Chasing a Mirage: How Israel Arab Parties Validate Israeli Apartheid

Regardless of the outcome of the latest Israeli elections, Arab parties will not reap meaningful political benefits, even if they collectively achieve their highest representation ever. The reason is not about the parties themselves, but in Israel’s skewed political system which is predicated on racism and marginalization of non-Jews.

Israel was established on a problematic premise of being a homeland of all Jews, everywhere – not of Palestine’s own native inhabitants – and on a bloody foundation, that of the Nakba and the destruction of historic Palestine and the expulsion of its people.

Such beginnings were hardly conducive to the establishment of a real democracy, perfect or blemished. Not only did Israel’s discriminatory attitude persist throughout the years, it actually worsened, especially as the Palestinian Arab population rose disproportionally compared to the Jewish population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The unfortunate reality is that some Arab parties have participated in Israeli elections since 1949, some independently and others under the ruling Mapei party umbrella. They did so despite Arab communities in Israel being ruled by a military government (1951-1966) and practically governed, until this day, by the unlawful ‘Defense (Emergency Regulations)’. This participation has constantly been touted by Israel and its supporters as proof of the state’s democratic nature.

This claim alone has served as the backbone of Israeli hasbara throughout the decades. Though often unwittingly, Arab political parties in Israel have provided the fodder for such propaganda, making it difficult for Palestinians to argue that the Israeli political system is fundamentally flawed and racist.

Palestinian citizens have always debated among themselves about the pros and cons of taking part in Israeli elections. Some understood that their participation validates the Zionist ideology and Israeli apartheid, while others argued that refraining from participating in the political process denies Palestinians the opportunity to change the system from within.

The latter argument has lost much of its merit, as Israel sank deeper into apartheid, while social, political and legal conditions for Palestinians worsened. The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah) reports on dozens of discriminatory laws in Israel that exclusively target Arab communities. Additionally, in a report published in February, Amnesty International describes thoroughly how the “representation of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the decision making process … has been restricted and undermined by an array of Israeli laws and policies.”

This reality has existed for decades, long before July 19, 2018, when the Israeli parliament approved the so-called Jewish Nation-State Basic Law. The Law was the most glaring example of political and legal racism, which made Israel a full-fledged apartheid regime.

The Law was also the most articulate proclamation of Jewish supremacy over Palestinians in all aspects of life, including the right to self-determination.

Those who have argued that Arab participation in Israeli politics served a purpose in the past should have done more than collectively denounce the Nation-State law, by resigning en masse, effective immediately. They should have taken advantage of the international uproar to convert their struggle from a parliamentary to a popular grassroots one.

Alas, they have not. They continued to participate in Israeli elections, arguing that if they achieved greater representation in the Israeli Knesset, they should be able to challenge the tsunami of Israeli discriminatory laws.

This did not happen, even after the Joint List, which unified four Arab parties in the March 2020 elections, achieved its greatest turnout ever, becoming the Knesset’s third largest political bloc.

The supposed historic victory culminated to nil because all mainstream Jewish parties, regardless of their ideological backgrounds, refused to include Arab parties in their potential coalitions.

The enthusiasm that mobilized Arab voters behind the Joint List began to dwindle, and the List itself fragmented, thanks to Mansour Abbas, the head of the Arab party, Ra’am.

In the March 2021 elections, Abbas wanted to change the dynamics of Arab politics in Israel altogether. “We focus on the issues and problems of the Arab citizens of Israel within the Green Line,” Abbas told TIME magazine in June 2021, adding “we want to heal our own problems”, as if declaring a historic delink from the rest of the Palestinian struggle.

Abbas was wrong, as Israel perceives him, his followers, the Joint List and all Palestinians to be obstacles in its efforts to maintain the exclusivist ‘Jewish identity’ of the state. The Abbas experiment, however, became even more interesting, when Ra’am won 4 seats and joined a government coalition led by far-right, anti-Palestinian politician Naftali Bennet.

By the time the coalition collapsed in June, Abbas achieved little, aside from splitting the Arab vote and proving, again, that changing Israeli politics from within has always been a fantasy.

Even after all of this, Arab parties in Israel still insisted on participating in a political system that, despite its numerous contradictions, agreed on one thing: Palestinians are, and will always be, the enemy.

Even the violent events of May 2021, where Palestinians found themselves fighting on multiple fronts – against the Israeli army, police, intelligence services, armed settlers and even ordinary citizens – did not seem to change the Arab politicians’ mindset. Arab population centers in Umm Al-Fahm, Lydda and Jaffa, were attacked with the same racist mentality as Gaza and Sheikh Jarrah, illustrating that nearly 75 years of supposed integration between Jews and Arabs under Israel’s political system hardly changed the racist view towards Palestinians.

