Innovators in science and technology are becoming drivers of sustainability, even as the world struggles to overcome climate change’s surging challenges.  The environment’s stewards and stakeholders – governments, civil society, multilateral agencies, academia and corporates – must become the enablers of innovative initiatives. The need for cost effective innovative initiatives to create prosperous, environmentally sustainable societies is most acute in Africa and Asia, including Southeast Asia’s ASEAN region. 

 The two continents have also borne much of global warming’s ravages. It was seen recently in this city of Delhi, where temperatures soared to historic heights, followed by unprecedented storms and floods.

Across Asia and Africa, climate change-induced suffering of the world’s most impoverished people has just got worse. Their plight is further worsened by wars between wealthy nations of Europe and the Middle East.

 The conflicts have triggered huge increases in the cost of food and energy for poor nations, who find little succour from the international financial institutions set up and controlled by rich nations firmly entrenched in free market policies. These policies actually add to the misery of the poor in Africa and Asia by seeking to lower tariff barriers and subsidies protecting the natural resources.

 Success in building sustainable societies can only come if the power centres of the East and the West come together, setting aside bilateral enmities to revive the spirit of the Asian African Conference in 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia. That gathering sparked the hope of nations determined to carve out futures based on justice and equity.  However, more than 70 years later, new forms of geopolitical inequities have  replaced the old.

Africa has done little to create the climate crisis. Asia, even with the strong economies of China and India, have contributed far less to the current consequences of climate change than the destruction affected by colonial powers over centuries. After all, the extraction of natural resources from Africa and Asia aided in the North’s industrialisation and prosperity.

 Resumption of the once valued North-South dialogue can bring back effective collaboration in developing innovative technological initiatives to create sustainable societies in Asia and Africa that were once mostly their colonies.

 The current state of this dialogue is reflected in the failure of the international community to share anti Covid vaccines and formulations with pandemic-engulfed poorer nations.

 Such damning instances provide proof of a fractured discourse between rich and poor nations.

 To restore the balance, Europe, with its historic linkages to Afro Asia, have over decades, even before formation of the EU, acknowledged past colonial histories, their dependence on raw material imports, and the extortionate cost of manufactured goods, as well as current dealings with migrations from their former colonies.

 It is here that India, being significantly advanced in science and technology, can take the lead to  develop affordable, innovative ways to improve rural productivity and establish supply chains for enabling  equitable trade.

 Our distinguished panellists drawn from government, multi-lateral agencies, academia and business include innovators, scientists and technologists.

 We believe this, the first of a series of conferences on similar subjects, will be held alternatively in Africa and Asia as well as in ASEAN – ‘Triple As’ in building prosperous and equitable societies of the future.