Climate-related disasters are no longer one-off incidents. While one hears about havoc caused by cyclones, floods and landslides during monsoons every year, extreme heat during summers has become a way of life too. In fact, 85% of districts in India are exposed to floods, droughts and cyclones. Around 40% of districts have witnessed hazard-type reversals – flood-prone areas turning drought-prone and vice-versa. What do frequent climate disasters lead to? The extent of annual income that poor households can lose from a single disaster event could be as high as 85%. There is almost a 20%-25% jump in school absenteeism due to climate disasters resulting in significant learning loss.

The worst sufferers in climate-related disasters are women and children. They suffer 14 times more than men. What’s worse is that it takes close 19 years for a poor household to recover from a major climate shock and today, we are talking about climate disasters becoming more frequent. Rohini Nilekani Foundation Philanthropies, in a recent report titled ‘Resilience – Moving beyond surviving climate disasters to supporting communities to thrive’, has stressed on the importance of moving from reactive relief to proactive resilience building.

Shift from relief-centric disaster model key as climate shocks grow more frequent, says philanthropist Rohini Nilekani.

India’s green economy is more than a climate agenda, it has the power to drive the country to its self-sufficiency goal by mid-century. However, many important labour-intensive value chains remain untapped and underfunded, slowing India’s economic progress. In this episode of Unusual Suspects, we put the focus back on what really matters – not just the market architecture that underpins the green economy but the people and communities that are its driving force. Join this conversation where host Gaurav Choudhury speaks with Tanya Kak from Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and Abhishek Jain from CEEW on what it takes to map a just transition in India. They explore how durable, scalable solutions to complex challenges emerge when community learning intersects with smart market design — enabling bottom-up change that is both sustainable and equitable.

First Published in MoneyControl 

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello and a warm welcome to a very special podcast series, Unusual Suspects. I’m your host, Gaurav Choudhury. This is a series about unravelling stories of entrepreneurs, investors, professionals and philanthropists who are disruptors, yet not in your face.

The disruptions have consistently delivered on the purpose and the mission they’ve embarked on. Their values are as strong as the mission. In each episode, I speak to one such leader, all leaders, talking to her or him or them about their businesses, work, interests, challenges, pivot moments and turning points.

Unusual Suspects streams on earshot.in, on spotify.com, on Apple Podcasts, on Google Podcasts, on moneycontrol.com and a host of other podcast streaming platforms and directories. A bit of a context for this episode, some numbers always help. A study by the Council for Energy, Environment and Water, CEEW, estimates that by 2047, India’s green economy could unlock $1.1 trillion of annual market, generating an estimated 48 million jobs and attracting about $4.1 trillion in cumulative investment across 36 plus green value chains.

Having said that, however, many of these value chains, which are extremely labour intensive at this point in time, remain grossly underfunded, posing serious threat to India’s climate commitments. And a green economy is far more wider, the universe is far wider than we generally think. You know, it’s not just solar panels and electric vehicles, which of course have become the most tangible and visible symbols of change in the green economy universe.

It is also about circular economy, bioeconomy and nature-based solutions. These are the potential to scale into billion-dollar sectors, creating massive opportunities for MSMEs, cooperatives and of course, community enterprises. In this episode, I have with me two distinguished experts who know this area like the back of their palms.

I’m joined by Abhishek Jain, Director, Green Economy and Impact Innovation, CEEW, and Tanya Kak, Portfolio Lead, Climate and Environment, Rohini Nilekani, Philanthropist. Welcome to the show, Abhishek and Tanya. Delighted to have you here.

Thank you, Gaurav. Equally happy to be here. Thank you.

You know, Tanya, first to you, it’s a context-setting question and also a basic one, but fundamental nonetheless, for the benefit of our viewers and listeners and also for my own benefit. India’s green economy is more than climate-only agent, isn’t it? It can be a key driver for India’s growth and there’s no gains in the fact that the opportunities are immense, tremendous. In such a situation when the promise is obvious, the potential is obvious and for everyone to see, why is nurturing green innovation entrepreneurship critical to India’s development momentum and long-term growth trajectory? Tanya? Yeah, thanks so much, Gaurav.

So I think when one thinks about the green economy or the transition that’s sort of underway, the way we like to think about it at the foundation is that it’s not just a decarbonisation project, it’s equally a people and livelihood sort of transition that’s happening all at once. So it’s very much about the developmental trajectory that India is on under climate constraints and therefore that represents both challenges and opportunities. Now when we think about a lot of the green innovations that have been successful in the past, like solar energy, LED bulbs, etc, we know that at the early risk stage, there is a different kind of capital that’s required to absorb that sort of risk, but you need a system of players to come together to enable systems to move in certain directions.

And the way we articulate it at the foundation is through Samad Sarkar Bazaar, these three players really sort of coming together to help systems move in some directions. And so I think the question is what sort of capital is suited to catalyse innovation and momentum at that early stage of when markets are not ready to absorb it. So when things are not measurable, assets are not quantifiable, or there is a lack of standardisation and policy regulation is not so clear, what do you do in those circumstances to spur innovation, which you know is very, very important? So I’ll just pause.

