This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on January 23, 2023 - January 29, 2023

The World Health Organization has warned that between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause about 250,000 additional deaths per year from increased cases of malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress.

If the statistics are not compelling, then the immediate evidence of frequent and sudden flooding and heat waves which cost lives and disrupt livelihoods should be a clarion call to arrest the dire effects of global warming.

However, some literature and conversations would have you believe that we are either one minute to midnight to irreversible climate devastation, or that climate change is a hoax.

Where the answer perhaps lies is somewhere in the middle: Yes, our earth and climate has been deteriorating and we are cognisant of the impact of that, but with strong decisions, we can halt the downward spiral and hopefully, in the near future, start to reverse the negative effects and repair our environment.

According to industry pundits, the emission of ozone-depleting gases was increasing rapidly until the 1980s. However, in the past 50 years, the world has taken huge strides in the near elimination of ozone-depleting substances and the trend towards the recovery of the ozone layer — making it arguably among the most successful international environmental collaborations to date.

While governments and organisations have started taking swift actions to pledge carbon neutrality, with aggressive net zero emissions targets and a suite of sustainable goals, the outcomes of climate action will take a while to bear fruit. Technology and innovation can help us arrest the situation, fast, but in itself needs other elements to collectively be locked in place for accelerated progress to materialise:

1) People: societal awareness and advocacy

One of the few positive things to have emerged from the pandemic is an increasing realisation of our carbon footprint and the impact of our actions on the environment. We saw first-hand the positive impact brought by the lockdowns — with commuting and air travel screeching almost to a halt, global carbon dioxide emissions fell by 6.4%, or 2.3 billion tonnes, in 2020.

Whether a virus outbreak or geopolitical conflicts coupled with extreme weather — be it harsh winters or burning summers — drastic and sudden events have created an urgency that was lacking before to truly tackle the issues of energy independence.

As a result, Germany, for example, which gets more than a third of its energy from Russia, is working overtime to secure alternative energy sources and encouraging its citizens to conserve energy.

The water crisis in Cape Town, South Africa — nicknamed Day Zero — is another example. Between mid-2017 and mid-2018, water levels — after periods of drought — hovered between 15% and 30% of total dam capacity. “Day Zero” marked the date on which drinking water to most businesses and homes in the city would be shut off. With the support of a socially and economically diverse citizenry as well as private companies and the government, tides began to shift. Measures to improve data management and technology upgrades altogether averted the disaster. So much so, at 50 litres per day per citizen, Cape Town achieved one of the lowest per capita water consumption rates of any major city in the world. The success set a benchmark for cities around the world that confront the uncertainties of climate change.

2) Government will

More than any other time in history, governments are determined to move the needle on sustainability. Energy transition policies, regulations and collaborations are emerging as governments rethink and lead responses on planetary health.

Take the Inflation Reduction Act recently passed in the US. Apart from reforming healthcare in the US and protecting vulnerable communities, a core tenet of the act is to reduce carbon emissions by 40% by 2030. This is significant because the US is the world’s second biggest contributor to carbon emissions overall (behind China) and is responsible for almost a third of the excess carbon dioxide that is heating the planet.

In September 2022, a multiyear study of the social cost of carbon, a critical input for climate policy analysis, found that every additional tonne of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere costs society US$185 (RM800) — far higher than the current US federal estimate of US$51 per tonne. The cost of not abating carbon is huge for every life on this planet.

Collective, decisive and unwavering action has to be taken for the vision to be realised, and the tech marketplace is abuzz with carbon capture calculators, climate trackers and other sophisticated modelling technologies to help measure and manage a country’s effective transition to green.

Today, 3D digital twins of cities around the world enable insightful, data-driven decisions for better living. Using a hybrid urban mapping sensor like the Leica CityMapper-2, light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and aerial imagery can enable city planners to visualise, manage and monitor critical assets and model risks, with the goal of creating smarter, safer and more sustainable cities.

With technology, governments can also optimally design green spaces to decrease the temperature on warm days, reduce a city’s carbon footprint by lowering the needs for cooling energy in buildings, track the air pollution index, map out safe travel zones for the well-being of citizens, and with a positive spin on the environment.

In the past two years, a new digital reality has also emerged with decision-making solutions that treat the physical and digital worlds as one. The benefits from real-time, autonomous data collection visualised by artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities have allowed societies to shift behaviours quickly. The case of health app trackers, which identified Covid-19 clusters and prompted the wearing of face masks en masse, is one example. A smart digital reality can be applied to everything from small-scale home-based actions to live a zero-waste lifestyle, to the production of components at manufacturing facilities and even solutions for entire cities. Technology and innovation help us remain agile and shift public norms for sustainable living.

Siddhant Gupta is the global vice-president for energy at Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence

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