Instead of converting the energy of what Palestinians dubbed the ‘Unity Intifada’ to invest in Palestinian unity, Arab Israeli politicians returned to the Israeli Knesset, as if they still had hope in salvaging Israel’s inherently corrupt political system.

The self-delusion continues. On September 29, Israel’s Central Election Committee disqualified an Arab party, Balad, from running in the November elections. The decision was eventually overturned by the country’s Supreme Court, urging an Arab legal organization in Israel to describe the decision as ‘historic’. In essence, they suggested that Israel’s apartheid system still carries the hope of true democracy.

The future of Arab politics in Israel will remain grim if Arab politicians continue to pursue this failed tactic. Though Palestinian citizens of Israel are socio-economically privileged if compared to Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, they enjoy nominal or no substantive political or legal rights. By remaining loyal participants in Israel’s democracy charade, these politicians continue to validate the Israeli establishment, thus harming, not only Palestinian communities in Israel but, in fact, Palestinians everywhere.

 Dr. Ramzy Baroud 

 

Who is China's President Xi Jinping?

 

Who is China's President Xi Jinping?

Issued on: 21/10/2022 - 23:04Modified: 21/10/2022 - 23:02

 When Xi Jinping took power in 2012, some observers predicted he would be the most liberal Communist Party leader in China's history, based on his low-key profile, family backstory and perhaps a degree of misguided hope.

Ten years later, those forecasts lie in tatters, proving only how little was understood of the man who looks set to become China's most powerful ruler since Mao Zedong after the five-yearly Communist Party Congress ends on Saturday.

Xi has shown himself to be ruthless in his ambition, intolerant of dissent, with a desire for control that has infiltrated almost every aspect of life in modern China.

He has gone from being primarily known as the husband of a celebrity singer to someone whose apparent charisma and aptitude for political storytelling have created a personality cult not seen since Mao's day.

The colourful details of his early life have been rinsed and repackaged in official party lore, but the man himself -- and what drives him -- remain somewhat more of an enigma.

"I dispute the conventional view that Xi Jinping struggles for power for power's sake," Alfred L. Chan, author of a book on Xi's life, told AFP.

"I would suggest that he strives for power as an instrument... to fulfil his vision."

Another biographer, Adrian Geiges, told AFP that he did not think Xi was motivated by a desire for personal enrichment, despite international media investigations having revealed his family's amassed wealth.

"That's not his interest," Geiges said.

"He really has a vision about China, he wants to see China as the most powerful country in the world."

Central to that vision -- what Xi calls the "Chinese Dream" or "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation" -- is the role of the Communist Party (CCP).

"Xi is a man of faith... for him, God is the Communist Party," wrote Kerry Brown, author of "Xi: A Study in Power".

"The greatest mistake the rest of the world makes about Xi is to not take this faith seriously."

Xi might not seem an obvious candidate to become a CCP diehard, though he grew up as a "princeling", or member of the party elite.

His father Xi Zhongxun was a revolutionary hero turned vice premier, whose "strictness toward his family members was so serious that even those close to him believed it bordered on the inhuman", according to the elder Xi's biographer Joseph Torigian.

But when Zhongxun was purged by Mao and targeted during the Cultural Revolution, "(Jinping) and his family were traumatised", said Chan.

His status vanished overnight, and the family was split up. One of his half-sisters is reported to have killed herself because of the persecution.

Xi has said he was ostracised by his classmates, an experience the political scientist David Shambaugh suggests contributed to a "sense of emotional and psychological detachment and his autonomy from a very young age".

At just 15, Xi was ordered to the countryside in central China where he spent years hauling grain and sleeping in cave homes.

"The intensity of the labour shocked me," he later said.

He also had to take part in "struggle sessions" in which he had to denounce his father.

"Even if you don't understand, you are forced to understand," he said, describing the sessions to a Washington Post reporter "with a trace of bitterness" in a 1992 interview.

"It makes you mature earlier."

Biographer Chan said the experiences of his youth had given him "toughness".

"He tends to go for broke. He tends to use a two-fisted approach when he approaches problems. But he also has a certain appreciation of the arbitrariness of power and that's why he also emphasises law-based governance."

Nowadays, the cave Xi slept in is a domestic tourist draw, used to emphasise traits such as his concern for China's poorest.

When AFP visited in 2016, one local painted a picture of an almost legendary figure, reading books between breaks in hard labour "so one could see he was no common man".

Chinese President Xi Jinping's apparent charisma and aptitude for political storytelling have created a personality cult not seen since the days of Mao Zedong Saeed KHAN AFP/File

That does not seem to have been obvious at the time though. Xi himself said he was not even rated "as high as the women" when he first arrived.

His application for CCP membership was rejected multiple times because of the family stigma, before it was finally accepted.

