Erik Solheim needs no introduction. He was in Sri Lanka during the most pivotal time of the country’s political transition, and he became involved in the affairs of Sri Lanka purely by accident, once he came to Colombo thinking to write a book. Erik has had a long and varied career in international politics and environmental work. He served as Norway’s Minister for International Development and Minister for the Environment, led the UN Environment Programme, and has worked quietly on peace and mediation efforts across Asia, including in Nepal, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka. He has also been a strong advocate for global climate action, particularly highlighting the central role of China and India in the renewable energy transition.
Yesterday, I sat down with Erik Solheim for a long, wide-ranging conversation. Our discussion ranged from his early years in Norway and the experiences that shaped his political outlook, to the Sri Lankan peace process, climate change, and global geopolitics. Throughout, Solheim was blunt, clear, and uncompromisingly honest, sharing his views on what worked, what failed, and what lessons he believes are essential for the world today.
Erik Solheim begins by situating his political awareness in the specific time and place of his upbringing. He grew up in Norway during the Cold War, in a country that felt stable, protected and distant from war. He describes Norway as “very, very safe and calm” and explains that, as a young person, he admired the United States and accepted the idea that the Soviet Union was the enemy. This was the background against which his political thinking first took shape. That framework was then broken by the Vietnam War. He describes this moment as a shock, not only because of the violence itself, but because it came from the country Norway admired most. He says that people in his generation suddenly realised that “the United States were killing people in the hundreds of thousands and millions, completely unnecessary.” He insists that if there is “one war in world history which was unnecessary, it must be the Vietnam War,” because the outcome of the war was exactly what would have happened without it.
Trust is the core value of any peace process. Without trust, nothing can happen. And yet, both sides lied constantly.
He explains this point very directly. Vietnam ended up with the same government it would have had through elections. Today, that government is “fairly friendly to the United States of America,” and many Americans would even prefer to outsource production to Vietnam rather than China. From his perspective, this makes the scale of destruction even more disturbing. “So, it was a war which killed three million people and the outcome was exactly, exactly the same which we would have got through elections back when the United States started the war.” For him, this was not a distant historical lesson but something that fundamentally changed how he understood power and morality. He says plainly that “that war was the political shock which can wake up my generation.”
At the same time, his political awareness was shaped by everyday life in Norway rather than ideology alone. He grew up in Oslo, which he describes as a city surrounded by forest. From where he lived, he could reach nature within twenty minutes by tram. He talks about skiing in winter and walking or running in summer as normal parts of life. During school holidays, he spent time in the mountains, helping with cows and sheep and trying to observe animals like elks and foxes. These experiences were not exceptional; they were simply how life was lived. He describes Norway as “immensely beautiful,” and although he now acknowledges that other places may be even more visually rich, at the time he had seen very little else. “At the time, I had seen nothing else and the beauty of Norway was more than enough for me.” From this came what he describes as “this love of nature,” and from that love followed a clear conclusion: “if you love nature, of course you need to protect it.” For him, that need automatically became political.
When he speaks about his family background, he is careful to avoid any sense of hardship or privilege. He describes it as a “completely normal middle-class upbringing in Norway those days.” They were not poor, but they lived very modestly. He emphasises how different that life was from today. “We never went to restaurants. I mean, that was seen as a complete waste of money.” They never travelled abroad for holidays. They did not own a car. The family bought their first television only because they wanted to watch ski competitions and the Olympics. He repeats that life was “much, much, much more modest,” but also stable and secure. “We didn’t have any major difficulties in life.” This sense of ordinary security without excess formed the background to everything that followed.
Although he later became deeply involved in international peace processes, Solheim stresses that this was not something he planned or prepared for in any deliberate way. He explains that if someone is interested in history, culture and power, it is difficult to avoid thinking about Asia. He describes India and China as “two great, many thousand years old civilisational states.” For him, India represents cultural heritage and religion, while China represents power, war and the rise of great kingdoms. But this interest was intellectual, not strategic. He says clearly, “I have absolutely no indication that I have been involved in any politics or Asia or peace processes.” Looking back, he acknowledges the connections, but at the time, there was no plan and no expectation that he would one day be involved in Sri Lanka.
