Bengaluru: Last week, Amsterdam-based academic Joyeeta Gupta won the Spinoza Prize — the highest scientific recognition in the Netherlands that is sometimes referred to as the Dutch Nobel — for her work on environmental safety boundaries and climate justice. For Delhi-born Gupta, the timing could not have been better, with the announcement coming just before her 59th birthday on 12 June.
“It’s very gratifying to see social science work, and especially work on justice-related issues, being recognised through such a prize,” Gupta, a professor of environment and development in the ‘Global South’ at the University of Amsterdam and the co-chair of the Earth Commission, told ThePrint.
Earth Commission is an Amsterdam-based global collective of scientists working towards a sustainable future in the face of global heating, with a focus on developing countries and climate justice.
“I’m proud of my school and college life in India, and hope that through my justice work I can also contribute to social and environmental issues in India,” she said.
Gupta, who will be awarded 1.5 million Euros (over Rs 13 crore) at an official presentation ceremony on 4 October, shared the prize with evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers, another professor at the University of Amsterdam whose work focuses on microbial networks in plants and agriculture.
Born in Delhi on 12 June 1964, Gupta studied at Loreto Convent School in Delhi Cantonment and the Air Force Central School at Subroto Park. She eventually went on to study economics at Delhi’s Lady Shri Ram College, and followed it up with a law degree from Sir L.A. Shah Law College in Ahmedabad before getting her Master’s in Law at the Harvard University, US, through an Inlaks fellowship in 1988.
Gupta’s latest research, co-authored with 40 other people, was published as a project on 23 May 2023, and deals with ‘Earth System Boundaries’ that “scientifically quantify safety of people as well as stability of the planet”.
The research goes into understanding the minimum needs worldwide for water, food, shelter, and infrastructure, and in a sustainable manner that’s fair to everyone across the globe.
In a follow-up work published in the journal Nature last week, the same team goes on to propose “Earth System Boundaries for maintaining the resilience and stability of the Earth system and minimising exposure to significant harm to humans from Earth system change”.
Last year, she also won the Piers Sellers Prize from the University of Leeds, which seeks to recognise solutions to climate change.
“The ultimate goal is to work towards a global constitution that incorporates environmental and developmental issues,” Gupta said of her work.
Gupta plans to use her prize money to find solutions for disinvesting in fossil fuels, and sustainable living within Earth System Boundaries that also delivers climate justice for historical emissions.
Also Read: The cost of tackling climate change & how countries’ GDP metrics may fail to accurately reflect it
From law to water to development
Gupta said environment and sustainability have been of great interest to her throughout her career.
After securing her law degree, she took a particular interest in consumer behaviour and the environment, working for Ahmedabad’s Consumer Education and Research Centre. She has also worked with renowned American political activist and lawyer Ralph Nader, and with the Netherlands Ministry for Spatial Planning and the Environment.
She completed her PhD in international law and politics at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam in 1997, and taught at the Institute of Environmental Studies from 1993 to December 2012.
Currently, she’s a full professor at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research and UNESCO-IHE Delft Institute for Water Education — the largest international graduate water education facility in the world.
She has been the co-chair of the Earth Commission since 2019 and, according to her profile on the University of Amsterdam website, she was also a lead author with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice-president Al Gore.
Tipping ‘boundaries’
The work that Gupta’s team does focuses on developing future cities in a sustainable manner by examining current policies, environmental impact, energy economics, and consumer behaviour.
Their latest research on “Earth System Boundaries” provides details about the resilience of the planet and its connection to human well-being as a species based on eight key parameters — climate, natural ecosystem area, functional integrity of the ecosphere, surface water, ground water, nitrogen, phosphorus, and aerosols.
“The Earth System Boundaries work shows that there are limits to our resources — water, land, biodiversity — and that there are limits to how much we can dump into the environment,” Gupta told ThePrint.
She said further: “Already, millions of people are threatened by polluted air and water and degraded land, to say nothing about the impacts of climate change. Western countries live far beyond their resources while countries like India need to make sure that they don’t overuse and overpollute their resources.”
The solutions she and the Earth Commission seek to offer target common and widespread crises facing humans. These include loss of groundwater beyond recharge levels, providing data about how investing in fossil fuels will turn out to be more expensive than renewables, encouraging development of compact cities with good public transport, ensuring equal access to minimum resources, reducing exposure to unnecessary pollution worldwide, and environmental justice where those who can take responsibility at a global level.
Gupta’s next steps are to further her research and implement it. She will also be filing a short proposal on how she intends to spend her money, and will start doing so from 1 January 2024.
The project will run for five years and will focus on financial security for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) as they phase out fossil fuels, she said, adding that the work will be financed by the European Research Council’s advanced grant of 2.5 million Euros (over Rs 22 crore).
Set up in 2007, the European Research Council is a public body for funding of scientific research conducted within the European Union’s jurisdiction.
She now hopes to set up an interdisciplinary team that will analyse global political and legal systems to find empirical evidence that just approaches and fair practices would make it easier for humanity to stay within the Earth System Boundaries.
“Right now, I have a team working on the role of pension funds, development banks, fossil fuel multinationals and philanthropies,” she said. “This research investigates the conditions under which they would be willing to stop investing in fossil fuel and put their money in renewable energy systems.”
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
Also Read: High Seas Treaty historic but climate change is upon us. India as G20 president can act