whose energy future?...! 1! whose energy future? developmentalism, climate change and energy policy...
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Whose Energy Future? Developmentalism, climate change and energy policy in India and Australia A two day international workshop hosted by the Indian Ocean and South Asia Research Network and the Cosmopolitan and Civil Societies Research Centre, UTS. Date: Tuesday 13 and Wednesday 14 August 2013 Venue: Seminar and Meeting Rooms, Level 3, MaryAnn House,
645 Harris St, Ultimo University of Technology, Sydney
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Whose Energy Future? Developmentalism, climate change and energy policy in India and Australia
Tuesday 13 and Wednesday 14 August 2013 Seminar and Meeting Rooms, Level 3, MaryAnn House, 645 Harris St, Ultimo University of Technology, Sydney
About the workshop In 2010 the governments of India and Australia declared a joint partnership for 'securing our energy futures'. With India's 'inclusive growth' and Australia's 'sustainable mining', we would all benefit. Or would we? This seminar investigates whose future is served by energy policy under climate change in India's 'emerging economy' and in Australia's extractive economy. We wish to question claims about the developmental benefits of current energy policies, such as those expressed in India's 'Integrated Energy Future' and by Australia's 'Clean Energy Future'. Energy is at the centre of developmentalism, both for post-‐colonial statehood in India and settler statehood in Australia. In this 2 day workshop we will be exploring the following questions together:
• How is energy now being re-‐modeled and re-‐packaged for the climate change era?
• What possibilities emerge, beyond the elite vision for 'our energy futures'?
Workshop organisers Devleena Ghosh, Heather Goodall, James Goodman, Jonathan Marshall
Keynote Lecture
Dipesh Chakrabarty Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor, Department of History and Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, Faculty Fellow, Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, The University of Chicago
Climate Change, Capitalism, and Double Consciousness Date: Tuesday 13 August 2013, 5.30pm for a 6pm start Venue: Room 6, Level 4, UTS Tower Block (CB01.04.06) This lecture will focus on some areas of cognitive dissonance that arise when we seek to bring together our concerns about global warming and our unavoidable investment in the idea of development as freedom.
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Important information for attendees
Symposium Location The symposium will be held in the CCS Seminar Room and Meeting Room, Level 3, Mary Ann House (entry at 645 Harris Street – CH01 on map below), University of Technology Sydney.
Audiovisual Please contact Jemima Mowbray ([email protected] ) to discuss any technical assistance or special requirements. Presenters who are using audiovisual materials are encouraged to pre-‐load and check their presentations on the equipment provided prior to their time of presentation. We suggest that you utilise morning tea, afternoon tea and lunch times to load your materials onto the computer provided. In the symposium venue the following audiovisual equipment will be available to presenters:
• A PC laptop which has the capability to load powerpoint and word documents, browse the internet, play DVDs or CDs
• A data projector and screen
Tea breaks and lunch Catered morning and afternoon teas and lunches will be provided. Please advise Jemima Mowbray ([email protected]) of any special dietary requirements.