Yeah, right. Absolutely. You know, very well said.

Abhishek, what’s your view on this? Why is the green economy so critical in the broader context of India’s development goals? Yeah, thanks, Gaurav. You did highlight in your opening statements, like how green economy, I mean, some of our research that has shown that we can generate massive employment opportunities, 48 million people can be employed by 2047, just in these sectors, in a time when we are increasingly looking at new jobs that need to be created, because our youth is coming into workforce, 8 to 10 million of them every year, we need to rapidly create new kinds of jobs. I think green does give us that opportunity.

But apart from just the jobs, there is this economic opportunity, you also highlighted that. But there’s one thing which I would like to add, which so far did not come in, why I think this is so important for India, is also from our sovereignty and Atma Nirbharta perspective. Right now, when you look at energy, almost 86% of our crude is coming from imports.

As you move towards renewables and electric vehicles, and second generation biofuels, a lot of that import can be substituted with domestic solutions. You look at materials and minerals and metals, almost 80% plus of our copper ore and copper concentrates are now imported. 100% of our lithium, nickel, cobalt is imported.

A lot of that, if you do circularity of your minerals and metals, can be again domestic streams, right? So you create more and more sovereignty through the green. And finally, even in terms of new age materials and minerals, every other thing that you touch around you is a polymer today. It could be plastics, it could be paints, it could be packaging materials, and so on and so forth.

Even your mobile covers, right? All of that comes from petrochemical base, again, which is not a resource that we have inherently in India. A lot of that is important. And as you look at now converting your biomass, all the feedstock that we have, India is the largest producer of biomass in the world.

If you use that biomass, move that into bioreactors and other value-added processes to create biopolymers, biopaints, biomaterials, that’s how you displace again your dependency for materials from an import to a sovereignty angle. And same goes for fertiliser. We are right now dependent, food security is critically dependent on huge dependence on imported fertilisers.

The bioinputs can actually displace that. So that’s the story of green. Green is not just good for the environment, it is great for our economic growth, for our jobs, and for the national security.

Absolutely. Now, Abhishek, you know, it’s a good point that you actually have raised and also touched upon. But Tanya, coming back to you, and this is a question that I’ll also circle back to Abhishek, is on investment.

And one of the major barriers to investing in green solution, of course, is the very high upfront cost. And that remains a considerable barrier to surmount, especially in the early stages, because it’s not easy to scale in the early stages, and the results come in much later than a conventional industry. That said, however, it’s now evident there isn’t enough demonstrable evidence on from ground to suggest that costs have fallen sharply over the years, because of technological efficiencies that have set in.

You know, my question, Tanya, is how does scale actually bend the cost curve in practise? Does it follow a conventional industry kind of a, you know, route or a pattern? And from an investor’s point of view, while evaluating such investment decisions or solutions, should investors rely on conviction or there are some other signals that are specific to the green economy? Tanya? Yeah, thank you. So I think essentially, you know, when you look at finance or capital in general, it’s not one homogenised monolith, right? The stack has sort of different sort of capitals which serve different purposes. So for instance, philanthropic capital might have different incentives, from CSR, the corporate social responsibility, that you know, the kind of money that flows in from there, or then the capital that also flows in from venture capital funds or more commercial capital.

Now, each one of them has a different role to play. And so in that sense, I would say that, you know, depending on the maturity of the field and the need of the ecosystem, each one of them will look for the different things as well. So I think what we have found, particularly because we support a lot of work on the nature based solutions and agroecology side, and also the conservation and nature linked sort of nature positive and planet positive solutions, which also help communities, but also economy at large.

What we have found is a lot of these growth or growth trajectories as we see them are nonlinear. So early for philanthropic capital, for instance, which we often call as catalytic capital for public finance to be crowded in, or then later private capital to sort of private commercial capital to step in at scale. The freedom or flexibility that it can operate with is that it can really take some high bets and high, which which which come with high risks, right.

So at that stage, what you’re really looking for is the potential for, for instance, if we do take a place based approach to certain challenges, if we do take a systems based approach to certain challenges, then a lot of the effort would also go in finding the enabling conditions that lead to the outcomes and not just the outcomes that you’re targeting at the end. So for instance, I’ll give you an example for agroecology, a lot of the times we could be looking at solutions which are, you know, affecting both yields incomes, and then also looking at greenhouse gas emissions, for instance, in terms of carbon sequestration. But right at the get go in, you know, in the whole agroecology field, as you know, when it spurred, there was not much evidence, which, which would make you take the economic bet or, you know, look at scale at large for the entire country.

What what what there was, was very solid evidence that there is a hypothesis here with some systems orchestrators, which need to sort of come in to build the field. So do you invest in just the outcomes from the get go? Probably not, you look at what are the conditions that the field may need, which will then spur that kind of innovation that can be taken by private capital, or public finance much later. Similarly, I would say that, you know, the conditions for scale become very different for different kinds of for other kinds of capital, but at least from a philanthropic lens, some of the things that we look at is is the, you know, fee, are there innovators who want to disrupt the ecosystem, then what are the enabling conditions that may lead to some of these systems moving, whether it’s from the government, whether it’s from the markets, and then what is the theory of change, which probably comes for with a vision for three to five years in terms of how do you want to move the field and not just with your organisation and innovation, but the ecosystem as a whole, which would be much beyond the mission that your organisation serves.

