“I’m afraid that increasingly frequent and destructive climate extremes are becoming part of our reality. But then I also think that we should not ever accept the destruction of people’s lives, homes, livelihoods, and futures as normal.” – Sunil Acharya
Max: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to EQUALS, the fabulous podcast about inequality. My name’s Max.
Nafkote: Welcome to EQUALS, everyone. This is Naf. Greetings from foggy London.
Max: Yes, very foggy. and how are you then Naf?
Nafkote: Good, Max. But I feel like there’s so much happening in the world. But right now, my head is focused actually on the recent government’s announcement, on prepping, that we need to prepare, you know, for the next three days. So, are you prepping, Max? And can you share with me your list?
Max: This is crazy idea, that we all have to buy in food or hoard cash or drinking water just in case something happens. Honest truth is we have got a lot of lentils in our house already, so we are probably okay in that regard. But we haven’t done any prepping. No, not yet, but there’s a lot of talk about it. A lot of talk about it. How about you, Naf, what are you thinking?
Nafkote: I’m not sure if lentils are going to save you, Max. you need to boil them. This shows you that I’m thinking about this.
Max: Yeah. Where am I going to get the water from? Exactly. Yeah.
Nafkote: So, I really need to take this serious. That’s what I’m realizing. I was talking to friends over the weekend. I was saying, should I, you know, remove my sofa and make space for bottled water and I, don’t know, other goods, but, but I really need to sit down and think about what to buy and then.
Max: Well, you won’t be. You won’t be able to sit down. I’m sure if you look on TikTok, there’ll be a way of using tins and water bottles to make an armchair, therefore covering both.
Nafkote: Yeah, I’m gonna be famous on TikTok if I do that. Yeah,
Max: But I mean, joking aside, you know, it is madness to think that even people equally have the room to store additional food and water and these things. And beyond that, the means as well. We’re going through a cost-of-living crisis. Lots of families in Britain struggled to get enough food for the next week. Supposed to get the money to store additional food or buy in or keep a pile of cash just in case a bank machine stops working. I mean, for me, it just shows the madness of thinking that the solutions to all of the crises of the world are on us, on individuals. And that’s true for everything, but particularly true for climate. And every year we do, our big report on climate and inequality, and we just published it. It’s called the disaster divide. And it does look, as we normally do at the emissions of the super-rich. This insane level of use of private jets, for instance, what a scandal that is. But this year, as a kind of main topic, is slightly different. We’re looking at the inequality of climate impacts. So, when the world experiences extreme heat or floods or fires or famine, how that interacts with inequality, and how the same flood can feel very, very differently if you’re in a rich family in a concrete house on a hill, compared to a poor family in a shack, on the shore of a river. So, yeah, very much looking at that kind of inequality of impacts.
Nafkote: Agreed Max. We live in such a crazy world. And these reports make me realize how inequality is at the heart of the climate crisis and how it’s palpable, because the ability of rich people, to insulate themselves is becoming, how do you say, clearer, more visible. They can afford to buy premium insurance, as we have seen in the wildfire that affected California. The rich were even able to afford their own firefighters. So, more and more we’re seeing the rich, have the ability and the means to distance themselves from impact building bunkers in New Zealand. And this is happening while the poorest around the world, and we’re talking about the majority of people around the world are being battered from one disaster to the next. And these endless disasters are taking away their ability to overcome climate shocks. Whether you’re in the UK, as you said, during heat waves or flooding, or, in Latin America or the Pacific, or, you know, in the Horn of Africa, let’s say in Ethiopia, you’re being impacted by drought after drought and you’re going hungry, you know, from one crisis to the next. So, this really shows you the inequality and impact is growing as the climate crisis also escalates. And this issue really needs to be addressed.
Max: Yeah, no, I agree. And it’s a great report, actually. And it’s quite positive in a funny way because it also looks at the virtuous circle. You can also get that, you know, more equal societies are also much, much better able to cope with disasters. you know, there’s one amazing fact in there that deaths from flooding are seven times higher in more unequal countries. You know, if you’ve got a more equal country, you know, well, imagine that people, they work together better. They have more trust in each other, more trust in government, more collective resources. They look after one another. So, inequality or equality makes a difference between whether an extreme weather event is just a shock or whether it becomes a disaster. And we’re going to look at one particularly vivid recent example of that. Today we’re going to be looking at the Nepal and the terrible flooding, the flash flooding in Nepal that many of us saw on our screens not long ago. We’re going to talk to a former colleague and good friend, Sunil Acharya. He now works for an organization called Recourse. They’re an international nonprofit and they work on you know the fair and just transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy. And he, he was recently writing in the Guardian about inequality and the impacts in Nepal. So, we thought it’d be really good to get firsthand experience from him. So that’s what we’re going to do.