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PROGRAM
Tuesday 13 August 2013 10.00am Welcome and Introductions, Devleena Ghosh & Heather Goodall 10.15am Panel 1
• Anthony D’Costa, Driving Out the Energy Future: Automobilization under Compressed Capitalism
• Surya Sethi, India’s development challenges in an energy/climate constrained world
11.45am Panel 2
• Stuart Rosewarne, Beyond the market: the transnationalisation of Indian coal economy and the Australian political economy
• Tom Morton, After the Coalrush: Germany and the Coal Dilemma 1.15pm LUNCH 2.15pm Panel 3
• Devleena Ghosh, TBC • Kuntala Lahiri Dutt (paper to be read by Heather Goodall), Energising the
Nation: the moral and immoral economies of coal in India 3.45pm AFTERNOON TEA 4.00pm Panel 4
• Rebecca Pearse, Carbon budget blowout: The politics of abstraction and Australia’s ‘clean energy future’
• James Goodman, Climate Policy and Developmentalism: Germany, India, Australia
5.30pm End of Day 6.00pm PUBLIC LECTURE
• Dipesh Chakrabarty, Climate Change, Capitalism, and Double Consciousness
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Wednesday 14 August 9.30am Panel 5
• Celine Granjou, Interlinking Nature and Human Development: Knowledge Infrastructures on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
• Jeremy Walker, Pre-‐emptive Speciation: Directing the Evolution of Synthetic Biospheres
• Jonathan Marshall, Geo-‐engineering and the imagining of society 11.15 MORNING TEA 11.45am Panel 6
• Linda Connor, Contested development, energy policies and place-‐based politics in a regional context
• Kanchi Kohli, Experimenting with futures: De-‐Naturalising Singrauli in search of energy security
1.15pm LUNCH 2.15pm Panel 7
• Duncan McDuie-‐Ra, Clean energy, communities, and consent in India's frontiers
• Manju Menon, Making Environmental Knowledges: Public Hearings and Hydro-‐Electric Projects in North East India
3.45pm Round table and closing remarks, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Prasanthi
Hagare & Heather Goodall 4.30pm Close of workshop
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The Indian Ocean and South Asia Research Network with the Cosmopolitan and Civil Society Research Centre Present:
Climate Change, Capitalism and Double Consciousness
DIPESH CHAKRABARTY
When: Tuesday 13 August 2013 5.30pm for a 6pm start
Where: Room 6, Level 4, UTS Tower Block (CB01.04.06)
Professor Chakrabarty's lecture will focus on some areas of cognitive dissonance that arise when we seek to bring together our concerns about global warming and our unavoidable investment in the idea of development as freedom.
Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty is the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor at the Department of History and Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations and a Faculty Fellow at the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, The University of Chicago
RSVPs essential: [email protected]
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Workshop Participants and Abstracts Linda Connor Professor of Anthropology University of Sydney [email protected]
Contested development, energy policies and place-based politics in a regional context What is the impact of government energy policies in place-‐based communities where fossil fuel extraction has a direct effect on livelihoods and life chances, including health, employment, biodiversity, food production, neighbourhoods and social life? Energy policies in Australia promote a future in which fossil fuel corporations will continue their dominance. Moreover, state support of capitalism’s hegemonic cosmopolitanism marginalizes cultural practices of place-‐based belonging and protection of locality and neighbourhood. How are place-‐based communities and groups contesting the adverse effects of fossil fuel-‐based developmentalism, and with what long-‐term consequences for democratic politics and social justice agendas? This paper explores these questions through ethnographic research with groups challenging coal industry expansion in the Hunter Valley NSW. Anthony P. D’Costa Professor of Contemporary Indian Studies Australia India Institute, University of Melbourne [email protected], [email protected]
Driving Out the Energy Future: Automobilization under Compressed Capitalism Industrialization has been a pathway to capitalist economic development characterized by high material standard of living. Most peripheral economies including India have attempted to replicate such standards with limited success. While there are many institutional and structural reasons for such failure, India’s development predicaments are related to the particular stage in global capitalist evolution (compressed capitalism, whereby capitalist maturity coexists with large petty commodity producing sector). Under this, late industrializers such as India face the twin possibilities of opportunities and retardation. The Indian auto industry is a case in point: a classic form of capitalist industrialization with individualized transportation and economic development to boot. But it is also a predicament engendering high dependence on imported fossil fuel and massive demand on an already stressed physical infrastructure. This commentary briefly touches on the transformation of the Indian automobile industry, the significant role of the Indian
