Wealthy countries like the US are less vulnerable to climate impacts and have a greater adaptive capacity than emerging economies like India, which “cannot ignore it [climate action] and cannot push it back,” Abdullah told the EB Podcast.
However, Abdullah questions whether enough is being done at the required speed, particularly in his sector. India is projected to build 100 million homes over the next decade, and as the world’s fastest growing major economy urbanises, climate impacts such as heatwaves and flooding are intensifying.
India’s construction sector could, according to some estimates, unravel the country’s net zero ambitions. A key part of Abdullah’s job is researching how to limit the built environment’s emissions through a unit known as the Lodha Net Zero Urban Accelerator. It comprises a team of researchers who are working on the masterplan for Palava City, Lodha’s climate-resilient concept city northeast of Mumbai.
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While there is no pushback [against ESG in India], has uptake been fast enough? That is the question.
Aun Abdullah, head of ESG, Lodha
In the latest episode of On the frontlines, which profiles changemakers on the hard edge of sustainable business, Abdullah says that India also cannot afford to waver on measures to support diversity, equity or inclusion (DEI), which has been highly politised in the US. More women are needed in the workforce to boost productivity and support the real estate sector’s heady growth trajectory, he says.
Now almost 14 years into his time at Lodha, with four years of experience leading the ESG function, Abdullah says that the best sustainability teams should be well embedded into a company, such that the function appears to be “invisible”. He advises sustainability professionals to avoid being prescriptive with solutions, and take time to “go beyond their desks” and “go deep” to truly understand the needs of stakeholders. “Only then will change happen, and only then will the job get done well,” he says.
Aun Abdullah, head of ESG, Lodha
Tune in as we discuss:
- How Aun Abdullah started out in sustainability
- What’s the hardest part of sustainability in real estate?
- How has the global retreat from ESG affected India?
- Challenges and risks in the real estate sector
- Will the sustainability function disappear?
- Where does the sustainability function sit in Lodha’s structure?
- Palava, the living lab
- Advice for young sustainability professionals
The transcript in full:
What led you to a career in sustainability?
I’m an electrical engineer by education, but working in the real estate and construction sector, my career steered into the design domain, specifically building services design.
It happens to be that building services design, especially the energy aspects, is very closely related to sustainability.
So anybody working in this profession actually comes very close to working in sustainability anyway. My entry into sustainability was quite accidental, I would say.
I’ve been working with Lodha for quite some time, close to 14 years. But, some eight to 10 years back I got associated with some exemplary projects on sustainability, including Palava City. And at that time I also happened to have a lot of commercial projects in my kitty.
Now in commercial projects, although there are many sustainability aspects, energy efficiencies of paramount importance, and that was the time when I would say that I formally entered into deep sustainability.
Working on those projects then, Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) came into the picture and we started engaging with RMI at Palava and developing the net zero roadmap there. And in that process, my interest and passion also grew. Our mandate also grew. And formally around 2020 or 2021, I started leading sustainability here.
What are the hardest things about your job?
On the one hand, whenever we talk about sustainability or climate action, there is this desire to do good, and charter a responsible growth path, as an individual or as a company, or even as a nation.
But on the other hand, there is the paramount challenge of how to translate it into an actionable framework. And sustainability problems mirror design problems.
We usually solve design problems by coming out of our domain silos and operate in an integrated manner. We call that integrated design thinking.
So where everyone comes together to look at the problem in totality and then see how the interplay of those domains can solve the problem more optimally and more quickly. This is the real challenge in sustainability.
Unlike in design where various design traits have to come together, in sustainability the ecosystem has to come together in this way; the policy, the experts, the markets, the users, the practitioners – everybody.
The issue of climate change has been identified as a force to be reckoned with quite recently – I would say in the last five to 10 years. And everyone is trying to solve it in their own ways. The real challenge is how can everyone come together and solve it together?
And in doing so, it adds to the efficiency of how the problem is solved.
I’ll give you some examples. Take the case of a low carbon material. All low carbon materials, which are being developed and conceptualised, they are going to be put into practice now. So they have not been subjected to the test of time.
When they have not been subjected to the test of time, there is obviously some sort of a pushback from existing practitioners on whether we should engage with this product or not.
If the product is not as durable, then whatever is being used, on a lifecycle basis, it may not be sustainable.
