SPECIAL FEATURE
“It is the density of urban spaces that enables a much larger reduction in per capita emissions.” Oliver Harman, Senior Policy Economist, International Growth Centre, London School of Economics
Oliver Harman
Oliver Harman is a spatial economist and economic geographer looking at
sharing the same infrastructure. You can pipe water to a hundred people using one kilometer of pipe, whilst in rural areas that one kilometer is not going to reach that many. In this quite resource- constrained world that we live in cities allow us to provide people with local public goods and services that give them the resilience to withstand sharp climate changes. Otherwise, it’s going to be a lot more costly. OFQ : In your article Climate change: won or lost in cities or by cities? you argue that cities could do more to combat climate change but are held back by higher forces. Is that a fair summary? OH: My point is that there needs to be better consideration on where the kind of power to make climate decisions lies with respect to how these issues affect the environment. It was former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who said that climate change will be urbanization, decentralization and internationalization. He is a Senior Policy Economist at the International Growth Centre based at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), a Research Associate at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford and Visiting Researcher at the LSE’s Department of Geography and Environment. He researches Sustainable Urban Development at the University of Oxford, teaches “Using Economics in Government” at King’s College London and even finds time to publish numerous articles and advise governments.
won or lost in cities. But no one was saying whether it was going to be won or lost by city or national governments. I think there needs to be a discussion on climate issues and where they are being dealt with, be it at city level or at national level. National governments are always reluctant to cede power to cities, but with some of the environmental challenges the urban level would be the best to deal with them. One example is air pollution, which is quite an urban problem and city leaders have an incentive to deal with this as a local public issue, while it is much less an emergency in rural areas. OFQ : Isn’t air pollution what most people associate with megacities? OH: This is true, but I think that a lot of the focus on megacities like Delhi, Dhaka or Cairo is actually a distortion. Instead, research should focus much more on intermediate and secondary cities to find solutions. Giving them more
power is only one part of the equation. To use this power wisely, they also need fact-based evidence. Research by Arnulf Grubler and David Fisk in their book Energizing Sustainable Cities shows that every time a small-sized city doubles, its energy increases by a factor of six. But then if you go from a medium to a large city, if you double that in size, energy use increases by a much lower factor. So there is this returns to scale as cities grow. It is in the process of urbanization where we need to make sure that intermediate cities, where a lot of the gains can be made, are being properly supported. OFQ : You are calling for more emphasis on intermediary cities. Who should lead this effort? OH: I think it needs to be interdisciplinary. I work as an economist with the International Growth Centre, for instance, and I strongly feel that economists need to stop talking to their own tribes
19
Powered by FlippingBook