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middles classes in automobilization, the stark widening divide between classes, the growing pressure on the balance of payments, and a reconsideration, albeit belatedly and too early to predict if too little, of major public transportation projects. The political economy of automobilization under compressed capitalism, though individually and socially liberating, is argued to drive out India’s energy options. James Goodman Associate Professor, Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Research Centre, University of Technology Sydney [email protected]
Climate Policy and Developmentalism: Germany, India, Australia Climate change expresses the global development crisis as a crisis for all societies. It challenges ideologies of development that underpin assumptions of centre and periphery in global society. With climate crisis all dominant policy frames, without exception, are thrown into disarray. In response, governments in over-‐developed, mal-‐developed and under-‐developed countries are seen to re-‐ignite their developmentalist rhetorics in a desperate urge to square the circle between climate crisis and ineffectual climate policy. Developmentalist ideology is sharpened and deployed as critical resource in the struggle to maintain elite power in the context of a deepening climate contradiction. As such, ideologies of developmentalism play a key role in enabling 'business as usual' in the face of climate change. From this perspective, the paper seeks to advance a common critique of climate policies as they have emerged in Germany, India and Australia. The critique positions Germany, an over-‐developed consumer society, with India, a low-‐income underdeveloped country, and Australia, a mal-‐developed resource economy. Key policy initiatives from each country are addressed from a shared critical perspective: Germany's 'Energy Transformation' policy (2010), India's National Action Plan on Climate Change' and 'Interim Report of the Expert Group on Low Carbon Strategies for Inclusive Growth' (2008 and 2011), and Australia's 'Clean Energy Future' package (2011), are compared and discussed in terms of a common effort at development rehabilitation designed to maintain 'accumulation as usual'.
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Céline Granjou Department of Sociology, IRSTEA (Institute of Research in Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture), France and Visiting Scholar at UTS [email protected] Isabelle Mauz Department of Sociology, IRSTEA, France [Co-‐author, but unable to attend in August]
Interlinking Nature and Human Development: Knowledge Infrastructures on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Today, energy, climate change, development and nature conservation issues are increasingly interlinked and can no more be addressed as separate fields. The catchphrase “Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services” (or “BES” [1]) is now popular in nature conservation policies, meaning that the focus is more and more on ordinary biodiversity and the services it fulfills, beyond the iconic fauna and flora that have long been the main targets of conservation policies. Ecosystem services are services that are fulfilled by ecosystems and are useful for human well-‐being, like climate regulation, flower fertilisation, and mechanisms involved in providing energy to human societies. This communication aims to document how this shift in nature conservation influences the way knowledge on nature is produced. Scientists have indeed different conceptions of biodiversity and how to investigate it: while taxonomists conceive of biodiversity as a world of species that must be recorded and classified, ecologists tend to think of biodiversity in terms of ecosystem functioning, considering that it is not necessary to know all species in order to understand biodiversity. We draw on two case-‐studies in the Alps (Europe): the implementation of an All taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI) in two protected areas (in France and Italy) and the creation of an Alpine Long term socio-‐ecological research site involving several labs and protected areas in France, in line with the European LTSER (Long-‐term Socio-‐Ecological Research) network. We conducted some 40 interviews with ecologists, field taxonomists, nature managers and other life scientists, backed up with participant observation. Drawing on the results of these surveys, we show that new collaborations arise between field taxonomists, ecologists and nature managers to produce environmental data and make sense of them. There is new opportunity for taxonomists to be considered crucially relevant partners rather than mere “collectors of things”, in particular by ecologists interested in ecosystem functions and by ecologists aiming at modeling how climate change impacts biodiversity. We argue that the ATBI and the Alpine Long-‐Term Socio-‐ecological research Site can be seen as two examples of collaborative infrastructures designed to produce knowledge on BES, i.e. interlinking nature and human development issues. [1] See for instance the IPBES (Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services).
