From Chandran Nair-The founder of Hong Kong think tank the Global Institute For Tomorrow: why Asia must reject the Western economic model and think for itself, posted on South China Morning Post-16 January 2022. He is one of the few Hongkongers against the western modern. He disagreed that Taobao or Eastern models should follow the Western Amazon model which suppresses pries of goods and overpackaging which give to unsustainability.
FIRSTS IN ASIA In 1985, I decided to come back to Asia and applied to do a master's degree in environmental engineering at the Asian Institute of Technology, in Bangkok. When I finished that, I joined a Thai- American engineering firm called Siam Tech in Bangkok as an engineer and within a year was made managing director. A few years into that job, I was speaking at a conference in Thailand when the managing director of a global sustainability consultancy, Environmental Resources Management (ERM), approached me. It took a little persuasion but, in 1990, I accepted a job with them as a senior consultant. It was the best decision I ever made. I thought it was a good deal – I had less responsibility and was making more money. I don't play office politics, I'm not competitive in that way, but within a year I was the managing director. Within the next five years, I grew the company from 10 people to about 100 and over the next 10 years opened offices in 12 countries. I'm very proud I opened the first environmental consulting firm in China and in Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Singapore.
UNSUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTS I led a study in Hong Kong that led to the first decision framework for sustainability for any city in the world – that was completed in 2003. The government attempted to do it, but it was so far-reaching in its implications for making decisions and framing the sustainability of decisions that it needed bold administrative institutions to be able to accept that. I was one of six people on the main board of ERM and the only Asian. We did a management buyout. I got so disillusioned and was at odds with most of my board members, particularity in terms of geopolitics, wars. Typically, you serve on a board by not having any political views, and so you become dishonest, you are in denial. All of us know what's going on, but we are supposed to keep quiet. People on boards hire people they know, no one is supposed to say anything and constantly they get caught out because there is no moral framing of understanding.
EAST IS EAST AND WEST IS WEST
After 14 years with ERM I left, I wanted to go on a different intellectual journey. I was flabbergasted that we in Asia invite a bunch of ill-informed Texans from [a think tank] called the Heritage Foundation to come here. You know how imperial that is? A bunch of guys who know nothing. Then there's the Chatham House guys and the Brookings Institution. So, I said, "When are we going to have our own narrative?" My ambition was to start an independent pan-Asian think tank and I founded the Global Institute For Tomorrow (GIFT) in 2004.
I felt that Asia was essentially asleep at the wheel. I saw there was a power shift from the West to the East. What is important from the sustainability point of view is that Asia's population will be six billion around 2050 or 2060. Six billion Asians living like Americans and Europeans is impossible – there is not enough to go around. Yet we are being told there is one economic model – the Western model of capital markets and consumption. The Amazon model is the best example of a broken system – it is essentially saying you can have anything you want, and we will make it so cheap that people can essentially order three things, use one and throw the other two, and it's cheaper than last year. We call that innovation, it's actually destruction. The entire economic model that the world has embraced is one that does not internalise the true cost of consumption and that has ramifications in terms of inequality and disenfranchisement. Carbon dioxide is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of that overconsumption model. I can say this because I'm not the guy from McKinsey. We are independent – I don't take money from anyone.
We talk about the substantiality issues of consumption, pricing and government systems. When I talk to pharmaceutical companies, I talk to them about how they have to adjust their world view. You can't sit in Europe and understand Asia without changing your entire structure. You cannot say you believe in diversity and inclusion, which is essentially tokenism, when your entire structure is led by a bunch of Westerners who have no connection to this part of the world.
Dismantling Global White Privilege, by Chandran Nair, will be published this month.