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The OPEC Fund
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  1. News
  2. Book Review: "Survival of the Greenest"
November 05, 2024
By Howard Hudson, OPEC Fund

Book Review: "Survival of the Greenest"

Adaptation or bust

2024_OFQ3 Survival of the Greenest.jpg

Heresy! That was the main accusation leveled at Charles Darwin for his 1859 book "On the Origin of Species". Yet by the turn of the century his theory of natural selection had shifted the paradigm and entered the mainstream. 

Now, over 160 years later amid a deepening climate crisis, a new book by the Algerian academic Amir Lebdioui opens with Darwin’s famous summary: “It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.” 

"Survival of the Greenest" is timely but not groundbreaking in a Darwinian sense – nor even about ecological survival per se. Instead its main aim is to challenge the global elites who “talk the talk”, yet break commitments while hiding behind green protectionism and double standards. The thrust of Lebdioui’s argument is to rewire the global economy, so that all countries become more resilient and the international community more equitable. 

Lebdioui presses the Global North to play fair on international cooperation, lest the entire system fails. By 2020, he notes, the USA had not even paid 20 percent of its commitment (less than US$8 of US$40 billion) to help poor nations adapt to climate change and mitigate higher temperatures. Elsewhere, he cites the EU’s 2023 Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism on goods such as cement, fertilizer and steel; while laudable from a climate perspective it is set to cost African nations more than US$30 billion in compliance investments and additional export fees. He also notes how the EU is blocking the World Trade Organization’s Environmental Goods Agreement by refusing to liberalize tariffs on bicycles, which by any account are emissions-free. 

Meanwhile, Lebdioui urges countries across the Global South to seize their “green windows of opportunity”, particularly in terms of product, process and chain upgrading. That means re-training workforces, adding value to products before export, making value chains more sustainable, while phasing out assets that may soon be “stranded” in the global green economy – primarily fossil fuels. 

In diversifying their economies, countries across the Middle East and North Africa will need to forge “new elite bargains”, which may be difficult politically, says Lebdioui. But from a technical perspective “activities such as chemical and temperature engineering services can be easily repurposed towards green hydrogen production, oil and gas reservoirs can be reconverted for carbon storage, and the construction and maintenance of offshore oil platforms involve a range of technological capabilities that can serve the construction of offshore wind platforms, while petroleum refineries can be repurposed as biofuel refineries.” It is possible, reassures Lebdioui, citing the rise of 3M from a small American mining concern in the early 1900s to a multibillion-dollar conglomerate with over 60,000 products – including Post-it notes – and 90,000 employees worldwide. 

As with industrialization in the 20th century, lessons can be learned but there are no “green silver bullets” and no one-size-fits-all solutions. Lebdioui says all countries should weigh up their regional contexts, the size of their domestic markets and their natural and human resources. “Some distinctions must also be drawn between ‘developing countries’,” he says, “which, as a category, lump together countries facing very different situations, ranging from China, Malaysia, and Mexico, which have developed green industrial capabilities, to low-income commodity-based nations such as Suriname, Togo, and Papua New Guinea.” 

Even the well-endowed should proceed with care, warns Lebdioui. He counsels caution for the coming “superpowers” of the green transition, urging among others Chile (for its lithium) and Rwanda (for its tantalum) to avoid the fate of Nauru. A small island nation in the Central Pacific with 10,000 people living on just over 20 km2, Nauru grew rich from phosphate mining in the late 20th century – at one point generating the world’s highest GDP per capita. Yet its deposits were soon exhausted, leaving its environment in ruins and the economy in freefall. 

Beyond such cautionary tales, Lebdioui presents a long list of inequalities and not just between the Global North and South. By 2021, Africa had captured less than 2.5 percent of global jobs in the renewable energy sector, for instance, while China boasted 42 percent. The same year renewable energy investment per capita was less than US$1 in sub-Saharan Africa but more than US$100 in the USA, Canada, Japan, China and the EU. 

So what can be done to speed up and scale up climate financing across the Global South? Many experts from various fields suggest “de-risking” as a way to get more private sector actors on board, either by reducing or transferring the burden of investment risk. Lebdioui agrees but with caveats, stressing the need to balance policy incentives with strict conditionality (as per the winning formula of the Asian Tiger economies in the late 20th century). The alternative is clear, warns Lebdioui, citing how almost half the projects in South Africa’s renewable power purchase program had failed by 2023. 

Accessible and digestible at only 73 pages, "Survival of the Greenest" is meticulously researched, clear and comprehensive. Yet there are one or two glaring omissions. There is barely any mention of nuclear power, despite its small land footprint, low-carbon emissions, high-energy density and overall reliability. There is also next to nothing on grid-scale batteries or geothermal energy, which can backstop the intermittent nature of wind and solar power generation or even (theoretically) provide a new lease of life to oil wells. These are small criticisms, however. This hugely informative book remains a must-read for any national or international policy-maker tasked with balancing climate planning with economic development – a roadmap to global economic justice via “heresy” and green innovation. 

Amir Lebdioui 

Amir Lebdioui is Associate Professor of the Political Economy of Development and Director, Technology and Management Centre for Development at the University of Oxford, UK. A development economist, his research has focused on the economic diversification of resource-dependent nations, green industrial policy and low carbon innovation, commodity value addition and biodiversity-based development models. An Algerian national, he holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK. Profile: https://www.qeh.ox.ac.uk/person/amir-lebdioui 

Watch the author’s trailer here:

Read the full open access book on Cambridge University Press here: https://bit.ly/3YSBrtx 

Expert view 

Gernot Wagner, Faculty Director, Climate Knowledge Initiative, Columbia Business School, USA 

“Amir Lebdioui nails the mandate of the green transition beginning with the opening quote by Charles Darwin: As uncomfortable as that is for most, perhaps especially for politicians the world over, none of this is if, it’s when economies adjust to the new climate realities. Despite this inevitability, there are, of course, plenty of choices along the way. Proactively managing the low-carbon transition clearly beats passively awaiting one’s fate. That’s also where the details begin to matter, and one hard truth is, for example, that the virtuous cycle of ever cheaper solar photovoltaics, battery, and other renewables prices creates a vicious cycle for energy companies. It’s a lot easier to make a lot of money when the price of energy basically remains constant, as it has been for coal for the past 200 years. Climate costs get externalized, profits get internalized. Solar photovoltaic producers like China’s LONGi have been instrumental in driving down the cost of solar PV, but their own bottom line is suffering as a result.”

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November 05, 2024
By Howard Hudson, OPEC Fund
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