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Kanchi Kohli Independent Researcher, New Delhi [email protected]
Experimenting with futures: De-Naturalising Singrauli in search of energy security For the last few decades, coal has played a pivotal role in the global climate negotiations and in informing the national planning around securing energy futures. While emissions related to coal based power generation and slogans of dirty coal continue to be debated at international platforms on energy and environment, there are places and people across the world that remain isolated not just from this discourse; but from a world of people itself, that you and I live in. Singrauli region in northern and central India has been the country's energy capital for the last 4-‐5 decades. Much before climate and energy crisis related trade offs were being spoken about, Singruali had been mapped for being the mining and power generation hub. Spread across the states of Uttar Pradesh (Sonebhadra district) and Madhya Pradesh (Sidhi and Singrauli districts), the Government of India had recognised Singrauli's "potential" as being critical to tap both large scale mining and electricity generation through the public sector. In the 1970s and 1980s, the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) and state government-‐initiated thermal power generation was linked to the coal supplied by the Northern Coalfields Limited (NCL, a subsidiary of Coal India Ltd.). Since then, this region houses a few of the oldest running thermal power stations and operational coal mines, which were set up by these companies. In addition there is an aluminum smelting plant, and other industrial and commercial operations. Over the decades the transformation of the region's landscape from forest hillocks to mine overburdens; free flowing rivers to polluted ash ponds and irrigated agricultural fields to bustling machine yards has 'denaturalised' Singrauli. These visuals are stark reminders of how the futures of a place and its people continue to be sacrificed without much discussion on the ethical and moral dilemmas of such transformation. A region which was earlier experimented upon for national industrial security is now a laboratory for private sector in India presented as a perfect location where corporations can get vast tracts of land, sparse and spread out tribal population and where coal and thermal power can create an industrial symphony. The living history of people surviving with 4 power plants (existing and under construction) under intense temperatures of 49-‐50 degrees centigrade, without the four decade old promise of jobs have no place in visions that seek to extend Singrauli to the neighbouring forest and agricultural areas. However even slight detours beyond NTPC and NCL gated communities to the villages of Anpara, Chilika Daad or the newer areas like Mahan and Amelia where newer contestations are emerging, gives a clear sense of how this surreal landscape today is home to people who have been denied their right to a future. These areas
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continue not to be planned for people, but for coal. It is not surprising then, that Singrauli being so central to India's energy map, is better connected for transportation of coal and transmission of power to the national grid. Its physical distance from big towns of Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh (6-‐8 hours by road) has ensured that Singrauli remains absent from the imagination of people in cities, corridors of powers, and round tables of climate/energy negotiations, all of whom have a crucial role to play in energy futures. Duncan McDuie-Ra Associate Professor in Development Studies, University of New South Wales [email protected]
Clean energy, communities, and consent in India's frontiers. An integral part of India's energy future is the so-‐called clean energy from hydro power projects. A significant number of hydro power projects are planned and underway in India's frontier regions; most notably northeast India. Hydro power has long been contentious in India and evocative protests have captured public attention nationally and across the world. Yet hydro power in the northeast is rarely as contentious. This is striking given the volatile nature of politics in the region predicated on separatism and ethnic autonomy. In fact hydro power politics in the northeast are most notable for the apparent consent of local communities for projects with extreme environmental consequences. This paper examines the ways consent for hydro power is produced in the northeast and in doing so makes a three-‐fold argument. First, hydro power politics reflect a particular developmental politics embedded in security and counter insurgency that characterize the relationship between the frontier and Delhi. Second, the enduring construction of the backward region inhabited by backward peoples is a powerful driver of local support for large scale development projects that can attest to the modernity of different communities. Third, the territorial logic at the heart of intra regional politics merge ethno-‐nationalist claims with competitive demands for projects that will generate revenue for small political units and put these groups 'on the map' and into the national spatial imagination.