So those are some of the factors we look at, at least from a philanthropic lens. Absolutely. Now, Abhishek, beyond solar, which green technologies or value chains show the strongest evidence of such cost trajectories? Abhishek? Certainly, I think, very closely after solar, the batteries are showing a very similar trend, where costs have come down crashing over the last few years.

Lithium ion batteries, in particular, in the last couple of years, have really come down to two and a half times of their price points, right? So you’re seeing that economies of scale learning efficiencies that have kicked in in the battery space. I think the next, which is still a little early on its journey of evolution is green ammonia and green hydrogen. India has already started to become competitive on green ammonia front.

Some of the latest bids are showing. But I think there is still a lot more room for efficiencies and learnings to kick in, for more innovations to kick in. But I would also say that we are going to see some step change in these technologies going forward.

The solar prices that have come down, have come down on the technology, which is today now mature. But the innovators are already working on new generation of solar panels and solar cells. And as that happens, you may see a step change coming in, instead of a linear decline that we have seen in the technologies.

And that’s why it is important for the investors in the space, whether it is the, as Tanya said, whether those who are putting in early risk capital or those who are coming in a little late stage, to keep an eye on where the innovation is evolving and support some of the early stage innovations in the next generation frontier technologies. Especially some of these sectors would need deep tech innovation. But then there are some sectors which need a lot of field building and a lot of support at the enabling ecosystem level.

Only solving for innovation may not help you. You need to get the rest of the ecosystem pieces of the puzzle sorted. What do I mean by that? Sometimes policy signals can drive the cost down and not just innovation and economies of scale.

LEDs were a great example, right? About 10 to 12 years ago, when government of India launched the famous Ujala programme, the one LED bulb used to cost 350 to 400 rupees a piece. But that large scale procurement signalling just gave the market the confidence that they can invest in large capacities. And that led to the prices coming down to 50 rupees a piece.

So a lot of those other elements that can help market move forward faster, typically government procurement or sometimes government mandates for private sector to do blending. We are seeing that with the extended producer responsibility rules, EPR rules, or with the biofuel blending, you give a firm signal to the market, the markets then start putting investments into the technologies which are then stable. Absolutely.

Tanya, taking on from what Abhishek has said, in India, green investments remain concentrated in mature asset heavy segments, while several economically viable value chains remain under finance. And that seems to be a paradox that we haven’t been able to crack at scale yet, although there are signs and you can see some green shoots appearing here and there. Labour intensive green value chains, for example, particularly in the circular economy, all the bioeconomy, all the nature-based solutions remain broadly capital starved.

Why is it important to embed social equity in climate finance? Isn’t it very critical now? How do we fix this misalignment in capital? Because if everybody is chasing conventional ROI, then capital will continue to remain a scarce resource in this very vital sector, isn’t it? Yeah, no, that’s exactly right. So I think it goes back to the question of what is our mental model when we think about green economy and when we think about the transition at large. So which is why it goes back to this fundamental thing that I specified right in the beginning, which is that if you look at development as the foremost lens through which a lot of this transition is happening, then it becomes very clear that your existing sort of developmental challenges across health, livelihood, skills, education would continue to be there.

And as the transition happens, it will create winners and losers. So when that new reality is not unfolding in a distant future, it’s happening right now. And it’s layering on to the existing sort of societal structures that we already operate with.

So for instance, we know that those who are marginalised, particularly women, children, disabled, elderly, etc., are facing the brunt of the crisis a lot more. So when the whole nation went through a series of heat waves and the heat crisis that has been plaguing us for many years now, we knew that the experience of a street vendor, for instance, is very different from a very urban middle-class person who is probably able to enjoy basic amenities. I think some of those inequities then, if we don’t operate and design and take care of them at the get-go from the design stage itself, unfortunately will get inbuilt in some of the institutions and structures that do come to support such investments in the future as well.

So I think something that has been very important for us at the Foundation, again, has been that one is the existing layers of inequities that do stand to get exacerbated as we look at financing some of the new innovations that come into play. And the second is, even within some of the green jobs that are getting created, now we know that there’s a lot of informality of labour that exists in our economy. We know that maybe 40-60% of our women are working in agricultural labour force.

Now, if the funding is going disproportionately towards, say, renewable energy jobs, what happens to their skills, their capacity, and how do you look at land as a living ecosystem, which does leave some people behind? So I think the broader point really is, can we design for the margins? Because then that would automatically take care of a lot of the inequity issues that do stand to get exacerbated. Absolutely. Yes, a very nice phrase, you need to design for the margins.

Abhishek, we have alluded to this in earlier questions, that green investments take a lot of time to bear fruit because project viability is evaluated over decades and the gestation period is far longer than conventional industry. So consequently, the payback periods are also very, very long on a comparative scale. Tanya, in a previous response to a question, did allude to crowding in a private investment.