Similarly, if we do not engage this theme into solution building, then we might miss the necessary tweaks to the product that must be made.
So how can all of these players in the ecosystem come together to really solve the problem? That’s the real challenge.
Everyone thinks, “I have solved it”. But the moment you bring it into the field, you realise there is a gap.
Take the case of super-efficient air conditioners. Recently we did the testing of super-efficient air conditioners in Palava. Those units perform far better than the best available in the market, but they are expensive.
Is the real challenge to make those units more affordable by tweaking the materials that go into making that product? Or can we unlock other levers?
For example, suppose if we are able to design a building with a lower heat load, then a smaller air conditioner might be needed, which might be cheaper. If we are able to do bulk procurement, we can unlock more savings. If we can understand the impact of this at the grid scale, we can then engage with the utilities to provide subsidies for the advantages they are getting from this at peak demand.
How can we bring everybody together to make a solution work, instead of individually trying to solve it?
How has your role been affected by the pushback against ESG in the US?
We need to break down ESG into its components and see which element of it is under more scrutiny.
Obviously the framework can have flaws. But when we pick individual items, say climate action, while it is a global issue, it has local nuances.
When we look at risk, it’s a function of vulnerability and adaptive capacity. A rich country might not be as vulnerable as a country like us. Similarly, their adaptive capacity can be much higher than ours. So, how climate risk is perceived elsewhere versus how climate risk is perceived by us is different.
India is going from being a low income economy to becoming a high income economy in the coming decades. This process will lead to a lot of wealth creation. And this growth will also manifest in unprecedented levels of urbanisation.
Certain estimates suggest that close to 100 million new homes will be required in a decade-plus time horizon.
Now, how will this urbanisation happen? This urbanisation will need materials. It will need a lot of energy. And it will happen exactly when the heat waves and urban flooding is showing itself up.
So, we will need to find ways to be energy secure. We will need ways for material optimisation and material security.
Similarly, we need to enable urbanisation with climate security. This is fundamental. It is so important for India’s growth that we cannot ignore it and we cannot push it back. Because the cost of pushing it back for us is much, much higher than any other developed country.
While there is no pushback, is uptake fast enough? That’s the question.
We all are striving to make sustainability more mainstream than it already is. Similarly, it also offers a huge opportunity.
If you take the case of the overall energy economy or the material economy or the low carbon material economy, this whole space is going to evolve.
India also happens to be one of the biggest consumers of [energy and low carbon material]. How can India become a market leader in both of these domains – not only servicing the needs of itself, but also supplying and delivering these solutions overseas?
That is also a way in which the economy can grow. So it can not only secure the productivity growth, it can also enhance productivity growth.
I would say that there is near consensus in well-meaning, well-thinking Indian corporates on climate action.
And you would have also seen that the government is also trying to push in their own ways, from reporting aspects through the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) initiative, [which mandates Indian firms to report emissions], to the energy policy, and so forth.
I should also mention productivity. It will increase by upskilling and by increasing women in the workforce. Any policy that brings women into the formal workforce is simply going to be good for the wellbeing, not only of women who get empowered, but for the nation at large. This skill gap is not covered as quickly as possible to become a key raw material for the growth that we are envisioning.
Tell us more about the challenges in sustainability in the real estate space in India.
If we are able to integrate energy efficiency and the energy transition well in any real estate or a building product, then the affordability and resilience of that product enhances.
And as soon as that enhances, the market demand for such type of a product also increases.
If you look at the real estate product – a house, for example. This is going to stay there for 60, 80 or 100 years. And we will not have the opportunity to integrate sustainability once we have given it over.
People will be judging our product for the next century. So it’s an amazing opportunity to go all in and create a product, which even at 20 years from now, is remembered for how it helped in increasing comfort as well as affordability.
Will the sustainability function eventually disappear, just like the digital function is receding as business digitises?
Yes, I feel that the sustainability teams should become invisible in any organisation. And each aspect of that organisation should reflect sustainability – in their products, in their operations, and in the way they engage with everybody.
In fact, any organisation is basically a community. A community of the people working in it as well as the community of people using it.
Let’s take an analogy of a gym.
Any gym or a health club is not known by the how effective the chief instructor or trainer is there in that gym. That gym is always known by the community of the healthy and fit people who go to that gym. So if that community becomes large enough and if that community becomes healthy enough, then the gym is in the right hands. And it is not that one particular gym instructor which is critical.
