The impacts of climate change on the lives of vulnerable populations include health, hunger, water scarcity, education, displacement, and work-related hazards. Indeed, from a fundamental need perspective is access to clean, reliable and affordable energy. An area addressed by climate tech. Without these resources, people face challenges in respect of their daily basic needs, including heating, cooling, cooking, lighting and hot water, as well as functioning businesses, schools and hospitals.
The Brookings Institution highlights other adverse impacts of climate change on developing countries, particularly the deterioration of economic performance and productivity, as well as security, as climate-induced migration in fragile countries could pose risks for international security too. G20 countries find themselves with unique responsibilities beyond their own borders. For example, providing financing and technology transfers that support adaptation policies in developing countries.
Sharing this sentiment, the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition (USGLC) claims that America’s investments in development and diplomacy are crucial for U.S. interests, which are placed at risk as a result of security, economic, and humanitarian consequences induced by climate change. Other bodies of literature by the WEF claim that, left unabated, climate change could force nearly a quarter of a billion people to migrate to safer territories, and with it, nearly half of them will fall into poverty, undoing decades of development.
This coincides with research by Ravi Chidambaram and Dr Parag Khanna, suggesting that while investing in the creation of new climate technologies is critical, in parallel, we need to invest in climate adaptation too. This relates to protecting people, animals and plants from climate change. According to Ravi Chidambaram and Dr Parag Khanna, the UN Habitat postulates that by the end of this decade, around three billion people will require better housing. This means that 96,000 new homes need to be built between now and 2030.
However, as a result of the adverse impacts of climate change disproportionately affecting low income people, certain populations will need to migrate to areas less impacted by climate change, with lower probabilities of disruption, and access to greater resources and technology. This is where regional and international security risks are posed.
As it relates to real estate, the world’s single largest asset class, valued north of $327 trillion, as well as the single largest carbon emitting industry, c.40% of all CO2 emissions, the need to decarbonise the built environment and transition to greener, healthier buildings is of paramount importance.
Indeed the climate crisis presents perhaps the greatest physical and financial risk to ever confront this massive, global industry. But it also represents the greatest opportunity for the real estate industry: to lead the world in addressing systemic climate injustice by ensuring that the technologies that are being developed to reduce carbon emissions are shared not just with wealthy countries and only the most successful real estate
companies, but with developing countries too.
We as a community of climate activists and entrepreneurs have a moral imperative to ensure the well off aren’t the only ones to benefit from the projected $100 trillion that is required to both decarbonise and build resiliency in the built environment. As an industry, the real estate sectors have an extraordinary opportunity to address, head on, the injustice posed by the climate crisis that disproportionately impacts the poor.