How do you think, and that is why policy becomes critical, because we need to have the right appropriate policy architecture in place, and also a lot of public resources and heavy lifting will have to be done by the government for commercial private capital to be crowded in, so that, you know, it sets the triggers, the multiplier effects. How do you think can policy action accelerate market creation and investment readiness across the green economy? Abhishek? Yes, let me answer your question, but then I would also like to elaborate on the role of different kinds of capital. I think that can play here.

So policy, to my mind, have really three main roles to play. One policy, as in government as a procurer, as I discussed earlier, that can itself create a demand signal. Second, government as a regulator, which helps create a more level playing field between the green and the grey.

Because if you see right now, why typically a lot of the green struggles in the early days is because the unit economics of the green would be higher than the unit economics of the grey. Grey has enjoyed the economies of scale, the learning efficiencies have quickened, and this is a new sector. So as a regulator, then if you can create that level playing field between the two, that can help solve for it.

Many a times, let me give you a very concrete example. A lot of the circular economy value chains struggle with the GST implication. Why? Because the input of their feedstock is coming from the informal market.

A lot of the circular economy waste is getting collected and aggregated by the informal players. So at the input, they are not paying any GST, but at the output, when they have to sell it to the, let’s say, offtakers, there is a GST implication. They cannot offset that implication because they have not paid the GST upfront.

So suddenly the recycled products become 18% more costly than the fresh product. This is where the regulation has to come in and create a level playing field for the green. And the third is giving the clear directional and enabling ecosystem.

If the policies say that, okay, this is our target, that’s where the markets start following very clearly. Once policy has said back in 2014-15 that India wants to deploy 100 gigawatt of solar, by 2022, the markets responded, and by 2024, we had 100 gigawatt of solar into the market. So policy can give that firm direction, and then the investors start following that piece.

The very same kind of concerns that we have today, let’s say, talking about on bioeconomy, circular economy, were there 10 years ago, 12 years ago for solar. But once the firm policy signals came in, the market starts responding. And to your point on, I think, the payback periods or longer duration gestation, one, it’s important for us to realise that India in general has done a lot less when it comes to deep tech-based innovation and entrepreneurship and sector building.

So, and deep tech is capital intensive, whether it is in green, whether it is in advanced materials, whether it is in biotechnology, deep tech is capital intensive. So that’s important to understand. The second bit is that there cannot be just one playbook to scaling things up, which is the VC model, the venture capitalist model.

I think the whole world with the innovation and entrepreneurship sort of influx that we have seen in the last few years, the default model to scale things up has become the venture capitalist model, where the timelines are typically five to eight year fund cycles. Those who are putting money are not sitting on their own money, but are also raising money. So they have to return the money within five to eight year cycle.

So you cannot then make long-term investments, even if the upside can be much higher. So it’s not just that, okay, the upside is not there in green, but sometimes you need a longer gestation period to realise the same upside. And that’s where you need new different vehicles through which you can deploy capital.

We’re seeing like some of the family back venture capitalists are able to do much better because they have the room to do longer gestation investments than the shorter one. And then many of the playbooks would be outside equity model. You can have very sustainable businesses, which are just running on debt.

A lot of the small and medium scale businesses can be very profitable businesses, great IRRs, but you do not need necessarily equity play there. I think that’s also equally important to recognise. A lot of the bio-economies, circular economy, may not need equity play, but need your debt play for them to scale up.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Climate solutions typically deliver benefits slowly.

That is now well understood. And at the same time, however, private players cannot be expected to bear the risk alone. And so Tanya, what role do patient and blended capital and primarily philanthropy play in bridging this gap? Tanya? Yeah, no, thank you.

So I think it goes back to the points that I’ve spoken a little bit about. We keep talking about philanthropy as a catalytic system. But I think in and of itself, it also has an independent role to sort of absorb a lot of these risks that come with innovations.

And sometimes not just innovations, but how those innovations sort of interact with people, societies, communities, and create the demand for then governments and markets to act on. So I think, again, going back to a few examples of the work that we’ve supported, where the signals were not very clear, the return on investment farther from sort of reality. You know, there are many partners in the agroecology space, but also the nature-based solution space that we have supported.

One such partner is the Consortium of Agroecological Transformations. And I think the early investment that really came in the field was just about how can we begin to build this field and create an investable opportunity for different kinds of capital to come together, whether in the form of blended concessional finance or also converge with public finance in some ways. And for that to happen, there has to be sort of a smooth, seamless sort of case being built with the communities, for the communities, and then with the governments and private sector.

So sometimes the role of just ecosystem enablers also becomes really, really important for some of these early stage innovations, I would say. And there, I think, you know, philanthropy can really play a very important role to show proofs of concepts, to show that there is a possibility here, but equally to show what’s not working. I would say that, you know, that flexibility to experiment with failure is probably something that philanthropic capital is very well positioned to take on.

And that’s something it should not shy away from, because before we get to know what’s working, we’ll probably get to know a hundred times over what’s not working. And maybe there’s benefit and merit to learn from failure. You know, Abhishek, how ready is Indian philanthropy to support the ecosystem building in the Indian green economy? And related to that, as a supplementary, do you think, do philanthropic actors sufficiently recognise climate change as an intersectional issue, Abhishek? Yeah, that’s a, that’s a hard one.

