The Great Debate UK

Pakistan floods show Asia’s vulnerability to climate change

By Lord Julian Hunt and Professor J. Srinivasan. The opinions expressed are their own.

It is more than a year since the devastating July and August 2010 floods in Pakistan that affected about 20 million people and killed an estimated 2,000. Many believe that the disaster was partially fuelled by global warming, and that there is a real danger that Pakistan, and the Indian subcontinent in general, could become the focus of much more regular catastrophic flooding.

Indeed, right now Pakistan is again experiencing massive flooding.  The UN asserts that, already, more than 5.5 million people have been affected and almost 4300 are officially reported dead, 100 of them children.

Last year’s calamity, in particular, highlights the  vulnerability of much of Asia to climate change, and has helped elevate this into one of the most important and pressing political and social issues in the region. Indeed, an increasingly prevailing view is that the impact of climate change could be worse in the region than all previous social, health and conflict disasters of the past.

In particular, there is growing recognition that global warming is dangerously linked to several significant threats, including not just natural disasters, but also energy, water, and food shortages as average rising temperatures reduce productivity and agricultural land is threatened by sea level rises and salinification of coastal areas.

Following the combination of last year’s Pakistani floods, and the exceptional heat waves in Russia, there is also now greater understanding in the region about the links between continental-scale weather events, and hence global risks to food availability. These linkages are likely to be exacerbated by adjustments in the patterns of atmosphere and ocean movements.

Reflecting this heightened concern, Asian prime ministers, legislators and business leaders are increasingly supporting new climate-related legislation, investments and research.  They are also leveraging their growing influence at the United Nations to help secure a comprehensive, global warming deal.

from MacroScope:

Give me liberty and give me cash!

Come back Mr Fukuyama, all is forgiven.

In his 1992 book "The End of History and the Last Man", American political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously argued that all states were moving inexorably towards liberal democracy. His thesis that democracy is the pinnacle of political evolution has since been challenged by the violent eruption of radical Islam as well as the economic success of authoritarian countries such as China and Russia.

Now a study by Russian investment bank Renaissance Capital into the link between economic wealth and democracy seems to back Fukuyama.

Looking at 150 countries and over 60 years of history, RenCap found that countries are likely to become more democratic as they enjoyed rising levels of income with democracy virtually 'immortal' in countries with a GDP per capita above $10,000.

" Only five democracies above the $6,000 income level have died. Even democracies above the $6,000 level have a 99 percent chance of sustaining their political system each year. The only exceptions were the military coups in Greece in 1967 ($9,800), Argentina in 1976 ($8,180) and Thailand in 2006 ($7,440), and the events in Venezuela in 2009 ($9,115), as well as Iran in 2004 ($8,475)," RenCap global chief economist Charles Robertson writes.

The $6,000 per capita GDP seems to be a crucial level, marking the point where a country is likely to shift to democracy. Tunisia, which early this year triggered the wave of uprisings against autocracy across the Arab world, recently crossed that threshold.

Conversely, democracy is most fragile at the lowest income levels and when incomes are shrinking. The world's populous democracy, India, is a notable exception as its per capita income was under $800 from 1950-1967, and only exceeded $2,000 in 2003.

Aid: In favour of zero-tolerance

By Laurance Copeland

After one year, the progress report on the Coalition reads “Moving in the right direction, but with a lot more to do”.

Nonetheless, it is a prisoner of its commitment at the outset to leave two departmental budgets untouched: the NHS and international aid. It is not simply the amounts of money involved (colossal in the case of the NHS, relatively small for aid). It is also the signal it sends that there is such a status as sacrosanct, which immediately begs the question from policemen, firemen, teachers, the legal system, the armed forces: why isn’t our budget sacrosanct too?