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Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt Senior Fellow, Resource, Environment & Development Group, Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU kuntala.lahiri-‐[email protected]
Energising the Nation: the moral and immoral economies of coal in India In India, with its separate Ministry, coal occupies a pride of place shaping the economic and political milieu of the country and dictating its energy future. Coal acquires meaning and assumes utility through its interactions with the Indian society, and it is in the haze of coal smoke that one can also read the history of capital-‐labour relations and the future of capital-‐nature relations in India. Coal mining was one of the key ‘modern’ industries that partially shaped India’s colonial trajectory but, unlike tea plantations or jute mills, the industry, became associated with powerful trade unionist movements and assumed an iconic status as a national symbol after the independence, leading eventually to its nationalisation. I argue that there are three economies of coal in India that neither comprise three ‘tiers’ nor are ‘parallel’ to each other. I show how these economies are interlinked and their domains overlap as each of them draws upon their different notions of morality, defining it uniquely. To understand these economies, one needs to accept that mineral resources like coal are not only material things but are coproduced by their utilitarian values of meeting the needs of a society at a given point in time, and that is how coal assumes wider social, cultural and political meanings to associate itself with economic development, nationalism and nation-‐building. Jonathan Paul Marshall Social and Political Change Group, University of Technology Sydney [email protected]
Geo-engineering and the imagining of society Geo-‐engineering, that is the alteration of the planetary ecology, seems to becoming a much mentioned ‘solution’ to the problems of climate change. However, unexamined social thought intrudes into this domain. While scientists proposing this solution seem to be aware of the possibility of disastrous unintended ecological effects, they seem largely disinterested in the possibility of disastrous and unintended social effects. Similarly, the justifications for geo-‐engineering depend upon social theories, which are deleted from consideration as soon as they are proposed. It is frequently, for example, suggested that we must begin research into geo-‐engineering as it is impossible to cut carbon emissions, or because someone or some State may go it alone, implying a view of social action, but it is rarely suggested that we explore the understanding of those social actions. Similarly, while law and ethics are often mentioned as important issues, which must be considered, law and
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ethics tend to be treated as ‘things in themselves’, without a contentious basis in social action or social dispute. This paper aims to unearth the social assumptions and politics of geo-‐engineering, and argues that without a proper understanding of the social factors social actors risk even further disruption from their attempts to control the climate and maintain their preferred order. Manju Menon
Making Environmental Knowledges: Public Hearings and Hydro-Electric Projects in North East India In the era of climate change, ‘clean’ development has acquired an immediate urgency. Sustaining economic growth while simultaneously reducing its carbon footprint is now considered a crucial strategy for tackling issues of poverty or ensuring quality of life challenges. It is in this context that hydro-‐electricity in India has emerged as a potential win-‐win energy solution. The Indian government’s enthusiastic embrace of hydro has, however, called for a dramatic geographical reorientation. Energy planners have increasingly directed their attention at the great Himalayan mountain ranges, particularly the Eastern Himalayas within Northeast India, which potentially offer some of the best sites for tapping flowing energy[1]. These steep and high mountains are crisscrossed by innumerable torrential streams and cascading rivers that, according to them, possess near limitless possibilities for turning voluminous cusecs into kilowatts. In hydro, in fact, the Indian government has been enabled to imagine electric energy not only as a cheap and abundant national resource but, significantly as providing the capacity to ‘green’ the national economy through clean energy. Attempts at implementing these hydro-‐electric projects have, however, almost immediately floundered upon choppy waters. Projects have invariably been dogged by waves of protests from local communities, challenges over cost-‐benefit calculations and, crucially as well, opposition on environmental grounds. It is increasingly being realised that most disputes over the projects run across a set of yawning fractures involving tensions between a) expert knowledges on the environment versus local traditions of use; b) the claims of official science and technology versus histories of environmental practices; and c) geographies for development against community notions of place. These contestations are important to understand the ways in which official environmental knowledge is unsettled, subverted and recrafted. A range of meanings, ideas and developmental actions arise from these discussions and debates which show that outcomes with regard to hydro-‐electric projects in Northeast India cannot be understood as the forced effects of dominant development discourses but are shaped by diverse social challenges and political negotiations on the ground. I submit that such discussions are a credible space for negotiations between policy, politics and people. Enabling such spaces with the