And I, but I’ll still try and be candid about this. I think there’s a long way to go for Indian philanthropy on this. A lot of them have started recognising climate change as one of the area, but they’re not realising the intersections that climate change has with almost everything that the philanthropy is trying to support.

Be it healthcare, be it education, be it livelihoods or agriculture, whatever you may call, climate is cross-cutting today. It is impacting each and every investment that these philanthropies are trying to make. If you are working on healthcare and not looking at climate, you don’t know the next vector-borne diseases outbreak that are going to happen in five to seven years in the same areas where you’re working on healthcare.

So that kind of intersectionality is not coming in today. Even though there’s a little bit of recognition that, okay, climate has to be one of our vertical, I think it has to be a horizontal in any philanthropist strategy. And the second bit that you asked, which is the ecosystem building, and Tanya beautifully spoke about that, I think there again, there’s a long journey to be travelled.

Most of the philanthropy, especially driven by CSR, ends up going into here and now projects. Sometimes also with this pressure of getting the utilisation done by 31st of March, you do just here and now immediate projects. Very Limited has started moving into programmatic interventions, which are slightly more long-term, slightly more resilient in nature.

But where we really need to go is ecosystem-level interventions, where you are not just supporting one programme, but you are really coordinating with others in the space that, okay, if someone is solving for the policy issue, here is it, we need to solve the skilling issue for the same sector, or here is it, we need to solve for the innovation for the same sector. So I think unless that ecosystem-level piece comes in, the overall progress becomes a lot slower. And the actual bang for the buck is not really realised.

I mean, India today has close to 30,000 crore worth of CSR funding. And then of course, there is family philanthropy and other things. I think that’s a reasonable amount of money to actually be utilised for real large scale, fast track shifts that we can see.

But because of this fragmented nature of going into one project at a time, I think we are really not leveraging it fully. Absolutely. Tanya, do you agree that there is a bit still a fair degree of silo-based thinking, so far as philanthropic investment in climate action is concerned, and it’s about time to break those and get into a horizontal mode.

And so we currently seem to be stuck in some kind of a tick boxing approach. We are ticking the box before the year ends, and not really looking at the broader picture and the investment cycle. Do you agree with that, Tanya? Yeah, no, 100%.

I mean, I go everything with what sort of like, you know, Abhishek just sort of spoken, because I think at R&P, like our one point mandate has been to socialise other philanthropies into similar ways of giving. For instance, almost 80-90% of our funds today are multi-year unrestricted sort of grants for the longer term. And the biggest learning from there has been that, you know, it’s not about accountability versus trust.

It’s really about if you’re able to just, I mean, if you’re able to just do what philanthropic capital is supposed to do, which is take on risk for the longer term, and just trust the partners on the ground to do what they do best, then you know, different kinds of results will show, even the ones that you probably did not imagine could show up before. So I think that’s a very important point. I mean, and the numbers stand for themselves.

That’s also the reason why we seeded India Climate Collaborative, along with a bunch of other philanthropies, which is that actually domestic philanthropy in India does not have a coordinated vision for climate as a challenge. And so what does that mean? For India, this was eight, nine years ago that, you know, we wanted to sort of set up an entity which would mobilise domestic philanthropy to look at climate as a horizontal. What happens when climate stands to undo developmental gains that you are looking at with every sector? Can you can you begin to see it as a risk? Of course, momentum is slow, and it’s hard to come.

But you know, you have to try and you have to make these efforts in the way that we can. So we take that responsibility very seriously. But I echo everything that sort of Abhishek said.

And Tanya, what are the key motivators and barriers for philanthropy to engage with climate actions? What are the key barriers, for instance? Yeah, so I think what’s happening in the current ecosystem, and I think there is progress, compared to what we had, say, nine to 10 years ago, when we seeded this India Climate Collaborative. I think the top barrier is very much the siloed thinking. So you know, each philanthropist is sort of operating, they’re also very much like the people you meet in the economy.

So each philanthropist is operating with their own sort of set of core interests, which might be spanning health, education, which is typically where funding has been very dominant. So to make the case for why climate is not a distant reality, and it affects everything that you’re doing right now has been a harder task to make an investable case for. Also, I would say a second top reason is that, you know, when you make investments in health and education, you see x, y, z outcomes come through in the next few years, right? So learning out, you inject an intervention, then you can see some effect on learning outcomes, perhaps in the next three to five years.

With climate, besides, you know, the very visible fields in terms of, say, the energy transition, when you look at some of the more invisible infrastructure that’s to be built, it’s also avoiding losses, right? So you can quantify it in some ways, in the current, in the present scenario. But avoiding losses, the thing with avoiding losses is there are unknown, unknown, so you will never be able to fully quantify exactly what you’re able to do with the current intervention. So I think some of it is because it’s, you know, it needs to be a lot more probably measurable, quantifiable, but we’ve been sort of arguing against it, not everything can be measured and quantified.

