On a sunny afternoon in a hotel overlooking the peaceful Chao Phraya River, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei walks into a suite for an interview after spending a busy morning that included a talk with high-school students. His topic: how to change the world to make it a safer and more pleasant place to live.
An ambitious subject, perhaps, but entirely in keeping with the interests of a Nobel Laureate for Peace. While many thought he would be going home to Egypt to contest parliamentary elections next month (the party he founded is boycotting the vote, calling it a sham), the 72-year-old Egyptian lawyer says he prefers to focus on the global issues that affect the survival of all human beings.
While he was the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1997 to 2009, Dr ElBaradei received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear power for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way.
"Almost all of my life has been spent dealing with global issues like inequality, global insecurity, the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, lack of good governance in many parts of the world, and the threat of nuclear weapons. These are the issues I feel comfortable with," he told Asia Focus.
"I would like to be active on these issues that affect our survival. I think that global issues, if they are right, they are right for every country. If you do right at the global level, you are doing right at the national level."
Globally, even as the middle class is expanding, there is still a huge gap between the rich and the poor. Egypt, for instance, faces the issues that challenge many developing economies: inequality, poverty, weak institutions and lack of good governance. And the country still has a long way to go to address these issues.
"What worries me of course is that in many cases when you have poverty, it is accompanied by a lack of good governance and usually it leads to civil strife, civil war and other issues. This phenomenon is going to continue unless we make some drastic changes," said Dr ElBaradei.
He finds it troubling that the more "connected" the world appears to be, the more fragmented many societies have become. "What we need to see is why we have this environment that creates all kinds of extremism or terrorism," he said.
"It is very odd that in many ways, we are very connected in the way we communicate, receive information, and react. We have become a one global community where everybody knows what is happening everywhere else, but on the other hand, we are fragmented in many ways. There is a sense of otherness in many ways, like it doesn't happen in my backyard."
Born in Cairo in 1942 and trained as a lawyer at home and abroad, Dr ElBaradei has participated in policymaking and legal activity at the highest levels of many international organisations including the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council, the Conference on Disarmament, the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Commission on Human Rights, the Organization of African Unity and the League of Arab States.
At the IAEA, Dr ElBaradei served three terms as the chief of the Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog. Its main tasks are to help all member states to enjoy the benefits of progress in nuclear development, while applying strict safeguard to ensure its peaceful uses. The agency's first priority is to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons
'MINDSETS MUST CHANGE'
As the world has changed so much, Dr ElBaradei believes that international institutions including the UN have to adjust to be able to handle the emerging issues more effectively.
"We have more of the problems, challenges we are facing globally. Climate change, arms control, communicable diseases, poverty — they all exist because the institutions do not have the resources or authority and governments continue with business as usual despite the fact that no one can solve any of these issues on its own," he said.
"It is not a matter of money. It's a matter of how we set our priorities. In many ways, I think we are in a management mismatch. We keep doing the same thing and somehow expect a different result. We are not going to get a different result unless we change the mindset."
The kinds of reforms he envisages include changes at global institutions so that they represent the world more fairly. Reforms at the UN Security Council, for example, have been talked about for years but have gone nowhere.
"It is not just about the UN but also the WHO, the Atomic Energy Agency, where authorities of these institutions have to deal with global issues but their authority is very limited and the resources are even worse. They should have more," he said.
"You have to get the member states to understand and agree that the current system and institutions are not serving them well because they are not able to solve the problems we are facing: terrorism, climate change, arms control. We are not moving beyond these issues and they are haunting people everywhere, not just the US.
"Powerful nations have to understand that power is not a zero-sum game. They have to understand that they need to share power."
During his career at the IAEA, Dr ElBaradei took part in a mission to Iraq in the wake of the 1991 Persian Gulf War to uproot the country's nuclear weapons programme. In 1997, he was chosen to succeed Hans Blix of Sweden as the agency's director-general.
As the head of the IAEA, he became known for his insistence on a diplomatic approach when it came to potential nuclear proliferation by North Korea and Iran. He also critiqued certain ideas related to nuclear armaments held by leading first-world countries.
He also went on record to state that his agency had found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, though the insistence by President George W. Bush's administration that such weapons existed was a major factor behind the US invasion in 2003.
NUCLEAR AS A BRIDGE
Asked how he foresees the future of nuclear energy, Dr ElBaradei said the prospects depend on a number of variable factors.
"It depends how much shale oil there is going to be, whether renewable energy is going to be affordable and able to be used for base-load large-quantity generation," he said. "Also, it depends on how the safety of nuclear energy develops over the next 10 years.
"The public in general is very sensitive about nuclear safety after the Fukushima and Chernobyl incidents. You need to reach out to the public to make them understand why they need nuclear, how it works, and what are the risks."
Germany, for instance, has decided to move away completely from nuclear power following the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.
But given the current concerns about energy security and the fact that as many as 1.6 billion people globally still have no access to electricity, several countries are developing nuclear power as part of their energy mix, said Dr ElBaradei.
The United States, for example, is building new reactors for the first since 1970. In France, 78% of the electricity is generated from nuclear plants and the country's policy is quite supportive of nuclear power.
"China is building a lot of nuclear energy right now with 26 reactors under construction, the majority of all plants under way in the world, as the mainland needs all the energy it can get. India is trying to do the same thing as China. These are countries that do not completely lack energy supply [domestically]," he noted.
As the world in general is facing energy insecurity, the use of coal also raises concerns about increasing climate change impacts. Oil, meanwhile, is highly volatile when it comes to price, as events of the past few months have shown.
"Renewables are the future but they are still very expensive and are not able to be used on a large scale," said Dr ElBaradei. "Nuclear, as a result, acts as a bridge. In fact, it's a bridge for the next 15 years. On the one hand, it's a clean source of energy and on the other hand, of course, the risk is serious accidents. That's the major problem with nuclear energy."
Although the fatalities from the Fukushima nuclear accident following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in 2011 were very few, people have become very sensitive about nuclear power since then.
"You have to accept that this is the risk that is part of modernisation," he said. "Since Fukushima, reaction to nuclear energy has been very hyper-negative. Safety has to be the number one priority."
In any case, Dr ElBaradei said, the role of IAEA is not really to promote the use of nuclear energy.
"It's a country decision. Once the country decides to use nuclear energy, then the IAEA comes in to ensure safety and security inspection. In fact, many times it tells a country not to use nuclear because it is not ready for it, because you need a very good industrial infrastructure, trained personnel and a regulatory mechanism."
Dr ElBaradei was in Bangkok last week as a keynote speaker in the 5th Asean event series “Bridges – Dialogues Towards a Culture of Peace”, organised by the International Peace Foundation.