When asked about mentors, he recalls being deeply impressed by a Sri Lankan foreign minister, Hameed [A. C. S. Hameed, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka], whom he encountered earlier in life. He remembers him as physically imposing and intellectually striking, and what stayed with him most was how Hameed spoke about international affairs. Hameed explained that global politics is not only about “economics and weapons and strength and power,” but also about “human relations.” Solheim recalls this clearly: “If you want to achieve something, whether for good or bad, human relations are critical.” This idea left a strong impression on him. Even so, he emphasises again that at the time he had no thought that this lesson would later apply to Sri Lanka itself.
Trump wants to go back to the 20th century. Oil, war, domination. China is walking into the future with solar.
His first visit to Sri Lanka was accidental rather than intentional. He travelled there in the 1990s to visit his Norwegian friend Arne Fjortoft, who had spent decades working on development and peace projects in the country. Solheim explains that the real reason he went was to escape Norwegian politics. He wanted time and quiet to write a book about Norway, not Sri Lanka. By staying in Colombo, he could avoid journalists and political pressure. He also mentions very practically that he had children and that being away made it easier to concentrate. “So it was a way to get calm and time to write that book.” During that visit, he met several Sri Lankans, including Neelan Tiruchelvam, who was later murdered. At the time, however, he had “absolutely no idea” that Sri Lanka would later become central to his life. What struck him then was the food, the spice, the friendliness of people, and the natural beauty of the country.
Looking back at the Sri Lankan peace process, Solheim repeatedly returns to the idea of momentum. When the process began in 2001, he describes the level of support as extraordinary. “All polls show that 90% of Sri Lankans supported this.” Ranil Wickremesinghe was elected prime minister with a large majority, and there was a widespread sense that major progress was possible. For two years, there were no killings by either side. “For the first two years, there was no killing and the LTTE killed no one and the government killed no one.” He sees this as a real achievement, not something symbolic. However, he believes the process moved too slowly. “We lost the momentum,” he says, and explains that solutions should have been pursued much faster while public support was still strong.
As time passed, problems that had been manageable at the beginning began to dominate. There were clashes at sea, killings resumed, and economic expectations were not met. Many people believed that peace would quickly bring material improvement to their lives, but instead it was paired with economic policies that “was not necessarily giving anything to poor Sri Lankans.” Disappointment set in, trust declined, and the long, drawn-out nature of the process allowed support to erode. He sees this as a central failure: when there is momentum, it must be used.
He identifies a second missed opportunity after the Asian tsunami in 2004. He describes this moment as another opening for peace. The Sri Lankan army helped Tamils and Muslims along the coast, even those who may have supported the LTTE. LTTE forces helped Sinhalese civilians in the north. “So there was an enormous positive momentum,” he says. Once again, however, delays, bureaucracy and political caution prevented that momentum from being turned into lasting change. “It took time, bureaucratic processes, the risk averseness of leaders.” As before, the opportunity passed, and the country returned to conflict.
Nearly always, peace is messy. But messy peace is still better than endless war—and the West refuses to accept that.
When discussing the obstacles to peace, Solheim speaks very directly. On the LTTE side, he points to Prabhakaran’s character. He acknowledges that Prabhakaran was militarily successful, mentioning the capture of Elephant Pass and the attack on the airport. But he says that Prabhakaran “tended to see every problem as military.” His instinct was to remove opponents rather than negotiate. Solheim explains that convincing him to accept a political solution involving Tamil self-rule within a united Sri Lanka was extremely difficult because “at the core, [he was] a very military man.” He contrasts this with Balasingham, whom he describes as having political wisdom. “If Balasingham had made the decisions at the end, it would have been very, very different.” He believes more international leaders should have spent time engaging directly with Prabhakaran, because “LTTE was not a mass meeting. It was ruled by one man, and without him, nothing could happen.”
On the government side, he identifies division as the main problem. The rivalry between the SLFP and the UNP meant that peace initiatives were often opposed simply because they came from the other side. “Whenever UNP went for peace, SLFP opposed, and when SLFP went for peace, UNP opposed.” He describes this as narrow-minded politics driven by short-term gains in Colombo. At the same time, he insists that public support for peace was overwhelming. “Nearly all Tamils, nearly all Sinhalese, nearly all Muslims wanted peace. And they were ready for compromises.”
