Q: You have managed to bring the North-South debate to global forums. But what challenges do you think remain in policy-making or implementation on the ground?

A: We are nowhere near solving the problem. Neither in the north nor near it in the south. I would say that the northern countries have a long way to go to change their behaviour. But India could have changed... the way it was thinking about climate change a long time ago, because we have been involved in the negotiation process for 30 years. Every country has a responsibility to start thinking about “how can we develop without emitting greenhouse gases?” And you can always say, “We'll wait for the North to take action, then we (South) will take action”. But the problem is what action can you take then? And how? And if the North, doesn't take action, do you (South) not take action yourself?

Ultimately, it is the Global South that will suffer a lot from climate change. More perhaps than the Global North.

Q: There is a huge inequality in who's emitting, and who's suffering because of those emissions. While conversations are happening at global forums like the G20 and COP, a huge inequality exists in policymaking. Leaders from the South are still fighting to have their voices heard about Adaptation, and loss and damage funds.

A: Climate change won't discriminate, but it will be the Global South that gets hurt more. But why didn't they talk about making the Global North take strong decisions to reduce their emissions? That was more important than adaptation. If you look at adaptation and mitigation, mitigation is the most important adaptation option. Because if you mitigate, you don't have to adapt.

So why didn't the Global South put pressure on the Global North to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? What happened was that everybody was talking about their own issues. Everybody wanted a bit of the money for adaptation. Everyone was fighting about the different kinds of adaptation funds that they could get. But there isn't that much money.

The problem was with some developing countries, because they were afraid that they would then also have to start reducing emissions. But now everyone suffers. And it's so late in the process for us to stop reducing emissions that it's not only a problem for the rich countries, but it's a huge problem for the poorer countries. Especially in a country like India. Because you're so large, to make a radical change for India as a whole is very difficult.

The other problem is that if developing countries want justice from the Global North, they have to be willing to talk about justice within their own countries. If you look at emerging economies, the distribution of emissions in the emerging economies as a small percentage of the rich emit a lot, and there's a large majority that doesn't emit at all.

But in the process, no one does anything. And ultimately, all of us are losing in the world.

Q: So what should be the focus of the debate now?

A: I feel that developing countries should focus as far as possible to get off fossil fuels. And not try to imitate the West, because that's not going to solve the problem. Getting off fossil fuel means trying to get other kinds of energy on board, and also doing massive demand side management.

It's very easy for us to make the negotiations so big and complex, that nobody knows what it's all about. People are getting distracted by the huge number of other articles in these agreements. When the bottom line is: Everyone must reduce emissions.

Q: What issues should be in focus at negotiations?

A: Climate change is not the only problem we are facing. For example, we are emitting too much of nutrients like nitrates and phosphorus. We don't have enough phosphorus (in the soil), we are… killing the oceans, and rivers, we are over-fishing in the seas, and there is acidification of the global oceans and land degradation. If you add up all this environmental and biodiversity loss, it is so massive that if you want to live within the boundaries of the environment that we have, we will have to completely redesign the way we live.

Maybe someone will say the environment isn't important, but if all the bees die then who's going to pollinate our food? We depend on clean air, but clean air depends on the mechanisms of the Earth to clean it.

If our climate changes and everything will collapse. The biosphere will collapse. The nutrient cycle will collapse, and the rainfall patterns will change. How will we eat in the future? The problem that we face now is: how do we live within these planetary boundaries?

In our paper ‘Safe and justice earth system boundaries’, we wrote about the (fact that) 1.5 is not safe, it is not just. It should be 1°C because at 1°C already so much damage is happening. But how is it possible that the developing countries didn't argue much earlier and say let's go for 1°C?

Government negotiators have been very cautious about how far they're willing to go because they might themselves end up having to take strong steps... I'm not sure that you're going to get the equity problem solved in the climate negotiations. You have to go to court for that.

Q: When you talk about litigation, there is a court-imposed ban on firecrackers in Delhi around Diwali, because it's also the season when pollution spikes in the north. But on the ground, the implementation of the ban is questionable.

A: That's because there's not enough awareness about these issues... Look at the level of pollution in Delhi on a normal day. It's so high, and people accept it. They're not protesting against it. It's like: “You know what, it's always so dirty. So, what if we have a little bit more?”

A government can, if it wants to, implement it. But you need a social agreement to it. The other side to this is… there are a lot of people working in the cracker industry, and how do we give them alternative jobs? There are so many little links and chains involved. How do you address them all?

Q: Socio-economic problems are much farther down the line of priority. All our climate goals have been development-oriented. We focus first on our economies, and we plan our emissions cuts according to our economies.

A: That doesn't work because you get locked in. For example, you say let's try and develop infrastructure for fossil fuels to enable growth. Once you've got that infrastructure, it is difficult to close it down because it's so expensive.

What happens is, if you want to change then you have to change every house, every petrol pump, and every production process. All systems have to be changed. So how does the government organize a complete change? Here in the Netherlands. It is a tiny country and very rich, we have to unlock every house and every pipe. It's a massive process. And so expensive. When in fact, it's cheaper to leapfrog and move to a newer system that can last longer. But it is very difficult to sell.

For that, you need to think long-term and make the investments upfront to avoid the problems. India anyway has not had much of its own gas, and imports most of it. The Sun is really a useful way out. But renewables need to replace fossil fuel, not be additional to fossil fuel.

Q: It's politics on one hand, and then there are business interests on the other. How do you balance the two?

A: The current system is based on exploiting people, miners, women, and men. It’s based on exploiting the poor and enriching the rich. If you want to create a more equal society, we have to also redesign our economies and the way we calculate profits and losses. All companies calculate profits without taking into account the damages they should have to pay others.

Q: In one of your interviews, you said that GDP does not show the true picture of growth. What do you propose instead?

A: A lot of alternative approaches are being proposed. The UN Secretary-General mentioned one in a speech last year. He said that GDP was out of date. There are alternative ways of looking at the wealth of the environment… and ways to look at social issues as well.

The main point for us is that even if we cannot redesign our economic system yet, we need to learn to live within our environmental space. We have to start figuring out how we use less energy, because even renewable energy alone will not solve the problem. For renewable energy, you would need a lot of resources. All of this has to be mined now (for use) in the future because you can't do a circular economy for renewable energy.

We need to invest heavily in public transport systems. How can we improve our use of water? It's a complicated challenge. India has crossed several safe and just boundaries. Whether it's water, the air, or climate; all these boundaries have been crossed for India, especially because we're so crowded. How can we redesign it and say it's a happy place to be at which is not necessarily stinking of wealth at one end and very poor at the other end?

Q: The COP chair and members of the advisory board appear to have conflicting interests. But do you think change can be brought about by excluding them?

In the existing democratic system at the global level, each country takes its turn in leading the COP process which is very expensive. So the host pays quite a lot. We now have a situation where COP is being led by oil interests. And then of course the agenda gets changed, because for them it’s very important to control the agenda. They have to sell the fossil fuels.

Q: What do you think is the way forward for India?

 A country like India will suffer a lot. It's in the Global South, it's already very hot in several parts of the country. We have a very poor population. We depend heavily on rainfall. Our agriculture system is very vulnerable now. Our groundwater is collapsing very fast. India must come up with a strategy: What does it want? You also have to be very clear about how you're going to get Net Zero by 2070. What does it mean? Are going to plant trees all over India? How will you compensate for the emissions through your Net Zero policy? And when you get to 2070, are you going to say, "Okay, this year we have to get to Net Zero?". What is the strategy that India has? Or any country? Every country needs to think now. Or are we just accepting that this is our fate?