Nafkote: This is an important story to tell because it really shows the inequality and impacts across the. Really grateful for Sunil, for making the time to talk to us. So, let’s get into it,
Max: let’s do that.
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Nafkote: Sunil, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of EQUALS. This last year has seen Nepal suffer profound impacts of the climate crisis and we’re really grateful to have that opportunity to unpack that with you. So, to kick us off could you introduce yourself to our listeners?
Sunil Acharya: Thank you Nafkote for having me. I lead the global just Transition work at Recourse which is an international non-profit organization working to transform development finance and to hold international financial institutions accountable for ensuring that development is more inclusive, socially just and environmentally sustainable. I have spent more than 15 years working on climate justice, inequality, and international development, including with Oxfam, working with movements and civil society organizations across Asia and internationally. Today my work focuses particularly on transforming development finance to accelerate just energy transition in public financing for fossil fuels and scale up sustainable renewable energy. Over the years I have seen the climate crisis move from something that is discussed largely in international negotiations or policy spaces to becoming an everyday reality on the ground, something that is fundamentally reshaping people’s lives, livelihoods, and futures. And I think I have increasingly come to understand that the climate crisis is deeply connected to inequality, economic power, and accountability. It raises fundamental questions about who cause this crisis, who pays for it and who gets to say the solutions. This means we need to confront the inequalities and power structures that created this crisis and work towards building an economy that works for people and the planet.
Nafkote: This is why it’s important to tell the Nepal story. To show that inequality is at ah the heart of the climate crisis. We know Nepal for instance contributes so little to global emissions, but you have faced some of the worst devastating impacts of the climate crisis. So, looking over the last few months alone Sunil, what has it been like on the ground for you, for communities and how would you characterize the world’s response to what’s happening?
Sunil Acharya: So, what happened in Nepal this year particularly in August, many people saw the harrowing videos, was devastation beyond words can describe. We lost thousands of precious lives. The floods destroyed homes, infrastructure and livelihoods for many people the impacts will last for years if not generations to come. This was just one climate disaster, and we are witnessing rising climate impacts including floods, landslides and forest fires that are increasing in frequency and magnitude. And this is particularly unjust because Nepal has as you rightly said contributed very little to the global climate crisis. Yet our people are facing increasingly devastating consequences. One important point to note is that the climate disasters that Nepalese are witnessing and that we are witnessing don’t affect everyone equally. It’s true for the world over. Poorer households, small farmers, workers, and communities living in vulnerable areas have far fewer resources to recover. We’ve seen so many people who you know, lost their houses, lost their farmlands, are still waiting for the support to come. So, what does this mean is the climate crisis is also deepening existing inequalities. What has been particularly painful for me personally is the contrast between the scale of destruction and the international response. Nepal’s estimated recovery needs, from that single climate, disaster in August, is calculated to be around US$4.74 billion. But the international support has remained pebble in the mountain of needs. We’ve heard that the fund for responding to loss and damage has set aside US$21.6 million in response to Nepal’s request for funding, which is a historic decision but as I mentioned this is just a pebble in the mountain of needs. I think this tells us something about the profound gap between the language of international climate solidarity that we keep on hearing on a rhetorical basis and what actually happens when vulnerable countries such as Nepal experience the catastrophic losses. And this is not simply about international aid; it is about responsibility. Rich countries, corporations, and individuals who have accumulated enormous wealth through fossil fuel driven development must take responsibility commensurate with the damage they have caused. Countries like Nepal can’t be left to deal with these consequences.
Nafkote: You’ve already touched on the issue of justice, but I want us to dive a bit deeper. So, when people talk about climate justice it can sometimes feel like this abstract concept, but in the context of what Nepal is experiencing, what does climate justice actually look like in practice? And also, if extreme weather is, is going to be the new normal, how do we better prepare communities for shocks like these?
Sunil Acharya: First of all, I’m afraid that increasingly frequent and destructive climate extremes are becoming part of our reality. But then I also think that we should not ever accept the destruction of people’s lives, homes, livelihoods, and futures as normal. Of course we need better support for preparation, including on early warning systems, disaster preparedness, and resilient infrastructure. But we cannot adapt our way out of the crisis, driven by continued fossil fuel expansion. We need much more ambitious emission reductions and adequate international finance for adaptation and loss and damage. For that we need the rich polluters to pay. And for that the money that is required to rebuild the lives of people impacted by the climate crisis reaches them swiftly not in a way that you know, the countries or communities are asked to write proposals after disasters happen or even for instances wherein you know, they need to prepare themselves from incoming disasters which we know that are becoming frequent and are becoming much more, you know, disastrous. So, the justice that we are looking for is the fact that the developing countries such as Nepal and the people in our countries do not have to wait for rebuilding their lives, after the disasters happen. But more importantly, climate justice means that people don’t have to see and bear these disasters in the first instance.
