DR. SHIV SOMESHWAR - Fmr. European Chair for Sustainable Development & Climate Transition - Sciences Po

How do urbanization and rural development impact communities differently? How can we make public policy and enlightened self-interest advance climate action?

Dr. Shiv Someshwar is a Development Clinician, diagnosing development of cities and nation states. A Visiting Professor at Columbia University, New York and at Sciences Po, Paris, he was the founder chair-holder of the European Chair for Sustainable Development and Climate Transition at Sciences Po. He helped set up the initial national and regional networks of the global Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

His publications cover a range of issues: planning, institutions and governance of sustainable development; climate change mitigation, adaptation, risks and offsets; and ecosystem management. He edited Re-living the Memories of an Indian Forester: Memoirs of S. Shyam Sunder and is presently writing The Fallacy of Evidence-Based Policy Making.

He convened and chaired the Independent Task Force on Creative Climate Action. Dr. Someshwar received a Ph.D. in urban planning from the University of California, Los Angeles, and he was a Bell-MacArthur fellow at Harvard University. He has two masters’ degrees, on housing and on environmental planning, and is also trained as a professional architect. He has previously worked at the Earth Institute, Columbia University, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, and the World Bank in Washington D.C.

"My area of work is sustainable development with a focus on climate. And you can ask what does sustainable development mean? To put it very simply, it means how do you have economic growth that is socially equitable and environmentally sustainable? It's not just that you have ecological sustainability; hence, that is sustainable development. Because lots of examples of economic, ecological, and ecologically sensitive growth need not be socially equitable. That's why this whole emphasis on just transition is not just about climate, but it's also about justice. It's about social equity in economic growth. Unlike in Europe, where there is now the call for degrowth or a circular economy, most parts of the world would look at you blankly if you talked about degrowth because they are hungry for growth.

And so sustainable development is about managing these trade-offs, which is what I've been working on. My work is really focused on institutions, and how do you bring the best of science into development. And for me, development is also spatially informed. It's not just the statistical averages, but it's spatially informed because you have people living in cities, villages, and homesteads. So, how do you become geographically sensitive in your policymaking? And that comes from my own background in planning and architecture."

https://www.sciencespo.fr/psia/sites/sciencespo.fr.psia/files/ITFClimateReport_Web.pdf
www.amazon.com/Reliving-Memories-Indian-Forester-Memoir/dp/9388337131

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