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institutional capacity and flexibility to harness ‘other’ development and environmental imaginations has become crucial in current times. [1] The Central Electricity Authority’s ‘Preliminary Ranking Study’ of October 2001 on the nationwide potential of hydroelectric schemes gives the highest ranking to the Brahmaputra river system. The 168 schemes considered by the study have a cumulative installed capacity of 63,328 MW and 149 of these are given ranks A and B, indicating high viability. Tom Morton, Associate Professor, Social and Political Change Group, Director, Australian Centre for Independent Journalism [email protected]
After the Coalrush: Germany and the Coal Dilemma In 2011 the German Parliament passed a package of laws which provides for a phase-‐out of all nuclear power plants by 2022. Known as the ‘German energy transformation’ (Energiewende), these laws set an ambitious target of 35% of total energy use to be provided by renewables by 2020, and all energy use provided by renewables by 2050 (Government of Germany 2011). However, Germany faces an extremely challenging policy dilemma in bringing about the 'energy transformation'. Coal-‐fired power plants currently generate 42% of total electricity used in Germany, and the country would need to burn an extra 3-‐4 million tonnes of coal a year to meet the shortfall from the nuclear phase-‐out (Knopf et al. 2011). Germany is the world’s largest producer of soft brown coal, and in a post-‐nuclear ‘dash for coal’ (Pahle 2010), pressure is increasing for expanded brown coal production, especially as the falling cost of electrity generated from renewables is now undercutting gas , making brown coal the only cheaper option. This paper analyses opposition to the 'dash for coal', focusing on case studies from affected communities in the Lausitz region of eastern Germany, and touches on alternative policy proposals for a complete and speedy exit from coal. Rebecca Pearse University of New South Wales [email protected]
Carbon budget blowout: The politics of abstraction and Australia’s ‘clean energy future’ This paper discusses the ways in which energy is being reconfigured in the climate change era using the case study of Australia’s ‘Clean Energy Future’ (CEF) reforms. The national policy framework for greenhouse gas emissions reduction in Australia
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illustrates an ongoing political transformation of the global carbon cycle. Carbon has become as symbolic common denominator in both policy and political imaginaries for energy transition across the world. The new carbon politics is a means to illuminate the globality of climate crisis; but at the same time it is an abstraction that elides the political economic context driving fossil fuel expansion, particularly in coal and gas markets. The Australian case discussed in this paper illustrates that climate policy produces territorial and temporal displacement through carbon offset regulations, and more fundamentally, through carbon accounting practices and the targets and timetable approach to emissions reduction. Carbon accounting rules and marketisation in policy serve to obscure the real level of carbon emissions and structural trends at the national level. The calculation of carbon budgets, are constructed across long time frames, avoiding more immediate and direct policy reforms. Finally, the exclusion of coal exports from the national carbon accounts and carbon offset policies relocate responsibility for transition to the South. Stuart Rosewarne Department of Political Economy, University of Sydney [email protected]
Beyond the market: the transnationalisation of Indian coal economy and the Australian political economy The increased generation of electricity from coal-‐fired power stations is a critical element in the India state’s ambitions to expand national energy-‐generating capacity. The most immediate platform for this has been to boost domestic coal supply through the allocation of coal blocks and legislative initiatives that would remove constitutional restrictions on the compulsory acquisition of land. However, these ambitions to increase domestic coal production have been frustrated by a variety of factors – corruption and rent-‐seeking behaviour, the failure to progress the land acquisition legislative agenda, resistance to land acquisitions, the low level of investment in mining, and the labour-‐intensive and comparatively inefficient character of mining techniques – and this has impelled Indian energy companies to explore sourcing coal offshore. Australia has emerged as the most significant site in the transnationalisation of Indian coal. Australia is a proven low-‐risk investment environment, in contrast with another potentially significant investment location, Indonesia, which has implemented minimum domestic equity and royalty obligations on mining investment. The magnitude of investment is extraordinary and, while dominated by major energy and steel corporations, it also has engaged the state-‐owned Coal India. The investment has assumed a quite distinctive transnational character. It is predicated on moving beyond the market, insulating the Indian energy supply chain from the uncertainties of global supply by securing control over every phase of the coal supply chain, from pit to port to destination, and escaping the volatility in global fossil fuel prices. In the process, the Australian energy sector becomes captured by the dynamics of the Indian coal economy.
