Dec162021
Posted by:admin
Caspian Climate Conversations | Episode 10
Featuring Gagan Reddy, Founder & CEO, Cittamap
Gagan Reddy is a nature tech entrepreneur and climate educator working on the climate and biodiversity crisis combining technology and ecology to realize a safe and green world. Currently, he is working in the Netherlands and India as Founder-CEO of a data analytics company that helps companies build resilience to climate risks.
To tune into the recording, please use the available link here: https://www.mentza.com/circles/7275
Please find below a summarized transcript of this interesting conversation:
Hi Gagan, welcome. Let’s start by asking you what is climate resilient infrastructure and more importantly, how can nature help in increasing resilience?
Sure, I’d like to introduce infrastructure in general first, and then the resilience part. I was explaining to my niece the concept of taxes and how the government builds us roads and water pipes, electricity, schools and hospitals; and all these buildings and structures constitute infrastructure- for energy, for water, for mobility, and distance services. And now imagine a flood destroying a road, or a storm disrupting the electricity lines- not only is the asset damaged but also there are costs associated with repair and there are also service disruptions. Now we can’t avoid storms and floods, in fact they are occurring at higher frequency and intensity off late, but the ability to withstand and bounce back faster is the concept of resilience. Nature gives us protection, for example, mangrove forest are 50 times better than seawalls against storms, wetlands and urban lakes are more effective in reducing flood risks, and forests that are really mothers of rivers reduce drought risks. So, incorporating nature into structures builds resilience.
In your business, you work with data. So, what is the importance of data in the context of nature and climate resilience and what is that you do?
I am a data-scientist and in our company, we are providing information on where climate risks are and how one can adapt to them. When we think about data in general, everything is data driven at some level, you look at information every-day and make decisions. However, a key factor in the success of data driven approach is how are we using the data from so many different sources. One source I’d like to talk about is satellite data which has proliferated in the last decade where we are able to measure the ecological benefits. So, talking about how wetland can reduce flood-risk is one thing but being able to quantify how much exactly is what we are trying to do. We are trying to help companies adapt to climate risks using nature. Right now, the only thing that is quantified that nature is giving us is carbon and carbon sequestration. But there are other things that need to be quantified, and the service of nature needs to be measured.
Can you explain your work with the example of a project that you have done?
Currently, we are working with a multinational water company, in Spain, where we are providing our nature-based resilience platform for flooding cases. What we are trying to do is to help them identify the areas with high precipitation risks and advise on nature-based resilience infrastructure, such as water retention pond or filter drains or green roofs along with locations where these can be built, in order to help combat the flooding risks.
Another example was with urban heat island effect in the Netherlands. Urban heat island effect is caused by concrete areas heating up a lot in the summer. We are able to look at land surface temperatures using satellite data and quantify the cooling effect that can be achieved if there is a park or a lake in that particular area. So, it directly translates to costs savings in terms of cooling, and also gives multiple other benefits like recreation and green spaces.
Tell us a little bit about the background of your company.
I come from a technical background and I had a technology with which we started a location intelligence company working with the government of South Holland in 2018. Sustainability was always my long-term target, and I started looking at climate neutral cities and climate resilience in infrastructure assets. We still use the same location intelligence core but what we’ve pivoted to is the use of ecology models to be able to quantify the benefits of nature, which is our USP. We are looking to mainstream more of the nature-based adaptation solutions because that addresses the intertwined crises of climate and bio-diversity. We want to focus on corporate companies to take action where it is not related to CSR but with an acknowledgement that adaptation is good for business continuity and resilience. I say corporate companies because we did start working with the government but we realized that it is not a very scalable customer segment and I think market forces can accelerate the transition.
Fascinating to hear about the way you started. For a startup, the founder is very important and yours is a technology driven company, so it would be great if you tell us a little bit about yourself.
Surely, so I was born and raised in Bangalore, and then I studied in the US, the UK then in the Netherlands. I started working in the Netherlands as a software engineer, mostly with scientific software applications, and I couldn’t stay at the job for a long time because I never got to see the user. For me as an engineer, I wanted to build things that are useful to people, and so I quit and started my own company. And over the last 4-5 years, looking at what is happening in the world, specially with the climate change scenarios and the disruptions caused by nature, I thought it was high time to put my skills to use and make something that is useful to people, help with the transition. Personally, what drives me is responsibility towards our environment, and intergenerational justice. There are lots of kids in my family and when I look at them, I want to make sure that they have a safe world to grow up in and I also want to be on the right side of the climate fight.
Why is it that adaptation projects are so difficult to raise finance for? Mitigation has dominated the climate change theme while adaptation is just coming in. Your comments on this?