And so at some point in time, you have to look at it as a lens which you if you don’t provide for and if nature is not an economic infrastructure, kind of a lens, don’t take that lens in your current decision making, then you stand to lose, right? Absolutely. Yeah, you know, Abhishek, Tanya spoke about unknown unknowns, but there are also known unknowns. And, you know, how far does one of the known unknowns now, of course, is evidence-based decision making.

Now, how far does evidence-based decision making in philanthropies? How far have these been successful? Can evidence-based decision making end up actually, you know, solving the problem of the underfunded areas and also low studied areas? And how can evidence and risk taking be balanced to support innovation? Because it can cut both ways. Lack of evidence could also mean there is very little capital going into underfunded areas. And it can also be the opposite.

So there’s both a positive and a negative side to evidence-based decision making. How do you think it should be balanced? And how should it work in this kind of an area where philanthropy is very active? Yeah, I think one of the things that philanthropy has started doing, but not doing enough in the Indian context, especially, is that taking some entrepreneurial bets on a few things in the sense that not everything will get solved by one of projects. But how do we do field building where you are taking longer term bets on a few efforts, including supporting entrepreneurship? I think typically philanthropy feels like, OK, here is a private entrepreneur.

It is maybe they are trying to, let’s say, do something on soil health. Oh, it is a private company. Why should we be supporting a private company? So this whole for-profit, not-for-profit piece comes into play.

But the social entrepreneurship or social impact entrepreneurship is becoming a really large space where a lot of the young entrepreneurs are coming in and saying, OK, we want to solve a social problem. We want to solve a green problem. But we want to do it in a way which is sustainable, economically viable for us.

And that’s why we are setting up for-profit setups. But then philanthropy ends up hesitating in supporting those. I think some have come forward, but there is a big room there, I think.

And that’s, again, where the leverage of the philanthropic capital becomes higher, because you don’t have to do everything with your own grant money. Your limited catalytic capital can really crowd in a lot more private capital, which is where we started. I think that’s where I think it’s a journey I think the Indian philanthropy is on.

I would say we have seen progress over the last seven, eight years, but there is a long way to go. Absolutely. Tanya, and this is a question I’ll also take it to Abhishek subsequently, and this is the final question, is that we spoke about various, a range of areas, but clearly there needs to be a change in attitude and approach.

So far as philanthropy is concerned, eventually, to put it down in one word, it will require engineering a mindset shift from charity to catalytic capital. How can we bring that about Tanya? Yeah, I think, you know, you have to meet people where they’re at, what is true for philanthropists is true for think tanks is true for practitioners in the ecosystem, and everybody is operating with their own incentives. So you know, you have to meet them where they’re at.

I mean, if there is one thing that I would say is that to look at nature as a strategic asset, right, it’s not something which is interdependent, which is not connected with business as usual or the economy as it’s panning out. It’s very much a part or it’s very much an economic, social and political infrastructure that’s fuelling everything that you do in business as usual. And I think when that mental model shifts that, you know, it’s not just an ESG investment and a silo to be treated in that sense.

But it’s actually something that’s driving every single thing that we do. Then I think we begin to look at investments and the risks we want to take slightly differently, right? It’s not, it’s not something that I need to plan for in addition, but it’s something that I need to plan with. And maybe that’s the mental model that needs to shift.

Abhishek, how do we bring about that mindset shift from charity to catalytic capital? Yeah, I think a lot of it has to happen among the peers. And I think organisations like RNP are already on that journey where they are themselves doing this, but also trying to convince the peers and also take people on the ground to demonstrate like what this actually leads to, like how these ecosystems can be built. It’s a patient game.

And we are trying to, to the extent we can play that role wherever we are engaging with philanthropists, showcase the real world examples that this is how sector building can happen. And this is how a 10 year long horizon of sustained investments in a space can actually make that sector sustainable. We have seen international philanthropy do that, whether it is in the energy access sector in India, whether it is now happening in circular textile space, we need to just showcase more peer examples and demonstrations that this is possible for slowly the mindset to shift.

Absolutely. Now, very well said. And thank you, Tanya and Abhishek for sharing your deep insights and perspectives on a range of issues.

Thank you for taking the time out and dropping by to have this conversation with us for this podcast. Thanks so much. Thank you both.

Indeed a pleasure.

TRANSCRIPT:

Reporter: Viewers, we live in an age where global warming feels more personal than the next door Instagram story. Whether it’s the air of cities, whether it’s the scorching summers in Chennai, or the biting cold winter in Delhi, or the harsh monsoons in Mumbai, people feel it everywhere. But perhaps that’s not the starting point.

And I’m referring to a very interesting report that made me realise that there’s a lot more to do. And in fact, actions taken towards climate change will be inevitable. Maybe it is already inevitable.

I have with me Rohini Nilikani, Chairperson of Rohini Nilikani Philanthropies that helped formulate a thought provoking report that focusses on building community resilience in the face of climate change and disasters. Rohini, thanks so much for having this conversation with us. My first question to you would be and a very basic one, the report calls for the need of living in tandem with the new normal, which demands the new kind of thinking.

Rohini Nilikani: What is the new normal? And what is the new thinking? Thank you so much, Mallika. And for us, this report is very important because we’ve been working in the sector of environment and climate for a long time. And it was becoming very obvious that all these years we are saying climate change is coming.