When we talk about sustainability as a profession, the time has also come when everyone, in whatever role they are working in, embraces sustainability and digital integration as part of the job. It is not an add-on. It is just a characteristic that needs to be integrated within whatever they are doing.
What other risks is India’s real estate sector facing?
The biggest risk, which I personally feel, is we do not act fast enough. So if there is a solution which is known, but the market and policy doesn’t move in that direction, or if a policy comes and the solution is not honed properly and in time, those are all missed opportunities.
In fact, this whole climate action piece, including industrial transformation, that all needs to be indigenous. Because the moment solutions are crafted outside of India, the solutions will not be that effective.
The growth of India is going to happen in the next couple of years. It is basically an infinite-scale business opportunity for everybody here.
Anything related to energy security, material security or climate security, or any other aspect of technology integration, this is critical. This is fundamental. This is something that should not be missed.
Where does sustainability sits in the organisation? How do you ensure the sustainability agenda is pushed through?
Sustainability is critical to how we conceptualise a project.
How do we integrate sustainability while doing our designs? I would say that there are two pillars.
One is that we do a KPI (key performance indicator)-based design.
These KPIs are across the environmental domains, all the way from green spaces to carbon and energy, water, air, climate risk, et cetera.
The second pillar is research and innovation, which is fed through the arm of the [Lodha Net Zero Urban] Accelerator.
So on one side there is this KPI. On the other side, there is this rigorous research, and both of these feed into how we build a project.
Now this project becomes this whole model of urbanisation. And with further engagement with the end users, we extract the real performance of sustainability through those developments.
And this performance goes back to feed the KPIs as well as the topics of research that the Lodha Net Zero Urban Accelerator does.
The masterplan for Palava City, Lodha’s climate-resilient concept city northeast of Mumbai. Image: Lodha
Tell us a bit about the Palava City Living Laboratory.
Palava is the origin story of the Net Zero Urban Accelerator. When you are doing a project in a larger urban master plan or an existing city, you can do only so much, because there are other aspects of urbanism which are beyond your control in that particular canvas.
A decade and a half back, we thought that it is important to have a urbanisation template rather than having a sustainable building.
So we conceptualised Palava City at that time. And Palava basically strives to be at the leading edge of sustainable urbanisation by solving all urban issues including sustainability and climate.
Palava is a walkable city. It has high quality housing. It’s a mixed use development. It has a unique governance model, where people are also integrated in how the city is run. It also aims to be among the top liveable cities in the world. And with that it also becomes the living lab of sustainable urbanisation.
The Lodha Net Zero Urban Accelerator is a team of researchers who are working in this lab.
There is one more important point with Palawa and that is the context of India.
India is in a very critical growth phase, and this is where we will leapfrog from being a low income economy to high income economy in the next couple of decades.
And this is happening specifically at the time when climate risks are manifest.
So India needs to urbanise well to ensure that this productivity growth continues to happen. In fact, urbanisation is a manifestation of productivity growth. If urbanisation is done well, then productivity will continue to grow well. If urbanisation becomes chaotic, then you lose the efficiency of growth.
So, how can the work we are doing at Palawa and the Lodha Net Zero Urban Accelerator become a template and a model for India to grow is something that we are trying to solve for?
What advice could you give to aspiring professionals?
Anybody coming into sustainability, specifically that layer of sustainability which interacts with the larger set of stakeholders, should be aligned with the necessity of doing this, instead of just looking it as any job.
Second, one should be curious and open-minded.
Because the moment you have to interact with a larger set of people with valid concerns and insights, you need to understand what they’re trying to bring onto the table and what you are trying to influence them to change into.
Also, many times, we tend to prescribe things or solutions or methods, without going deep into the aspects which are related to their implemention.
So sustainability professionals should try not to do that. Because then what happens is that you start feeling that I have offered all the solutions and people are not accepting.
And on the other hand, the people who have to actually implement it on ground start realising that the solutions coming from the sustainability team are not practical. And are not effectively thought through. In that case then, a deadlock happens, where you are trying and the transition is not happening.
So, going beyond your desks and talking to people from whom you want that change to happen in a much more meaningful and detailed manner is very important.
Only then will change happen, and only then will the the job actually get done well.
This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity. Listen to more episodes of On the frontlines here.