When he speaks about personal loss, his tone remains direct but heavy. One of the first Sri Lankans he met was Neelan Tiruchelvam, whom he describes as a man of peace, even though he did not agree with Prabhakaran. Tiruchelvam, was later killed by the LTTE. Solheim calls this “completely unnecessary.” Over time, many others he worked closely with were also killed, including Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar and LTTE figures such as [Seevaratnam] Pulidevan, who headed the peace secretariat. “We had spent hundreds of hours with them,” he says. “We knew them. We knew their families.” Faced with this loss, he explains that the only way to continue was to ask what those affected by the war would want. The answer, he says, was always the same: “please continue, please find a way of getting a stop.”
He also speaks about the moral difficulty of dealing with constant lying during negotiations. Both sides denied killings they were responsible for. In response, he and his colleagues developed what he calls the “elephant theory.” “If you see an elephant, please believe it’s an elephant.” If someone is killed by the LTTE, then they were killed by the LTTE. If they were killed by government forces, then that must be acknowledged. He insists that mediators cannot lie, even when the parties do. “Trust is the core value of any peace process. Without trust, nothing can happen.”
China makes 60 to 90 per cent of all green technology. No nation can afford to ignore that. Not even the United States.
When Erik Solheim reflects on his experiences beyond Sri Lanka, he places what happened there in a wider global context. He says very clearly that Sri Lanka was unusual. “What happened in Sri Lanka is very, very rare.” The war ended with a total military victory for one side, the Sri Lankan state, and almost no one expected that outcome until the final months. Even India, he recalls, believed there could be no military solution. “Even the Indians told me that there can be no military victory here, there can only be negotiated peace.” For Solheim, this makes Sri Lanka an exception rather than a model. In most conflicts, he says, one side cannot defeat the other completely. What normally happens instead is some form of negotiated settlement, which he repeatedly describes as messy.
He insists that this messiness should not be feared. “Nearly always, it’s a peace process of some sort. And normally that’s very, very messy.” He points out that peace does not bring perfection, justice, or prosperity overnight, and often does not bring them at all. But he is very clear that it is still better than war. He draws on his experience in Nepal, where he says the peace process was successful in ending violence and is irreversible. “There is no way Nepal will go back to war.” At the same time, he does not romanticise the outcome. Nepal remains very poor, poorer than many parts of India, and peace did not deliver economic transformation. “So it brought peace, but not real economic development.” He calls this a messy peace, but he still sees it as a success compared to endless conflict.
Myanmar, in his view, illustrates another reality. For a time, there appeared to be progress, but the country later returned to dictatorship and repression. He says very directly that no one can predict such outcomes in advance. “There’s no way you can predict the future.” From these experiences, he draws a broader lesson that applies to today’s wars. He argues that many people in the West still expect clean solutions and moral victories, but those expectations prolong conflict. He says bluntly that on this point, even Trump is right, despite his many dangers. Trump, he argues, understands that messy peace is often the only possible outcome.
Solheim uses Afghanistan as an example. Trump decided to leave, even though that meant handing power to the Taliban. He does not deny that the Taliban are oppressive, but he insists that their rule is still better than endless war. “Taliban running Afghanistan is much better than endless forever wars.” He contrasts this with what he describes as liberal thinking in the West, which would have continued the war indefinitely in the name of fighting terrorism, emancipating women or building infrastructure. In his view, those goals, however well intentioned, ignored reality. He extends the same logic to Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan. He states plainly that Israel cannot kill all Palestinians, that Russia cannot achieve a stable total victory in Ukraine, and that Sudan is effectively divided between two armed forces. In all these cases, he says, peace will be messy, but war will be worse.