Beginning as a village party boss in 1974, Xi climbed to the governorship of coastal Fujian province in 1999, then party chief of Zhejiang province in 2002 and eventually Shanghai in 2007.

"He was working very systematically... to get experience by starting at a very low level, in a village, then in a prefecture... and so on," said biographer Geiges.

"And he was very clever by keeping a low profile."

Xi's father was rehabilitated in the late 1970s following the death of Mao, massively boosting his son's standing.

Following a divorce from his first wife, Xi married superstar soprano Peng Liyuan in 1987, at a time when she was much better known than him.

Even so, his potential was not apparent to all, exemplified by comments made by his host on a trip to the United States in 1985.

"No one in their right mind would ever think that that guy who stayed in my house would become the president," Eleanor Dvorchak was quoted as saying years later in the New Yorker magazine.

Cai Xia, a former high-ranking CCP cadre who now lives in exile in the United States, believes Xi "suffers from an inferiority complex, knowing that he is poorly educated in comparison with other top CCP leaders".

As a result, he is "thin-skinned, stubborn, and dictatorial", she wrote in a recent article in Foreign Affairs.

'Heir of the revolution'

But Xi has always regarded himself "as an heir of the revolution", said Chan.

In 2007, he was appointed to the Politburo Standing Committee, the party's highest decision-making body.

When he replaced Hu Jintao five years later, there was little in Xi's past administrative record that foreshadowed his actions once installed as leader.

He has cracked down on civil society movements, independent media and academic freedoms, overseen alleged human rights abuses in the northwest Xinjiang region, and promoted a far more aggressive foreign policy than his predecessor.

In the absence of access to either Xi or any of his inner circle, scholars are left to survey his earlier writings and speeches for clues to his motivations.

"The absolute centrality of the party's mission to make China a great country again is evident from Xi's earliest recorded statements," wrote Brown.

Xi has harnessed that narrative of an ascendant China to great effect, using nationalism as a tool for his own and the party's legitimacy among the population.

But there is also evidence he fears that grasp on power might decline.

"The fall of the Soviet Union and of socialism in eastern Europe was a big shock," said Geiges, adding Xi blames the collapse on its political opening up.

"So he decided that something like this shall not happen to China... that's why he wants strong leadership of the Communist Party, with one strong leader." https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20221021-who-is-china-s-president-xi-jinping

The 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party

 

The 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party

The 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party formally closed on Saturday (Oct., 23, 2022)
The full report answers some of the questions about China’s future direction and priorities, although it does not drill down into specific policies. It explained Xi’s common prosperity initiative and how it can be achieved. The report also outlined his vision of green development and greater self-reliance in science and technology.

Xi also delivered a strong message on anti-corruption, as well as military and defence after pledges to improve strategic deterrence were included in the report for the first time the 20th party congress is very much a show for Xi. The message of his supreme leadership and his dream of national rejuvenation will be amplified and promoted in China many months after the conclusion of the congress

Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping has unveiled his main supporting cast for his record-breaking third term, promoting rising stars Li Qiang, Li Xi, Ding Xuexiang and Cai Qi to China’s highest decision-making body.

Together with ideology tsar Wang Huning, and former anti-corruption chief Zhao Leji, they will form the new Politburo Standing Committee. By bringing these fresh faces into his core team, Xi has laid the foundation for his rule for the next five years and beyond.

He brought them out to meet the press at the Great Hall of the People on Sunday, capping the Communist Party’s week-long 20th national congress. According to state news agency Xinhua, the new hierarchy order of the Politburo is party secretary Xi Jinping, 69, Li Qiang, 63, Zhao Leji, 65, Wang Huning, 67, Cai Qi, 66, Ding Xuexiang, 60 and Li Xi, 66.

This means Li Qiang will become China’s next premier, as the South China Morning Post reported earlier.  Cai Qi is the first secretary of the party’s secretariat – taking over from Wang Huning – and will be responsible for the day-to-day running of key party affairs.

How Pakistan can leverage international climate financing

 

How Pakistan can leverage international climate financing

In order to achieve the 2030 emissions target, and make our cities liveable, Pakistan will need to attract investment in climate change initiatives.

William P. Mako | Amna Mahmood | Ijaz Nabi Published September 14, 2022

Imagine it is 2030, and a chilly November morning. You step out of your house and are welcomed by a clear sky and not a pervasive smog, a common occurrence not so long ago that required you to mask up and forced schools to close down.

You start the car and the engine revs up noiselessly and without fumes — you recently replaced the older petrol version with an electric vehicle. Many people you know have made a similar switch as it has become easier to purchase electric vehicles and charging stations are now within easy access.

Shifting to a solar home system reduced monthly electricity bills and generated savings allowed you to invest in the electric vehicle. The image of a dense tree-lined street, with the green contrasting magnificently against the blue sky, reflects on your rear mirror as you reverse the car and head to work.