But then you realise it’s already here. And there is plenty of data in this report to tell you that most of the districts of India are experiencing, almost 85% of them are experiencing forms of climate change related either weather patterns, changing floods, droughts, all those things on a regular basis. And that’s why we are calling it the new normal.

That this unfortunately is the new normal where you’re going to have to deal with unreliability all the time. There are going to be continuous shocks and one shock after the other. You hardly recover from one when another one is coming of extreme events.

And I really think we need to shift our mental model on this because we are very good in India at responding. When there’s a flood, we’ve become very much better in the last few years at responding, at preventing deaths, at pushing in more public funds for the recovery. But it’s not going to be enough.

So it needs a real mental reset. So that’s why we say we need new thinking for this new normal. And the report also illustrates many, many examples of that new thinking that are being experimented with by the Sarkar, of course, but also by Samaj entities, many civil society organisations, some of which we are so proud to support, which are enabling us to relook at this whole question of disaster from a community first lens, very much from a Samaj lens.

That’s the new thinking for me. Definitely. New old thinking.

New and needed thinking to fight climate change and also live with it. Rohini, one very important point I think the report makes, and you said that climate change is not just an event in many lives, right? It has become a periodic way of living for so many. In fact, quoting our statistics from yours, you said that 85% of districts in India tend to either face with one of the floods or cyclones or droughts on a regular basis.

And in fact, that frequency is so alarming that it is worrisome. What do you think communities have to do on the grassroots level, not just to fight or survive climate disasters, but also build a framework so that they can sustain the solution of it in the long term? This is the kind of brainstorming we’ve been convening for the last few years. And what we are seeing is the first thing I would say is we have to convey to communities that they have in them the agency to work for their own future, to secure themselves post disaster.

The state must step in to help. But instead of saying that the state will do something for you, they have to do something with the communities. So the communities have to be able to do it for themselves and pull in the required governmental or even, you know, bazaar resources for what they need.

And I think therefore, getting people to make their own community level plans, first of all, to understand what assets they have that might be at risk, both public assets and private assets. How do you then secure them? What happens? What are the roles and responsibilities when unfortunately something does happen like it could be a flood? And how do you then post that? You will get a lot of immediate government response post an event. But usually the real tragedy begins just a few days after that.

How do you put in place before a disaster, a kind of a scenario building an action plan, a place where everybody knows what they are going to do, what they have to do after something like that strikes. And then there are many innovations, both financial innovations and social innovations, which we are trying out. People are trying out to help communities respond, recover, and rehabilitate their communities and their livelihoods.

For example, I’ll just give you one example, Seeds, an organisation called Seeds has been developing these disaster wallets like Akshavi, where before any disaster happens, people get to authenticate the actual assets that they have, say it’s a house or a farm or a business. And suppose something happens and you lose those assets, which happens very routinely. Government can’t completely reimburse.

But the process of, because it is already pre-authorised and authenticated, the way in which you can get back some compensation for that is quicker, faster, smoother, and more just and equitable. So that’s something that is truly useful. There are many other things that are being done is, first of all, to get communities to understand their own vulnerabilities, their geographical vulnerabilities, the vulnerabilities in the face of whether you’re in the climate change pathway because of too much heat or whatever it is.

Reporter: So do you think education is lacking there? Education? I think awareness, when we say education, we think of schools and colleges, there it has to happen. But I think we need new forms of storytelling, Malika. Where’s Bollywood? We need Bollywood.

Rohini Nilikani: We need books. We need, I mean, you young people have many forms of communication through social media. Lots is happening.

But I think what needs to happen more often is where people don’t feel helpless, helpless, hopeless, where they feel like we can do something together. So I have a question for you that made me think about it and contemplate over it for a very long time. In fact, when I was noting down questions, number one, firstly, I also read in your introduction to this report, you said that some disaster affected households, recovery, they take about 19 years to recover from economic losses as a part of this repercussion that happens to them because of climatic disasters.

So that is extremely, I think, nerve wracking in a way where families are taking more than about two decades to recover from economic losses. So how does one prevent that? And second, you’ve spoken about the role of the government in all this and steps have been taken. Initiatives, as you said, have been taken in the past couple of years.

But what incentive can be practically given to the private community, the private funders to help and catalyse this process altogether? Because I think climate change is at that given point in time where it needs not just the government’s attention, but as you said, grassroots level attention as well as private funders also to come in as and as your report highlights the bazaar to come in. So what do you think is going to incentivise that move? When you say private funders, do you mean like philanthropy? Philanthropy, or even private institutions to take it up in some form or the other. I know CSR activities exist, but how can it be increased? I think CSR has certain restrictions of what they can do.

Certainly, they can come in quickly for post-disaster response. There are houses to be rebuilt, there are materials to be given. There is mental health relief to be organised.

There are many silent things that are happening where CSR can step in. But I think there is a bigger role for private philanthropy to play, which is much more unrestricted in that sense and private people are free to give to whatever. I would say that this is a really call to action for private philanthropy to step in and look at how we can make communities much more self-reliant in the face of disasters.

