Hanging by a Thread

01 Feb 2008 – Sophia Tickell

My friend Shereen, who is in Cairo, contacted me yesterday to say that the Internet was down in Egypt and much of the Gulf. I vaguely thought it seemed odd, but duly agreed to contact her by mobile phone instead of email without thinking more about it. It turns out, though, that she is only one of an estimated 75 million people across India and the Middle East whose access to the internet has been severely disrupted and may continue to be so for the next ten days. According to Omantel, a Middle Eastern telecommunications company, a severe storm in the Mediterranean caused the Egyptian authorities to close the northern entrance of the Suez Canal, meaning ships had unexpectedly to drop anchor at Alexandria. And it was that which caused damage to the Flag Europe-Asia and Seas-Me-We 4 fibre optic submarine cables which between them account for around 75% of connectivity in the Middle East and South Asia. It’s extraordinary to think that the knowledge economy hangs on such threads.

Also, it is a salutary thought that so much disruption can be caused by an unseasonable tropical storm, if indeed that was the cause. Not everyone was affected. Some global firms had backup systems that insulated them from the damage, but the outsourcing of many support services to India, means that the reverberations are being felt across the global economy. Not that it’s causing headlines, though. There is too much competition for the crown of prime destabiliser this week, as our earlier blogs have discussed.

As Davos fades from the headlines, John’s observation that the sustainability theme now has real traction among global leaders remains live. In meetings this week with ICT, pharmaceutical and energy firms, I have been struck by the extent to which companies are now beginning to talk about how to reduce their negative impacts on the environment and, in particular, how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – known as mitigation. What we are not hearing anything like enough of, however, is the impacts of environmental change on business and markets; impacts that will require much greater adaptation than people are currently prepared for.

This is surprising. Last year the CNA Corporation published its report on National Security and the Threat of Climate Change which draws on the expertise of a military board of eleven retired generals and admirals. The report reviews the impact of climate change on fresh water supplies, food production, health and land and flooding. Amongst many interesting findings, it points out likely impacts of climate disruption along coastlines. Not only does two-thirds of the world’s population live near them, energy production, transportation, industrial, port, and distribution facilities are all based there too.

From where we sit at SustainAbility it seems that business in general needs to be much more alert to the fact that its physical assets are at risk. Agribusiness, for example, is at risk from drought, floods and unpredictability, while the construction, manufacturing and oil and gas industries are vulnerable to greater wind and storm intensity, as Hurricane Katrina forcefully illustrated. While being far too well versed in climate debates to attribute one weather incident to climate change, it’s definitely worth pondering what the impact of a tropical storm in the Mediterranean tells us about the sustainability challenges we’re faced with.

I was fascinated to follow up John’s suggestions to read about Craig Venter and his work on synthetic genomics amongst the many other strings to his bow. Having done so much work on the pharmaceutical industry and watched earlier expectations around the promise of genomics expand and then shatter in the face of unrealistic investor hopes for returns, it will be interesting to watch that space evolve. Though no Luddite, I tend to be more muted in my enthusiasm for technological responses than John. It provokes interesting discussions between us – not about whether there is a vital and urgent need for technologies to adapt and mitigate to address the sustainability challenges we face – but rather about how to get the right policy environment to support them. And how to make them secure. I have to face the fact that I am made uneasy by over-reliance on technology in a globalised economy. Too much hangs on too little, as the impact on 76 million people of a slipped ship’s anchor shows only too well.