This week we learned that Dr Liam Fox is opposed to fixing in law Britain’s aid budget at 0.7 % of GDP.  I can understand his disquiet, but I would feel far more sympathy if he favoured instead enshrining in law a more sensible level for international aid – say, 0.0%, or thereabouts. It is not really a question of what we can afford – personally, I would be quite happy to see 0.7% of GDP set aside in a fund to support international disaster relief (think of the 2005 Asian tsunami or the Haiti earthquake) – it is simply that ongoing international aid is at best a waste, at worst it actually damages the poor people it is supposed to help.

The justification for aid is, presumably, that it is intended to alleviate the suffering of those at the bottom of the income distribution in countries which are themselves too poor to be able to help.  However, when you actually look at the list of recipients of aid from the UK, you find that it includes a number of countries which ought to be capable of providing a tolerable standard of living for their own population without outside assistance e.g. Angola, with its vast natural resources (oil, gas, diamonds etc) and, unbelievably, Russia, which is even better endowed both with raw materials and with billionaires.

It was reported a few weeks ago that HMG was considering crossing countries like these off its gift list – not before time, you may think – but that leaves on the list a number of other recipients whose status might well be questioned, notably India.

On the one hand, even after a decade or so of rapid growth, India still probably holds the greatest concentration of misery on the planet. Yet at the same time India feels able to afford not only one of the world’s largest and best-equipped armed forces, with a well-developed nuclear capability and delivery systems to match, but also maintains a gift list of its own, including among its clients Myanmar, Afghanistan, Bhutan and a number of African countries.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

India-Pakistan – cricket, spooks and peace

"Cricket diplomacy" has always been one of the great staples of the relationship between India and Pakistan. The two countries have tried and failed before to use their shared enthusiasm for cricket to build bridges, right back to the days of Pakistan President Zia ul-Haq, if not earlier.

So when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced last week that he was inviting Prime Minister Yusuf  Raza Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari to watch the semi-finals of the Cricket World Cup in Mohali, India, the temptation was to dismiss it as an old idea.

Yes, it would be the first visit by a leader of either country to the other since the November 2008 attack on Mumbai.  Yes, the invitation came at a time when relations between the two countries were already thawing. And yes, the Middle East is changing so fast that you would expect --  in the way that warring siblings do -- that India and Pakistan would bury their differences at a time when the outside world has become so unpredictable.

But the instinct for cynicism is unerring. India and Pakistan have tried and failed to make peace for so long that it is easy, lazily easy, to predict that this latest initiative will also come to nothing. Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, himself a participant in cricket diplomacy in 2005, wrote it off in 2000:

`"We have been trying all kinds of bus diplomacy and cricket diplomacy and everything. Why has all of it failed? It has failed because the core issue was not being addressed ... because there is only one dispute, the Kashmir dispute ... others are just aberrations, minor differences of opinion which can be resolved," he told The Hindu in an interview in 2000.

Yet even after Mumbai, even after years of fighting over Kashmir, even after all the failed diplomatic initiatives of the past, I still found myself regularly  checking on Google and Twitter to see whether Pakistan had accepted the invitation to the cricket match. When Zardari's spokeswoman Farahnaz Ispahani announced on her Twitter feed that Gilani would be going to Mohali, the news was retweeted with the speed once reserved by traditional media for attendance at U.S.-Soviet summits.

Over the years, each time something like this has happened, enthusiasm about a breakthrough in India-Pakistan relations has been swiftly disabused.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Musharraf’s Kashmir deal, mirage or oasis?

The foreign secretaries, or top diplomats,  of India and Pakistan are expected to meet on the sidelines of a South Asian summit in Thimpu, Bhutan on Feb 6/7 to try to find a way back into talks which have been stalled since the attack on Mumbai in November 2008. Progress is expected to be limited, perhaps paving the way to a meeting of the foreign ministers, or to deciding how future talks should be structured.

Expectations are running low, all the more so after a meeting between the foreign ministers descended into acrimony last July. And leaders in neither country have the political space to take the kind of risks needed for real peace talks right now. Pakistan is struggling with the fall-out of the assassination of Punjab governor Salman Taseer  among many other things, while Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been weakened by a corruption scandal at home.