From this understanding of conflict, Solheim turns to current geopolitics in the West. He expresses deep concern about ideas that seek to revive nineteenth-century power politics. He describes Trump’s thinking as dangerous because it imagines a world where strong countries dominate weaker ones openly. He compares this to the age of empires, when European powers made war across the world, including in South Asia. He states clearly that nationalism is now the strongest ideology everywhere, and that attempts at domination will inevitably be resisted. “There’s no way that Brazilians or Mexicans or Colombians will accept to be dominated by the United States.” He believes such policies will provoke resistance even among conservative groups that are otherwise friendly to the US.
He also draws a direct comparison between American ambitions and Russian actions. If the United States claims the right to dominate Latin America, he asks, what argument remains against Russia dominating Ukraine or other former Soviet territories? He sees this as a recipe for instability and conflict. “It’s a recipe for havoc, anarchy and wars. It must be stopped.” He then addresses the specific arguments used to justify American interest in Greenland. He dismisses the security argument entirely, saying there is no serious Chinese interest in Greenland. “Never, ever, in all my years there, never, ever any Chinese mention Greenland.” He also rejects the argument about critical minerals, explaining that the reason they are undeveloped is not political resistance but cost. Extraction in ice is extremely expensive, and if it were commercially viable, it would already have happened. If the United States wants to invest heavily, he says, Greenlanders would welcome it, but none of this justifies territorial ambition.
At the centre of Solheim’s thinking about the future is climate change and the global energy transition. He argues that co-operation with China is unavoidable, regardless of geopolitical tensions. He contrasts what he sees as a backward-looking approach in the United States with China’s focus on the future. “Trump wants to go back to the 20th century, back to the time that oil was the most important. China is by the day walking into the future, which is about solar.” He highlights a historic shift: for the first time in human history, more energy has been produced from renewables than from coal. “Last year, for the first time in human history, we developed more energy from renewables than from coal.” He is confident that solar will dominate the twenty-first century. “And very soon, I mean, no one can be in real doubt, solar energy will be the dominant energy in the 21st century.”
China’s dominance in green technologies, he says, is already overwhelming. “China makes 60% or more of everything. There may be about 90% of solar energy, about 80% of wind energy, about 65% of electric batteries, and you can go on and go on.” He attributes this success to long-term vision, leadership, and intense competition within China’s market. “It’s developed by China, and China is now nearly totally dominant in all green energies.” For Solheim, price is the key factor. “No nation, including Sri Lanka, can afford to do renewables if they’re much more costly. No nation wants to do that.”
He illustrates this with examples from India, where small businesses have reduced energy costs by switching from diesel to solar. “I just was in the Indian state of UP, people running small green mills there. They told me in the past we paid 40,000 rupees for diesel. Now we pay 15,000 rupees for solar. And you don’t need to be an environmentalist to want to make that change.” The driving force, he insists, is economic, not environmental. “These are the most easily accessible and lowest-cost energies. Added cost is a matter of national energy independence. And the sun is Sri Lanka, and it’s also Indian or Chinese or French.” Solar, wind, and hydro are domestic resources; fossil fuels mean dependence on foreign powers.
Kindness is not moralising. It’s strategy. The more friends you have, the fewer enemies drain your life.
When asked why China has been so successful, Solheim points to leadership, planning and market competition. “Is that because of their political system? I think it’s about, yes, the political vision, a strong leadership from President Xi Jinping to drive in this direction. But added, because they also have a very vibrant market economy, what has brought down the price of solar is the intense competition between companies like Tongwei and Longyi and a number of others, which are solar companies.” He also stresses the importance of market scale. “And of course, China has helped with a factor which cannot be replicated by, say, Sri Lanka, and that’s the size of the market. I mean, it’s a market of 1.4 billion people.” The sheer size allows innovation to scale and prices to fall.
He then turns to China’s future plans, particularly the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan, which focuses on what Chinese leaders call “new, high-quality, productive forces.” These include green energy technologies and artificial intelligence. He contrasts this with what he sees as an excessive American focus on military power. “While the United States, sorry for them, focus so much on military, the Chinese are completely focused on technology and economy. And I believe the latter is much, much more likely to win out.”