Yes, even now, 95% of funding is going towards mitigation, because they are bankable projects, setting up a solar plant, or setting up an EV, charging station network, are all considered mitigation projects. On the nature front, plantation efforts are also mitigation projects, because there is a methodology to quantify carbon and there is a market for carbon. When we talk about adaptation, in the sense of avoided losses, the economic system does not support prevention of future crises. It is a situation similar to the current pandemic, we knew it was coming but nobody prepared for it. The countries that are most responsible for the current state of the climate need to pay up, the people who are experiencing this have contributed least to it, but they don’t have bankable projects to put money into because return on investment can’t be shown. So, I think that should become part of the calculations, and then we will realise that it is not as cheap as we might think.
Do you intend to bring your solutions to India? What type of market do you see in India? What is the type of customer that could work with you in India?
As far as market goes, we look at two sides of the coin-the infrastructure developers and the infrastructure investors. Infrastructure developers, owners and operators, are the ones that will build roads or a solar plant. On the other side are infrastructure investors- institutional investors, banks, all of them are looking at the same asset piece, from a different vantage point, and that asset is exposed to climate risks. So, advising them on the associated climate risks is essential. So, we are targeting both the infrastructure developers and investors. Right now, we are working with a water company in the Northern Indian states. The most important thing today is developing the adaptation and resilience community by bringing the ecosystem together. Maybe a few years down the line, we can actually convert this into a market.
At Caspian debt we are always interested in exploring relationships between interesting technology providers like you and companies in our portfolio so I’ll run you through a few examples and look at your reactions as to how you can work with them. Say, we have a company which erects solar plants all over the country- either as a partner to the large IPPs or distributed plants on their own. How could you work with them?
Solar energy infrastructure is crucial for India- specially with ambitious targets 2030 and also to replace the ageing coal plants. So, when we talk about solar, there are operational issues, and when you add extreme weather events to the mix, the uncertainty is higher. So as far as solar plant developers go, I would say knowing where assets are located, what type of climate risks are prevalent at that particular location, and what kind of interventions can be built is crucial. For example, if we are installing roof-top solar and there was a technical specification that said this can withstand 150 kmph windspeeds. Scale that to a solar plant where there is flood risk, and the technical specification would be to raise the pillars or add another concrete barrier to it. Here, you can actually get a better result, by using grey infrastructure along with some green and blue infrastructure added to it. That will help them with their asset protection primarily, but also strengthen bio-diversity, climate action plan and business continuity.
Great, let’s talk about another company, let’s say in affordable housing in some of the coastal areas of the country, how could you work with this affordable housing company or a company which finances them?
Coastal areas are threat because of sea level rise, storm surges and extreme storms. So, it is a very challenging situation, but there are certain habitats that can protect against it, so urban wetlands, mangroves, sea grasses, coral reefs, all of these ecosystems both on the terrestrial freshwater and marine ecosystems can be strengthened. When we talk about affordable housing, where they want to locate the project, becomes doubly important, the current climate risks as well as future projections. So we have fairly good climate models to look at projections, up until 2100. Having this data, fundamentally changes how you approach projects. We are pretty good at adaptation as a species, I would say, so having the right data can really change how we approach these projects, set it up and make sure that as a structure it is protected.
We have a lot of companies in agriculture, these companies help smallholder farmers grow variety of crops from pomegranates to organic cotton. Can you work with them?
Definitely, for starters, meteorological data can be provided to farmers. There are fairly good apps for this in India, but the community penetration is poor because technology not user centric. We want to bring user centric technology to the farmers not only in terms of short term meteorological data but also for the long term. Secondly, agriculture infrastructure is not just farm till farmland, it is also transportation, warehousing, etc. all the way until it reaches the consumer. So, the entire supply chain needs to be strengthened and that applies to the smaller companies as you just brought up. MSMEs can look at how their supply chains are exposed to climate risks and start planning adaptation interventions when an event occurs. It shouldn’t be like the covid situation when it was in the face and people had to react. Knowing these kind of shocks and stresses can help them go a long way in terms of preparing to fight them.
We talked about this affordable housing example, how easy or difficult it is, given your experience internationally, of real-estate developers including climate risks in their planning process.
The challenge is global, not just in India. There are multiple reasons for it.
- The real estate sector is very less digitized.
- We are talking about data and digitization plus nature, which is a new concept and very difficult to get buy in for.
That is the reason why we are trying to focus on building awareness using consulting reports and workshops. This starts the conversation about climate resilience.
Any final thoughts?
I think developing a culture of resilience, to primarily nature inclusive thinking and technology tools to support decision making can go a long way towards climate action. And to reiterate my earlier point- it is business continuity through resilience.