However, in the interests of establishing a baseline, I asked former president Pervez Musharraf in an interview earlier this week about a roadmap for peace he had agreed with Prime Minister Singh in 2007 before political turmoil forced him out of office. The roadmap brought the two countries to their nearest in years to a peace deal, and during Barack Obama's presidential election campaign, there was a great deal of hope it  could be revived in order to ease tensions between India and Pakistan  in turn helping to stabilise Afghanistan. Even after the Mumbai attacks ended chances of an early "Kashmir to Kabul" peace settlement, the idea has lingered on as one of the more promising models. Yet since the agreement was reached in secret, its details have never been officially released.

Diplomats say the agreement hinged on an acceptance by India and Pakistan that there would be no exchange of territory in disputed Kashmir but they would work to make irrelevant the Line of Control which divides the region. There was also supposed to be a "joint mechanism" under which Indians, Pakistanis and Kashmiris would oversee areas of common interest.  No one can agree, however, on far advanced the talks were. Some say the deal was ready for signing; others that there was still a long way to go.  In particular, the two countries had yet to agree the nature of the "joint mechanism", and bring on board their own people and domestic constituencies in accepting the agreement. Here is what Musharraf had to say when I asked him about the sceptics' view of the draft agreement:

"You are probably concentrating only on Kashmir. But there were two other issues, Sir Creek and Siachen. On Sir Creek and Siachen we reached a stage that they can be signed yesterday. There is no doubt in my mind."  The disputed territory in Sir Creek had been surveyed and was just awaiting a leadership decision, he said. "Then Siachen, we had decided on the relocation of troops beyond certain lines, so everything is done."

"Yes, Kashmir is not that easy. We had found basic parameters; it was my idea actually ... the parameters were first of all demilitarising, which meant really demilitarising on the Line of Control; graduated demilitarisation from the Line of Control and also from the cities in the Indian part of Kashmir; that is what is bothering and troubling the civilians there; so therefore in first case leave the cities and go into the outskirts and then further getting to garrisons. The second element was maximum self-governance, and the third was an overwatch of those areas not given for self-governance, and also (to) see how the self-governance is functioning. This body we had proposed, I had proposed, (was to) be of Kashmiris, Pakistanis and Indians.

 "So these were the parameters and then the issue was of the Line of Control, making the Line of Control irrelevant ... The Indians thought we should make this as a permanent border. My view was that this has been the cause of wars. How can we have the cause of conflict as the permanent solution? So my idea was that we could look into making the Line of Control irrelevant.

from Davos Notebook:

Will Goldman’s new BRICwork stand up?

Jim O'Neill, the Goldman Sachs economist who coined the term BRICs back in 2001, is adding four new countries to the elite club of emerging market economies. But does his new edifice have the same solid foundations?

In future, the BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, China and India will be merged with those of Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey and South Korea under the banner “growth markets,” O'Neill told the Financial Times.

Hmmm.  Doesn't quite grab you like BRICs, does it? The Guardian helpfully offers an amended branding banner of  "Bric 'n Mitsk" (geddit?). But which ever way you cut it, it's hard to see a flood of investment conferences and funds floating off under the new moniker.

Ten years ago, Goldman had this field to itself. Now more and more acronyms are being bandied around by  banks  seeking to pique investors' appetite for higher returns.

Goldman has already launched the N-11, or Next Eleven countries, and other contenders include the VISTA economies (Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey and Argentina), the CIVETS (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa) and the EAGLES (Emerging and Growth-Leading Economies).

So far, none of them have really caught on. One thing you can bank on: the term BRIC will still score highly in any tally of the millions of words that will issue forth from Davos next week.

from Environment Forum:

Food for thought

Feeling hungry? Maybe that's because of all the news, from around the world, about food today -- how much people produce, how much more they need, how much it's going to cost, how much of an effect it will have on climate change, and vice versa.