Speaking about India, Solheim expresses strong admiration for the scale of its renewable projects. “Prime Minister Modi is really leading India with the vision that India should go green and should go prosperous. And there is no choice between the two.” He describes massive installations in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, calling them among the largest in the world. “It’s unbelievably big. For example, it’s double of all hydropower coming out of Nepal, just to give one comparison. It’s more than the grid in most nations in the world, just one plant in Andhra Pradesh.” He states plainly that there is “nothing like this in the West.” Only China, he says, can compare. He believes India will soon become the second most important country in the global green transition.
At the same time, he identifies pollution as India’s biggest remaining challenge. Air and water pollution, particularly in northern India, affect health and deter investment. “The level of pollution in the Ganga, particularly north, is much better than the south, like in Chennai or Hyderabad. But in northern India, it’s very polluted. That is a huge negative for people, for the health, but it also is so bad that it prohibits investments because foreigners don’t really want to go there to invest.” He believes India can learn from China, which cleaned up pollution in a decade. “If that can happen in China, it can happen in India also.”
Turning back to Sri Lanka, Solheim focuses on preparedness in the face of climate-related disasters. He recalls the tsunami, where tens of thousands died because there was no warning system. “35,000 Sri Lankans perished in the tsunami. If there had been better preparedness, then most of them could have simply walked inland and they would have avoided the tsunami.” While that event was unprecedented, he insists that smaller disasters such as cyclones and landslides can and must be prepared for. Early warnings, evacuation plans and state capacity are essential. “Being better prepared so that people can get the exact right warning that the government system brings people out of the most dangerous areas by buses so that very few people are killed, I think that is the most important.”
He avoids blame and focuses on future readiness, noting that preparedness is politically difficult. “Preparing is very difficult in politics, not just in Sri Lanka, everywhere. For the simple reason that if you are the mayor somewhere and you open a new plant or something new, there will be a lot of fuss and you get a lot of attention. But long-term planning and preparedness and maintenance don’t give you the same media attention, maybe not the immediate votes, so there is a very strong temptation for politicians everywhere to focus on the immediate rather than being prepared.”
When he speaks about political change in Sri Lanka, Solheim frames it first as a structural and historical shift rather than as a partisan moment. “The change which happened with the AKD [Anura Kumara Dissanayake, President of Sri Lanka] was kind of long overdue. It was the time that someone outside the traditional elite, say Colombo 7 as it was normally said, got the power. Sri Lanka got a president who was the son of a daily worker in Anuradhapura. That was a huge achievement.” He immediately places this within a wider regional comparison, pointing to India as a similar case. “Prime Minister Modi of course also is originating from the most modest of backgrounds. His parents were running a tea table selling tea in a small railway station. So that shift was overdue and it was very positive and it should get support from the entire world.”
At the same time, he is careful not to romanticise what follows such a shift. “Of course it brought into government a movement who had very little, if any, experience in governing. The key cadres had run their own movement. Some of them had been professors at universities, they had run civil society groups, but no one had run a large complicated place like Sri Lanka.” Looking back after a year, he offers an assessment that is deliberately restrained. “It has not gone as well as the JVP or the movement expected or hoped, but it has not gone as bad as the opponents feared. The government has made no huge mistakes, no horrible acts of any sort. However they have also not been able to put Sri Lanka on the trajectory to growth like we can see in say Vietnam or Singapore or some East Asian countries.”
When Solheim is asked about the most important lessons he has learned after decades of working with rebels, presidents, activists and global leaders, he rejects grand theories or complex doctrines. He says his conclusion is very simple. “Always try to be kind. It’s not a great philosophy maybe, but the more friends you have, the fewer enemies you have, the more easy is your life. Because if you get into difficulties, the friends will support you. Enemies, you waste a lot of time if you have many enemies because you spend the time fighting them rather than doing something positive.”
He is careful to say that kindness is easy when directed upwards, and that this is not where the real test lies. “Not that you are kind to say your own boss in the workplace or the president of your own land. I mean nearly everyone is that. The test is that you are kind to your political opponents, people from different other groups or society, and that you are kind to those below you. Not that you are kind to the top leaders, but you are kind to those who serve the food, drive the cars, clean the floors, because without them, society comes to a complete standstill.” In this closing reflection, Solheim does not frame kindness as moral superiority or weakness, but as a basic rule for holding societies together, especially in places shaped by long conflict and deep divisions.
