ESG or the Financialised Data Variant of Sustainability, and the allocation to low carbon projects was never about climate change per say, it is about risk mitigation, which capitalism is good at, from exactly the same externalities it generates. It is the adaptive nature of capitalism in the long term, and not merely about climate adaptation.

There is no capitalism and value creation without a planet to live on.

So glad to have made it to the Third Financial Geography (FinGeo) Workshop at the National University of Singapore next year! Splendid to be joining this group of early career scholars.

Nice to visit my alma mater too, and former teachers and friends with whom I have not met up in over two years.

As a peripheral scholar/researcher with an anchor in consulting such opportunities enable access to the best ideas in the business.

Sustainability was about improving lives of the most in need on the margins while we try to save our planet from sinking, all in framework conducive to market capitalism and globalisation. It was never only about filing reports.

We will all sink while beautiful sustainability reporting documents are published by the best consultants and graphic designers.

Beautiful writing.

Sunil Amrith’s grand sweep of global environmental history is a delight for the career environmental engineer within me.

This is such a welcome break from the instant coffee grey literature from consulting agencies and UN bodies which release reports on LinkedIn each day, which I am sure most consultants have made summaries from LLMs to extract bullet points.

Deep scholarship lasts and informs in transformative ways it provokes to think alternative frames than the boring frameworks which have reduced the environmental discourse to pithy soulless key performance indicators for sustainability reporting.

Ipoh surprised me in terms of scale and size, and the sheer fact that it’s not Uber touristy as Melaka. A sense of a functional city was present with its own native population as per conversations with grab drivers. The grab rents were a fraction of KL, which made travels easy.

The history is present in the city embedded in the spaces from the Ipoh railway station which was home to a site of historical memory in terms of a death railway commemorative plaque where thousands perished for the imperial cause.

The vibe in Ipoh is creative and very chilled, with an active music scene. The feel of the city is not rushed and that’s the main currency of the town, nestled in between the mountains, with cool weather.

Tourism is the new Tin for Ipoh and the town seems too be well prepared for the new gold rush.

History is etched in the land, to conflicts far away and chapters which needed to be remembered.

The Death Railway monument at Ipoh Railway Station is poignant as thousands perished as fodder for colonial infrastructure.

I travel for my love of Indian Ocean Tarikh, as culture is downstream of history. The residues of the post colony still ember and simmer contemporary identity politics in the everyday. Think Bangladesh, Fiji, Guyana, Mauritius, South Africa in addition to SE Asia where contestations occur in sharp and subtle ways.

A chilled out vibe sans the hype.