Starting in Washington, the U.S. Agriculture Department reported that American stockpiles of corn and soybeans will shrink to surprisingly low levels this year, which sent grain prices soaring to 30-month highs. Bad weather in places like Australia and rising world demand led by China are partly responsible for cutting crop inventories around the globe.

There's actually encouraging news on the food front from south Sudan, where citizens are voting now to become an independent nation. While much of Africa is under intense pressure to provide food for its people, the U.N. World Food Programme says south Sudan could become a food exporter and end its chronic food dependency within a decade. But immediately after the vote, this area is likely to need more food aid, according to the U.N.

In India, food inflation rose for the fifth straight week to the highest level in more than a year, part of a trend of rising food prices across Asia. In India's case, the price of staples like onions and tomatoes have political heft and are a major voter issue in advance of state elections there.

Back in the United States, two reports offer food for thought, or at least some interesting thoughts on food. The Worldwatch Institute, which puts together an annual "state of the world" report, focuses this year on agricultural innovation as the key to cutting poverty and stabilizing the climate. Looking at sub-Saharan Africa, where 239 million of the world's 925 million hungry people live, Worldwatch advocates building up soil and water (not just donating seeds for planting), using existing food more effectively, and thinking about the global climate impact of growing food. "African farmers could remove 50 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over the next 50 years, primarily by planting trees among crops and stewarding nearby forests," the report says, warding off "disastrous climate change."

Environmental analyst Lester Brown worries that this change is already imminent. Talking to reporters about his new book, "World on the Edge," Brown talked of a potential "food bubble" caused by over-use of natural water supplies and an over-plowing of soil. "When the food bubble bursts, we will see rises in food prices," Brown said in a telephone briefing. "No one knows how much they will rise and exactly when a big jump will come."

Still hungry? Perhaps for some fish? The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told Congress today that six nations -- Colombia, Ecuador, Italy, Panama, Portugal and Venezuela -- have fishing vessels that engaged in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in the last two years.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

After Holbrooke, chances of political settlement in Afghanistan fall

Reading through some of the many thousands of words written about Richard Holbrooke,  for me two stories stood out in their ability to capture what will be lost with his death:

The first was in Rajiv Chandrasekaran's obituary in the Washington Post:

"While beleaguered members of Mr. Holbrooke's traveling party sought sleep on transcontinental flights, he usually would stay up late reading. On one trip to Pakistan, he padded to the forward of the cabin in his stocking feet to point out to a reporter a passage in Margaret Bourke-White's memoirs of the time of India-Pakistan partition and independence. Bourke-White quoted Pakistani leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah telling her that Pakistan would have no problems with the Americans, because 'they will always need us more than we need them.' Mr. Holbrooke laughed, saying, 'Nothing ever changes.'"

The second was in this 2009 profile by George Packer in The New Yorker.

Talking about Washington's approach to Pakistan, Holbrooke said, “The relationship with Pakistan is so fraught with a history of disappointment on both sides... We can’t align our interests exactly, because they live in a different space, and their history is defined by their relationship with India. . . . The one thing I believe we can do with Pakistan is to try to reach a strategically symmetrical view on the danger posed by Al Qaeda and its allies. That’s the proximate strategic goal.” 

Put together, those comments cover a huge sweep of history and geography which explain why the war in Afghanistan is proving to be so intractable. While the military, and much of the media, focus on Afghanistan - since that is where western troops are deployed - Pakistan is fighting its own battle with India born out of the bloody partition of the subcontinent in 1947.  

