Tackling climate change in India needs some team-building

Beyond individual research, fostering multi-institutional teams and “living labs” can unleash India’s scientific potential for a climate-resilient future.

Institutions such as the Indian Institute of Science aspire to be ranked among the top universities in the world. These aspirations drive research agendas and publications.  | Photo Credit: SUDHAKARA JAIN

Much has been written about India’s climate woes and the loss of lives, properties, livelihoods, and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). And, by extension, on the need for adaptation and mitigation. What can academia do besides advocating action and producing research? Academia, in fact, can actually lead by example!

There is plenty to be optimistic about in India’s climate actions: effective and efficient disaster management, improved weather and climate predictions and early warnings, and the deployment of renewable energy projects.

But is the climate community in India working as effectively to further climate science and solutions? The number of doctoral degrees, papers published and the number of researchers in academia and national labs have certainly grown with massive investments from the government and some private players as well.

So, what can be improved to match research and development with the urgency of actions needed?

Earth system doctors

One major narrative change can be to avoid the hyperboles emerging out of the global North; we need to recast our climate challenge as a sustainability challenge. The national goals, strategies, planning, financing and implementation can then focus on creating a ‘smart country’, transitioning to net zero. This should go well beyond climate coping strategies to a climate-resilient country and a climate-proof economy. Risk will never be zero but implemented resilience can prepare us to be fully ready for acceptable and unavoidable risks.

Are there ways to make our research and development more effective and efficient? The answer is yes, we can be much more efficient and effective in serving India’s needs in climate science and solutions. The key word is ‘teams’. We need to train earth system doctors instead of just climate pathologists.

Solar panels being insatalled on the rooftop of a house in Gurugram | Photo Credit: AP

Team efforts can help take much larger steps towards a climate-resilient India. This, however, will need some systemic changes. We need to rethink the way requests for proposals are made and the way reviews and funding function. India need not follow the Western world’s methods focusing on individual research or small collaborations focused on incremental advances.

India can encourage multi-institutional team building to work with national labs and agencies such as the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting, the National Institute of Ocean Technology, the Indian National Center for Ocean Information System and most importantly, the National Disaster Management Agency. Without multi-institutional teams, India will not be able to tackle the sustainability challenge and the march towards net zero.

Infinite innovation

The existing institutions, such as the mighty Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research and the Indian Institute of Science, aspire to be ranked among the top universities in the world. These aspirations drive research agendas and publications. India needs them to also collaborate with the State and Central universities.

Much has been written about India’s climate woes and the loss of lives, properties, livelihoods and the GDP. And by extension, on the need for adaptation and mitigation. Here, women carry umbrellas amid snowfall in Srinagar this February | Photo Credit: AFP

The scope for science and innovations is literally infinite with plenty of room for entrepreneurs and startups as well. IMD’s weather and climate models will keep getting better and more accurate. Its data needs will drive technology innovations, big data science, and an AI/ML bonanza to bring the model forecasts to decision scales. The sky is the limit in terms of R&D opportunities with education, skill training, and prepping the country to lead the world’s green technology revolution.

New materials such as graphene, miniaturisation with nanotechnology, microgrids with renewables, and so on, can offer clean water, clean air, nutritious, and plentiful food, clean transportation, safe infrastructure and buildings, affordable healthcare, and of course a climate-proof economic development that can bring high standards of living, good health and well-being to all citizens.

Living labs

Is there a coherent educational vision to meet India’s needs in the sustainability challenge? The most important contribution to problem-focused team building is education and training that inculcates these values before graduates leave the campus. A lack of teamwork can create islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity. India cannot afford to sustain this model if it is to become net zero and sustainable. The sustainability challenge requires a tweak to the traditional model of academia.

Living labs to create course content, identifying skill and expertise gaps, building teams and leadership skills, and driving problem-based learning with real-world problem solving: these are urgent imperatives on campuses. They can integrate themselves into the community around them to advance net zero by focusing on energy sources, demand and distribution, low-emission and zero emission transportation, energy efficient buildings, land use to protect biodiversity and an enhancement of carbon uptake as well active transportation such as walking and biking and managing materials and waste.

These living labs have to go beyond the hackneyed mantras of reduce, recycle and reuse to demonstrate quantitatively that net zero and sustainability are not just dream concepts but are attainable goals. With teamwork.

Campuses as sustainability sites

The biggest challenges in implementing net zero and sustainability in the real world are the availability of technology alternatives, skill sets, and financing. Resilience reduces the cost of disasters and is much cheaper than disaster management and recovery.

There is no better education than having campuses initiate net zero and sustainability implementations and engage students, staff, and faculty in the efforts. Innovation is needed in science, technology, measuring impacts, monitoring and evaluating progress, and most importantly, finding funds. There are ongoing efforts across the planet on campus net zero and sustainability implementations; the lessons emerging from them are very valuable for India.

Graduates as ambassadors

Once educated in such immersive problem and project-based modes, students are more likely to go out with these values into the real world and amplify the need for action to achieve India’s dreams of net zero and sustainability.

Students at IIT Powai | Photo Credit: EMMANUAL YOGINI

Reducing emissions and waste with existing technologies are low-hanging fruits. But learning to innovate in the context of implementing net zero and sustainability are the best opportunities arising out of this sustainability challenge.

India will continue to invest more and more in education, weather and climate forecasts, adaptation, mitigation and disaster management. Academia will continue to produce graduates, do research and publish papers. All these parts can add up to a sum that will be much more than the parts with teamwork. And academia can lead by example instead of just preaching to the world about how to act and how urgently to act.

Most importantly, net zero and sustainability implementations on campuses round out the residency programme needed for the earth system doctors. 

Raghu Murtugudde is Professor, IIT Bombay, and Emeritus Professor, University of Maryland, US.