Nafkote: COP31 is right around the corner. It took three decades to establish, a loss and damage fund, but support has been painfully slow. Even the recent 20 million payout for Nepal, it feels like a drop in the ocean compared to what’s needed on the ground. So, heading into COP31, are you hopeful for real progress or are you growing disillusioned with the process?
Sunil Acharya: As you rightly described Naf, the international climate policy process has been so frustratingly slow. We’ve been waiting for years, and decades, to see, you know, meaningful positive outcomes coming to the people of developing countries, particularly is seen in the fact that even if the decisions are made, those decisions to be materialized takes a lot of time again and as I mentioned previously, the way the international financial, climate finance mechanisms are structured require a process that takes a lot of time to write proposals, to decide on whether those proposals will be, you know, funded and then again the time it takes for the implementation. That means for example a farmer you know who lost their farmland in Nepal is waiting for many years, for the support to come. That’s not justice, that’s justice delayed. And particularly from the UNFCCC COP process, they are very much detached from the realities of the climate crisis in the ground, such as what we experience here in Nepal this year. And this is not only you know, Nepal experiencing these impacts. All developing countries and the people across the global south are experiencing these impacts. And as we speak, people are losing their lives, people are losing their livelihoods. I am not, a pessimistic person. But then the decisions to be really centred toward people and timely, it requires a lot of efforts and resistance from civil society. Organizations and people all over the world. Unless and until, people come together, civil society raise their voices strongly enough to overcome, the power, that these, particularly the, rich countries, rich corporations and rich individuals have, we are not going to see meaningful, change happening from the policy spaces, international policy spaces, such as, the COP31 But what I also want to emphasize is that people in the ground who are in the front lines of the climate crisis are not the helpless victims. They are actively organizing, resisting, and demanding accountability. I’ve seen this year in Nepal where communities and civil society organizations have mobilized to defend their rivers, their forest lands, and how they are challenging the extractive development projects that threaten their rights and environment. And I was reminded of this very powerfully just a few weeks ago, when I attended the IMF and the World bank annual meetings in Bangkok. While the finance ministers and leaders were meeting inside, thousands of people, organized and took to the streets outside to challenge the harmful economic policies and impacts caused by these institutions. It was a powerful reminder that decisions made by international bodies are not abstract decisions. They have very real consequences for people’s lives. And people are not willing to remain silent about those consequences. They are demanding different economic model. They are demanding faster climate response, including, climate finance, not only for mitigation, but also for adaptation and loss and damage and system that puts people and the planet before private interest and commercial returns. So, what I think is like, the spaces like COP31, the government must listen and hear the realities, you know, that is happening in the ground because people in the front lines are not waiting to be rescued. They are demanding the right to save their own futures and COP31 is one of, the key moments.
Nafkote: That’s a crucial point, and I’m always reflecting on this year after year. You know, when cops come around, we have to engage with these formal processes because those policy decisions directly impact real communities. Or Sunil, you actually put it really well earlier that policy decisions are not something abstract, they have tangible consequences on the ground. But as you said, ultimately power lies with the people. And that’s what gives me hope. Which brings us to our final question. People affected by climate change, who are often, you know, the poorest, are frequently talked about as if they’re passive victims, but they aren’t. They’re mobilizing and taking to the streets to fight, you know, against climate change, inequality, corruption, just as we’ve seen with young people in Nepal. So how do we turn that incredible grassroots energy into lasting political change?
Sunil Acharya: Yeah, you raise a very you know important issue. We’ve seen young people are rising across the world. We saw that in Nepal last year and we are constantly seeing this year as well in several countries, not only in the global south but also in the global north. The fact that you know these people are coming to the street is because they are you know done with what is happening to their lives. What the global economic system is you know, making them deal with for example the rising cost of living, the increasing climate crisis, and whole other issues that affect the lives of the people. Yeah, they’re enough with waiting and see you know change coming from the very system, you know that created the problem in the first place. But as you rightly mentioned the difficulty with these uprisings is the fact that they have not translated into meaningful transformation, transformative change that needs to happen for that, what I really see is the need for people like us who are working on these issues for civil society organizations like ours, you know constantly provide that political education of what is the real root cause of the challenges and crisis are, which is the rich and the powerful exerting their powers and focused on reaping the benefits out of this misery and the crisis that we are witnessing on a day to day basis unless and until we provide enough grounded political education in terms of what our system should look like, what is the vision of that future, everybody can come together. So that requires efforts from the people who are really working on these issues, the academic, the civil society representatives, the activists and the campaigners coming together to feed into the desire of sense that the young people and the common people across the world are looking for.