Holbrooke was one of the few U.S. officials to have the intellectual range to fully grasp how far the problems of the Afghan war stretched back into history and out into the wider region, from Kabul to Kashmir, from Islamabad to Delhi, from 2010 to 1947. And though he was not allowed to include Kashmir in his mandate because of Indian objections, he nonetheless travelled frequently to India to seek ways of easing tensions with Pakistan. Without such an easing in tensions, Pakistan was never going to turn fully against the Afghan Taliban, believing it might need them to counter Indian influence in Afghanistan.

from Breakingviews:

Trade should leave China and India both winners

Decades of mistrust haven't stopped China and India's trade from tripling in the past five years. Now China wants to restart free trade talks when Premier Wen Jiabao visits New Delhi later this week. India has long resisted such an agreement. Yet more open trade should leave both sides winners.

Since the two countries warred over a border dispute in 1962, China and India have had a fractious relationship. But on some issues they agree. India helped China stop an agreement over climate change in Copenhagen that both felt was too soft on rich countries. Chinese and Indian state-owned firms have bid together for oil and gas assets.

While both have benefited from foreign trade, closer union may sound like an unequal bargain. India's trade deficit with China rose to $16 billion in 2007-2008 from $1 billion in 2001-2002, and freer trade might push it wider. China's cheap currency gives it an edge, despite Indian tariffs on many goods. But in the longer term, India could be a big beneficiary too. Despite the widening deficit, India's exports to China have been growing. Indian exports to China surged by 75 percent in the first quarter of 2010, year on year, led by textiles and precious metals. China's cheaply produced goods pose little threat to India's thriving services sector, while in categories like pharmaceuticals, India remains significantly ahead.

Moreover, India looks due to take over some of China's manufacturing lead. Wages in China have been rising rapidly. India's workforce could step into the gap: the country's GDP per capita is a quarter of China's, its median age ten years younger, and its unemployment rate double that of its trade partner. Cheap Chinese power equipment and infrastructure should help India build modern factories, at relatively low cost. Undoing deep mistrust will take time. Indians may worry that China will attempt to keep both low and high end manufacturing, particularly given its reluctance to let the currency appreciate. India may not be prepared to sell more of what China really wants, like iron ore. Free trade between the emerging superpowers is a distant goal, but still one worth pushing for.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

On WikiLeaks, India, Pakistan and a partisan media

Reading through some of the WikiLeaks cables, I have been struck by how easy it might be to take the fragmentary and often outdated information contained in them and make a case to support either side of the India-Pakistan divide.  Now it turns out someone did, but without even the support of the underlying cables, according to this version of Pakistani media reports by the Pakistan blog Cafe Pyala of alleged Indian skulduggery, including in Baluchistan. 

As Cafe Pyala notes, Pakistan's The News and various other papers cited the alleged cables as proof of alleged Indian involvement in creating trouble in Baluchistan and Waziristan. These allegations were included amongst others that anyone who follows the subject closely hears being bandied about between India and Pakistan. (Reporting on those allegations is much harder, for reasons I will discuss below.)

But according to Cafe Pyala these cables may not even exist, but are rather the work of intelligence agencies telling the media what is to be found in them.  "Small wonder The News and Jang give the source of the report as 'Agencies'," it says. "Question: How stupid do the 'Agencies' really think Pakistanis are?"

This is terribly confusing, as it is hard enough to make sense of the WikiLeaks cables on India and Pakistan, without having to filter out what intelligence agencies/media  say about what may or may not be in that huge database of leaked U.S. embassy reports.

As it is, we have to keep in mind the idea that the cables are only as accurate (we assume) as the ambassadors who penned them were able to make them,  given that they themselves were dependent on sources who might, or might not, have been telling the truth.  They are not gospel (and odd that in Pakistan which tends to distrust everything the Americans say, they are being treated as such.)

So two points - one on Baluchistan, and the other on the media in India and Pakistan.

For background, Islamabad accuses India of using its presence in Afghanistan to destabilise Pakistan, particularly by funding and arming separatists in Baluchistan. India denies this, and says it is interested only in promoting development in Afghanistan.  The  Indian consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad particularly trouble Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, which sees them as bases for alleged nefarious activity by its rival,  India's Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) spy agency.