One thing I’ll tell you which makes me sad is talking to a few agencies like Goonj, etc., which go in after disaster and help people. They do that by making sure that those people’s agency and dignity is not trampled upon. They don’t just become recipients of somebody’s largest donation, but they become partners in rebuilding their own communities.

So they were telling me that, off late in the last few years, that people like us who sit in urban India and are relatively secure, somehow we have lost our empathy because there are so many disasters happening all the time and there is so much call for, give me money, I want to give food, clothing, shelter, blankets, whatever, that the kind of response we used to get five to seven years ago from the people of India, for the other people of India who are suffering, that empathy and sympathy has dropped. And I don’t want to use this interview to say, no, no, we need that empathy and sympathy more than ever because people are now, earlier a disaster would happen and people would crawl back, but they would become alright, and then much later something else would happen. Now it’s happening before they can, they’re still crawling, they haven’t stood up and something else is hitting them.

What is a practical step for us to take, for people like us in urban cities? So when calls for help come, okay, do, even if you do very little, every little bit count for somebody there in Assam, somebody there in Bihar, somebody there maybe even in Kerala or wherever these things are happening, all along India’s hinterland and our coastline. So I just want to say, sympathy and empathy is what makes us human. Let’s not forget that it’s continuously needed.

Today I think middle-class families spend 5000 rupees on a pizza night. Ek night ka toh rakho, every time. Because that’s what connects us to our interconnected future.

I took you slightly off track, but I did want to say this message, ki ye, this is really a question of our humanity. So more than ever, Indians need to reach out when they need to help other Indians. So let’s not drop that empathy which we’ve always had for all these years.

I can understand why people are fatigued, but this is not the time for fatigue. It’s time to take action. We have to keep that chord going.

Reporter: Rohini, I think I’m going to take this opportunity and also ask you, for youngsters especially who are at the forefront of building decisions, influencing decisions rather, what steps can they take to contribute to climate change and building communities that can fight through resilience, as the report also highlights? Because we know that we can go and perhaps donate. But what’s the first step that we should take as youngsters? I think when it comes, you know, we think that all these things happen only in villages and remote parts of India. It’s absolutely not true.

Rohini Nilikani: It happens right here where we are sitting in Mumbai. It happens in Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Jaipur, everywhere. So first thing I would say to young people is, first, understand.

Because unfortunately, my generation and the generations of these last 300 years, somewhat unknowingly, but sadly, have left young people like you and even younger people like my grandson, very vulnerable to climate change and what’s happening to this planet. First, become aware of what we ourselves are doing and why. And second thing I would say, be part of anything in your neighbourhood.

It could be a waste cleanup drive. It could be a collection for something. I’ll tell you why, because that is how you build the samaj muscle, the societal capacity to come together for collective action.

So for young people, do things. Become aware of what’s really happening. Look at the science.

Look at the history. Look at the technological innovation that’s also coming. So there’s a lot of hope also.

Get in touch with those things first. And secondly, get out of your screens, if you can, just for a little while, and get involved with some neighbourhood activity. Because when something like a disaster comes, and it will come unfortunately, then you will have the muscle that can kick in when you need to all work together and play a role when something bad happens.

I hope it doesn’t happen in your communities. But if it does, this is the time to think that all of us have a role to play. Definitely.

Reporter: Baby steps, for sure. Rohini, another question that comes to the mind, especially if you think about climate change in the context of India’s geography, we’re a very diverse country with very geographical challenges, as you said. And communities need to be aware of their own geographical vulnerabilities.

How do you think policies made in this direction can be customised or can actually suit the geographical needs of different regions, at the same time, fight resilience in the long term for the coming decade or so?

Rohini Nilikani: That’s a good question, because your response has to be very contextual to your region. So CEW, for example, has had map India’s vulnerabilities and climate risk. This climate risk atlas has now been combined with looking at what’s happening with, say, heat.

And using those maps to create heat action plans at the local level. So the heat action plan required in Bangalore may be completely different from the heat action plan required in the Himalayas, for example. So contextual responses have to be planned based on your geographical location, your eco zones, etc.

So I completely agree with you that knowing that, knowing your specific risk, two very big risks in India, the whole Himalayan belt, our glaciers are melting and at least 500 million people will be immediately affected as that is happening. And then our coastal line, we have one of the longest coastlines of countries in the world. And that’s very, very vulnerable to warming seas.

People will have to start thinking or moving inland. How are we going to protect our coastlines from erosion? These are very context specific responses. So communities need to understand and need to get involved to respond in a very contextual and diverse manner.

And that’s why there are many heat action plans, disaster management plans being put in place. Samaj has to participate more. Okay, Samaj has to.

Reporter: I’m going to wrap this interview on that note, that Samaj needs to participate more and the young generation… And philanthropists need to come in boldly, quickly, generously, open the head, the heart and the pocket. The head, heart and the pocket. Thank you so much, Rohini, for having this conversation with us.

And viewers, today, climate change is more ubiquitous than we may realise. And therefore, as Rohini highlighted, it’s important for us to participate in our own capacities whenever, wherever possible. That’s all the time we have.

Stay tuned.