Nafkote: Thank you so much Sunil. We’re really grateful for you making the time to talk to us. Really appreciate it.
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Max: Oh Sunil, such a great guy, such a great interview. So, Naf, what did you take away from that one?
Nafkote: I really love the interview with Sunil, Max. It so vividly illustrates what we’re talking about at COP You know, the climate conference taking place right now in Türkiye, which focuses on the urgent need to reduce global emissions and limit warming, but also the importance of raising climate finance to support countries like Nepal. Of course there’s going to be a lot of fight, especially on climate finance, on how to hold rich countries accountable because right now, they’re absolutely failing to provide the support needed. And you know, their responsibility, their obligation to provide finance has been clearly stated within the UNFCCC So we need to be serious. You know, as Sunil was talking about Max, I was thinking he was saying this is one disaster and imagine that devastation that it cost. to Nepal. I’m talking just economically, the Nepalese government have said, the need to rebuild recover support communities is. The cost is around 4.5 billion. If we’re looking at the loss and damage cost, it’s an additional 2.6 billion, something like that. So, Nepal has been asking for support and all they have received from the Loss and Damage Fund is I think 20 million. That’s peanuts as Sunil said. So, this COP needs to deliver, you know, to support countries like Nepal communities at the front line of the crisis.
Max: Yeah, yeah, I think I think that’s, I think that’s right. you know one of the big victories at ah, the people wonder what happens at these big climate conferences. Well, I do. I mean you’ve been to many of them, but I’ve never been. But you know every so often there are big breakthroughs and the creation of the Loss and Damage Fund a few years ago was, was a big breakthrough, wasn’t it? But we’ve got now three or four fantastic funds at the un. they’re governed in a kind of even way where the Global south has a voice completely different to the World bank and the IMF, where the rich countries rule the roost. And we have these funds at the UN, but they have hardly any money in them. And it does feel to me there is a solution here, like a really obvious solution staring us in the face. You know rich country governments are definitely, quite reasonably can say that they are broke. I mean they are all fairly broke. They’ve all got debt levels that are very high. But they also have inordinate numbers of very, very rich people at the same rich People that are destroying the planet with their private jets. And we know that taxing those rich people is incredibly popular with virtually everyone apart from the rich people. In fact, even some of the rich people are very supportive of tax paying greater tax. So, let’s do that. Let’s tax them more, let’s tax their jets, let’s tax their yachts. Not only will that reduce their emissions, you, know, helping the planet survive, it would raise, you know, the hundreds of millions, the billions we need. And that money can help ordinary people in Britain, in rich countries coping with climate impacts. But a huge portion of it can also go through these funds at the UN and really help countries like Nepal when disaster hits. So, they get the amount of money they need, not a tiny amount, as we heard in the interview. So, yeah, tax the rich, use it to save the planet. That’s what I think.
Nafkote: Exactly, Max. And you know, tax excess profit of fossil fuels. We have shown that just by doing that we can raise around 400 billion. so, I’m really hopeful, Max, as you know, I’m, about to go to COP that we can make this happen. You know, by the way, the polls show how public around the world are supporting taxing the richest messages. they want the richest to be taxed and for that money to be used for public services, including, for climate action. Greenpeace and Oxfam also did a survey I think last year, and nine out of 10 people globally support taxing the super-rich to pay for public services and again, you know, for climate action. So, you know, we need to continue the fight and I’m sure we will make it happen.
Max: Yeah, yeah. And it’s, I mean, I think the elections this week in the US and more recently in Brazil and the sense that these messages are really making a difference at the ballot box. You know, people are really, really worried about affordability and the cost of living, but they also very, very angry about corruption, oligarchy, the kind of runaway power of those people at the top. So, I think this is an idea that this time has come, and I think the relationship between progressive taxation, reducing economic inequality and a safer, ah, more secure, world that survives is clear to me. So, I do feel maybe, yeah, I just feel a bit positive right now. But listen, good luck at the COP Have a fantastic time and we look forward to hearing about it. When you get back. We have this episode, with Sunil and then we’ve got another episode on climate. The next episode coming up, we’re going to be talking to two other amazing guests. So, watch out for that one. And, you know, keep listening to EQUALS. Thanks, everybody.
Nafkote: Please help us spread the word, subscribe, share it, and join the conversation. You can find us on X @EQUALShope thanks so much for listening. Bye for now.
Max: Thanks, everyone. Bye now.
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