Stockholm gets the green signal
by Darryl D'Monte
Mumbai edition of "The Hindustan Times national daily", September
6 2006.
Any environmentalist who visits Sweden may be tempted to echo the words
of the wide-eyed American journalist who exclaimed, in the early years
of the Soviet Union, “I have seen the future, and it works!” By
any reckoning, the country is set to establish, pro-actively, new green
norms in every sector of the economy – from household to transport,
housing, energy and industry. It wants to sever its dependence on fossil
fuels by 2020, while other countries – in particular the US – are
still resisting implementing the much lower emission reductions under
the Kyoto protocol.
The test will come on September 17, when there is
a referendum on whether to impose a congestion tax on cars that travel
through Stockholm, to coincide with the national elections. Although
not infatuated with automobiles like Americans and Germans, Swedes have
by no means ended their love affair with these polluting machines. Some
observers believe that the Social Democrats, who have proposed the tax
along with the left-wing and greens, are going to commit political hara
kiri by putting this on their agenda.
One must recall that as early
as in 1972, Sweden held the first-ever UN conference on the environment,
where Indira Gandhi was one of the few heads of state to attend. It
is another matter altogether that she chose this platform to make the
unfortunate rhetorical assertion that “poverty is the worst form
of pollution”, which still – though more faintly – echoes
through the corridors of UN and other conference halls throughout the
world. It is now well understood that many so-called development measures
taken by countries in the first flush of independence actually contribute
to poverty, far from removing it, as the experience of her own nation
demonstrates only too abjectly.
The green agenda is firmly established
in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, along with the Netherlands,
which is why the late Anil Agarwal, who founded the Centre for Science & Environment
in Delhi, used to refer to them as “the NGOs of the international
community”. Sweden is in fact permitted, under the Kyoto protocol,
to increase its greenhouse gas emissions by 4% by 2012, which is remarkable
for a highly developed country. It boasts the only Minister for Sustainable
Development in the world. This takes environmental concerns several
steps forward – a positive, rather than negative, connotation.
As Minister Mona Salin told international journalists in Stockholm recently,
Sweden’s Social Democrats had development as their goal since
the 1930s. Between 1940 and 1960, the party launched a “Peoples’ Homes” programme
to house everyone adequately in the post-war era. This was followed
by massive reconstruction known as the “Million Homes” drive,
where a brave new urban - though soulless - world, was ushered in
throughout the country. Since the 1980s, there has been an adverse reaction
to this form of social engineering, which sought to create amenities
but ended up fostering anomie. It was perhaps inevitable that the resistance
to this earlier belief in rationality made way for greater humanism,
and greens were part of this rethinking. Ms Salin, who was previously
in charge of gender issues, where Sweden also tops the human development
indices, sums up the change in Social Democrats’ advocacy of growth
in a welfare state to the contemporary greening of the welfare society.
Such bold initiatives were evident in the “Stockholm Trial” during
the first half of this year with the traffic congestion charge. The
political leadership of the conservatives assured Stockholmers that
this supposedly unpopular move would not be introduced. However, left-wingers
pressurized the city’s Mayor to undertake the trial. Ironically,
for ideologues who would normally oppose monetary measures, the left
espoused this cause and had its way. Unlike London, where another left-winger,
Mayor Ken Livingstone, introduced a £5 congestion tax on every
motorist who enters the central business district and has now raised
it to £8, in Stockholm it was paid by anyone leaving the city,
but only half what Londoners fork out.
On the eve of the $10 million
experiment, the media warned of utter chaos. Many motorists chose to
stay put, with the astonishing result that the city centre was devoid
of traffic during the rush hour, which increased only after “carfew” ended.
The city earned around $70 million by way of congestion charges during
these trial months. Almost a third of the cars were exempted because
their environment-conscious owners were either using petrol-electric
hybrids or clean ethanol as fuel. On an average, traffic in the city
dropped by a fifth and accessibility within the inner city – where
the country’s vital transactions are conducted – increased
by a third. Carbon dioxide levels were reduced by some 14%. As the Stockholm
city manager, a political appointee, told journalists, more than the
green agenda, it was congestion itself which was the biggest problem.
Characteristically, when faced with these results, the media turned
full circle and applauded the move.
Stockholm is part of a European
sustainable cities project, with Guildford in the UK, Padua in Italy,
Groningen in the Netherlands and Fredrikstad in Norway. In Stockholm,
some 60 families are taking part in a unique “smart consumption” study.
They are painstakingly auditing their lifestyles to see where they can
reduce their use of energy. Surprisingly, they have found that food
is one of the most profligate – energy used in agriculture, transport,
packaging and freezing. To combat this, these families order fresh organic
fruit and vegetables delivered at their doorstep, once a week. Nothing
is left untouched: from the heating and building materials in houses
to commuting. Another major energy-guzzler is the annual vacation: a
family of four emits 9,000 kg of carbon dioxide on a single trip to
Phuket, while the average Swede contributes 10,000 kg over a year.
Ironically,
the socially advanced Swedes are caught in an ecological trap of their
own making. Partly because they have some of the best social security
systems in the world as one of the most highly taxed countries, the
average occupancy per household is only around 2.1 persons; almost a
third of all households have single occupants. This imposes a greater
strain on the environment, since there is duplication of energy-intensive
appliances. Even so, a fifth of all cars are environment-friendly and
polls show that 95% of all Swedes believe that it is vital to do something
about climate change.
All electricity in the country is fossil-free:
half comes from hydropower and the remainder from nuclear generation
which is, however, being phased out. While GDP has risen, the use of
oil has dropped from 70% of the total energy in 1970 to 30% today. Renewables
have risen to 28%, with biomass accounting for most of the increase.
Most Stockholm buses proudly indicate that they use ethanol, much of
it obtained from waste from the country’s dominant timber industry.
District heating – as distinct from that in individual homes – accounts
for 40% of the market. Sweden introduced a carbon tax in 1991, one of
the first to do so.
Even so, one should not underestimate the powerful
automobile lobby, which believes in motorists’ “freedom” to
drive and suburbanites may veto the congestion tax, which will set it
back for possibly another decade. However, it demonstrates that the
Swedes are more democratic by going in for such a referendum (as it
did for nuclear energy some years ago), rather than imposing it, as
it has been in London and Singapore. Meanwhile, for championing this
measure, Minister Salin is being likened to an environmental Jeanne
d’Arc.