Are We Serious About Climate Action Success?We Need More Strategic Climate Action Leadership With The Fierce Urgency of Now! Our Time is Running Out!

If ySuppose you are serious about sustainable development in general, and climate action in particular. In that case, you must be extremely concerned when the UN says we are far behind progress in terms of pursuing our 2030, 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. You must be even more concerned when the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, says that when it comes to our effectiveness in slowing down global warming and curbing it at below 2 degrees above the preindustrial levels, we are still at in business as usual mode and at this purse were heading towards overshooting our target by almost 100 percent. This is despite all the current efforts, a generation of the Conference of Party (COP) meetings and financial resources poured into a plethora of climate activities and programs.

I am not sure if the Secretary General's warning has made any impact or, like most warnings from geoenvironmental scientists, the warning will not make any dent in the conscience and awakening of people in general and those in formal positions of leadership in particular.

I first got involved with sustainable development theory years ago I was an undergraduate student studying geosciences years ago and I took a course called "sustainable development" as part of my Geography Studies. Geology and biological sciences where two of my other disciplines of study. When I chose this course in sustainable development, I never thought seriously about the sustainable development course and I took it like those other "additional courses" that you take after choosing the ones that you really want. Little, at that point, did I know that I was engaging in a subject that would become a big issue in the future.

As part of my university geography studies, I also took courses in climatology, urban geography, groundwater and hydrology. We learnt these subjects as separate, independent subjects that have no link and treated them as separate entities. At that time I did not realise that the course in sustainable development would link all these disciplines together.

Fast forward to my Master of Science Studies in Environmental Technology. This program was predominantly on pollution, its causes, effects and management including the use of technology in managing pollution. Climate change was a mandatory course. But you see as a student, it never occurred to me that I was engaging in defining issues of the future.

A geoscientist and an environmental engineer, I spent most of education years and early career years thinking science, technology and engineering where all the world needed to solve our environment and development problems. Even when I decided to go for My Master of Science Education I had been offered to places, one to study in Sustainable Development at University of Sussex and another to Study Environmental Technology at Lancaster University. I chose Environmental Technology at the last minute after arriving in the UK from Zimbabwe.

But after years of experience and learning how the world works, I have come to realise that #leadership is the master key to sustainable development and to solving all of the environment and development challenges that we face. No amount of science, technology and engineering can work in the absence of effective leadership.

1. All our challenges in sustained, effective climate action are not caused by a lack of climate science, engineering and technology. It is caused by climate leadership issues.
2. All our challenges in sustained, effective climate action are not caused by a lack of climate financing. It is caused by climate leadership issues.
3. All our challenges in sustained, effective #climate action are not caused by a lack of climate climate justice. Climate justice is a #leadership issue. You cannot solve climate justice issues outside of the climate leadership issue.
4. All our challenges in sustained, effective climate action are not caused by a lack of just transition. Just transition is a symptom. The problem is a just climate leadership challenge.

We need more strategic climate leadership now.

Without more strategic climate action leadership, let us kiss sustained success in climate action goodbye.

Without more strategic climate action leadership, all the hard work by climatogeoenvironmental scientists, engineers and technologists is going to waste.

Without more strategic climate action leadership, all financial resources being poured into global climate action work is grossly underutilised.

Without more strategic climate action leadership, all what we are current doing will not successfully solve the climate challenges we are trying to solve.

What is the answer to the following question?

Doing the same thing, the same way in the same environment and expecting different results is;

A: Wisdom

B: Intelligence

C: Insanity

D. Smart

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?Simon Bere, 2024