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Surya P. Sethi Adjunct Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore [email protected]
India’s development challenges in an energy/climate constrained world India’s high GDP growth numbers of recent years hide the fact that India remains home to the largest number of poor and malnourished in the world even when compared to Sub-‐Saharan Africa as a whole. The absolute number of the poor and malnourished has increased and income inequality has become worse since 1990, when India set in motion massive economic reforms and liberalisation – a move widely acknowledged as the key driver that unleashed high GDP growth. The popular perception of a rising and shining India overlooks the absence of inclusive growth. Ensuring universal access to lifeline levels of modern energy services is essential for providing inclusive growth, eradicating poverty and delivering the millennium development goals. India needs to significantly raise its electricity and energy consumption if it is to ensure universal access and deliver rapid sustainable growth – a goal that remains the most potent tool for delivering adaptation capacity to her poor who will suffer the worst consequences of climate change. However, resource/supply constraints faced by conventional energy sources, techno-‐economic constraints faced by renewable energy sources and, above all, the bounds imposed by climate change on fossil fuel use are likely to undermine India’s quest for continuing rapid, sustainable and inclusive growth. The speaker will discuss the challenges that India faces. Jeremy Walker Social and Political Change, University of Technology Sydney [email protected]
Pre-emptive Speciation: Directing the Evolution of Synthetic Biospheres The concept of the ‘bioeconomy’, or the ‘biobased knowledge economy’ has developed a certain currency in the recent policy statements of the European Union and other advanced economies. It proposes that future economic development will be predicated on the increasing centrality of industrial biotechnologies (as distinct from agricultural and medical applications) to the realisation of a ‘sustainable’ model of economic growth. Insofar as bioengineers claim the potential to substantially transform the most basic processes of industrial production and thereby the interactions between the economy and the biosphere, (ie. through replacing existing petrochemical and coal-‐based industries with bio-‐based ‘green’ chemistry, bioplastics, and algae biofuels), it claims the allegiance of environmentalists -‐ even
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the most romantic find it difficult to ascribed ‘sacredness’ to invisible microorganisms. The catastrophic risks of global warming and ecosystem failure now functions to license the rapid development of synthetic biology, with its aims to systematise the design-‐based assembly of novel life forms. According to the venture capitalist bioengineer Craig Venter, the exponential development of the technologies of combinatorial genomics will unleash, a “new version of the Cambrian explosion”, an anthropogenic mass speciation event itself justified by an anthropogenic mass extinction event, where speciation will be driven by explicitly economic criteria. Bioengineering thus conceived and justified is the most ambitious form of geoengineering yet imagined. In order to begin an evaluation of the bioeconomy the paper engages with the concept of ‘directed evolution’ as it is found in three literatures unrelated to one another except by their relevance to the bioeonomy: (1) the business literature on technological forecasting and product development, (2) the technical literature on the engineering of proteins, enzymes and artificial Darwinian systems, and (3) the literature on the macroevolution of the biosphere. The paper concludes with a discussion of the politics of the bioeconomy as the now classical neoliberal governance paradox, whereby the production of security by the state becomes the task of bringing as yet non-‐existent competitive markets into being, in this case a market for directed evolution. The ‘creative destruction’ of entrepreneurial innovation is now called upon to generate a ‘less destructive creation’, in the form of a synthetic biosphere internal to productive infrastructure. One way or another, this experiment in directed evolution will effect the future conditions of survival of ‘wild type’ biospheres. Whatever the rationale for or prospects of this articulation of the bioeconomy , its paradox of biosecurity can be thought of as a response to the crisis of mass extinction through counter-‐proliferation, or what I would call ‘pre-‐emptive speciation’.
Other Participants Devleena Ghosh Associate Professor, Social and Political Change, Director Indian Ocean and South Asia Research Network, University of Technology Sydney [email protected] Prasanthi Hagare Director of Postgraduate Programs (Engineering), School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney [email protected]