Chairman Marc Watum delivered a thought provoking speech at The 29th Global Forum, held in Oman's capital.
While sharing his thoughts on the desirability of smart, cognitive cities in local African contexts, the chairman asserted that the global expenditure on this transition does not align with the continent's development priorities.
The inconvenient truth about innovation expenditure
During this address, Marc Watum shared invigorating statistics that stunned the audience of world leading politicians and investors.
"How do you define sustainability?" The chairman asked rhetorically. "Depending on who you ask, and today you're asking an African, sustainability reaches beyond Oslo, or Copenhagen - or in the Middle East, Neom city (in Tabuk, SaudiArabia).
It is ironic that the model sustainable, smart, cognitive cities of the world have arisen as exemplars when they haven't in any recent period been a problem child in the world's environmental issues. Short of New York and Singapore who engages in emission offsetting activities to qualify as nearly if not fully net-zero emitters, while today appearing in every top 10 emissions list, virtually none of the most revered smart, cognitive cities have ever been describable as responsible for the world's unsustainable, unintelligent, and mindless environmental practices.
What is even more ironic is that in the last year alone, cities have spent in excess of $124 billion in the pursuit of this subject matter, yet natural disasters are still on the rise - we have floods, hurricanes, droughts, and famines that even if you deny have anything to do with the emission of green house gasses, you must question the true sustainability at play through this decision-making. Where I come from people are dying under this phenomenon, with only increasing population and resource scarcity pressures pending."
How investors and policymakers should define impact
Marc then used a visual example to reframe how we define sustainable impact. "When we look at this subject matter there are typically few types of impact we consider. All under the caveat that within the different types of impact exist different qualifying metrics. Within the different qualifying metrics exist different lenses. It is through these lenses that intervention decisions are made - and depending on how you perceive them, you can tell very different stories.
Take sustainability as a type of impact, for example. Within all of the metrics that form our opinions on sustainability sits emissions. When analysing emissions, the most common lenses include total or net carbon emissions, versus per capita metrics. Switching between the two lenses will reveal a totally different top 10 culprits list for the world, so who do you blame? Where do you press? Where should you invest? Can the impact trends objectively determine whether an investment into these infrastructures should have happened in the first place?
Further to this example, here is a map of the world's top 100 carbon emitting cities. Let's do a little exercise. With your visual mind, draw a separating line between the top and bottom hemispheres. If you know your geography, the equator is what you may have just imagined.
For the global South we have how many, maybe 9 or 10 cities appearing, none or whom are in the red?
Pay close attention to Australia, who has just 3 cities on its East/ South East Coast. If you really want a North hemisphere example look at Canada, virtually blank on this map. Look at what happens when we change to per capita instead - understandably Australia and Canada, who have relatively small populations, blow up as hot spots.
In Australia's case, if achieving global sustainability is truly the objective, then knowledge that three cities are rampant emitters would in my book justify the pursuit of these innovations. Meanwhile, aside from Joburg and Cape Town, Africa is the only place on this comparison to remain dark. So to pursue these innovations would require some very good reasons in my book."
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