This can be Lahore in 2030 if the government realises its vision of drastically reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the climate action plan, the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

 

Mission green

The aim is to reduce GHG emissions by 50 per cent by 2030 from the projected levels through shifting to 60pc renewable energy and 30pc electric vehicles, banning imported coal, and sequestering (or capturing) carbon (a common GHG) through natural resource restoration initiatives such as the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Programme (TBTTP) and the Protected Areas Initiative.

It is common knowledge that Pakistan contributes minimally to global GHG emissions — 2020 emissions of CO2 accounted for less than 0.7 per cent of global emissions.Why then, you may ask, did the government decide to set such ambitious plans to reduce local GHG emissions?

 

It is because being in the category of low emitters, sadly, does not make the country immune to the consequences of global GHG emissions. Between 2000 and 2019, the Global Climate Risk Index ranked Pakistan the 8th most vulnerable nations affected by climate change. The recent floods will probably bump it further up the vulnerability rank when the index is calculated next.

 

GHGs are problematic because they trap heat, leading to increased global temperatures, and like Covid-19, do not respect national boundaries. If global warming were to exceed 2 degrees Celsius beyond pre-industrial levels, it is expected to cause rising sea-levels, extreme and unpredictable weather, and damage to ecosystems and human settlements at a scale that has not been observed before.

 

It is precisely due to the global nature of the problem that 196 countries (including Pakistan) became signatory to the legally binding Paris Agreement in 2015, an international treaty on climate change that established the goal of limiting global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably 1.5 degrees Celsius. The same agreement also requires signatories to submit their NDCs every five years to show their commitment towards achieving this goal.

 

The question then is: how will Pakistan’s climate targets be financed?

 

Show me the money

In the NDCs’ view, 15pc of the reduction in 2030 GHG emissions will be financed from domestic sources, and the remaining 35 per cent should be financed from international sources.

 

In other words, the ability to meet the 2030 commitments will hinge upon the availability of international climate finance, ideally on a concessional (lower market rate, generous terms) basis.

 

Broadly speaking, climate finance refers to local, national or transnational financing that is targeted towards supporting mitigation and adaptation actions that address climate change.

 

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement call upon parties with more financial resources to assist those that are less endowed and more vulnerable, so that progress towards the global objective of stabilising GHG concentrations in the atmosphere can be made. There is also an added expectation that developed countries will take the lead in mobilising climate finance.

 

To date, Pakistan’s access to international climate flows has been very limited. Its profile of relatively high climate vulnerability and relatively low income per capita may allow it to attract concessional climate finance but, nonetheless, will require meeting stringent qualifying criteria.

 

Globally, the volume of concessionary finance has been modest. Of the total climate finance of $632 billion available in 2019-20, $65 billion was concessionary finance by multinationals to East Asian economies and only $20 billion was grants to the poorest countries. The Ukraine war may further cloud prospects for a substantial increase in the overall volume of funds at least for the foreseeable future.

 

Furthermore, the great majority of Pakistan’s planned mitigation spending is for renewable energy. For instance, the NDCs anticipate $101 billion for energy transition alone (the energy sector accounted for 41pc of Pakistan’s 2018 GHG emissions) by 2030. As the costs of renewable alternatives fall within the range for fossil fuel options, non-concessional financing for renewable investments has become the norm.

 

Investors expect renewable energy investments to cover their costs and provide an adequate return on investment and hence, not qualify for concessionary climate finance. Recent trends show the same. Of about $324 billion in recent worldwide annual funding for renewable energy, a large proportion was market-rate debt and private equity.

 

The opportunities

Faced with such challenges, what options are available to attract substantial quantities of international climate finance? Well, Pakistan can explore two strategies.

 

One, it should look at cases of innovative financing instruments and apply those relevant to the local context. Two, and more broadly, it should look to improve structural issues to make itself a more attractive destination for international climate finance. A few examples are shared as follows.

 

In November last year, Belize committed to protecting 30pc of its ocean (as well as a range of other conservation initiatives) in exchange for a $362 million debt-for-nature swap that reduced Belize’s debt by 12pc of the GDP. This was the largest debt financing to date for ocean conservation and was negotiated with The Nature Conservatory, an environmental organisation.

 

Pakistan can also explore financing nature conservation projects, such as the TBTTP, through a similar settlement. In April 2021, the government issued 30-year bonds for $500 million. If the government can borrow to redeem the outstanding April 2051 bonds, initial calculations show that debt servicing savings generated could potentially fund 5.7 billion trees over the bonds’ remaining maturity period.

 

Debt-for-nature swaps can also be applied to subsidising green technology to make farming practices more eco-friendly. For three weeks straddling October and November, farmers in the Punjab province resort to stubble burning of the harvested rice crop to prepare the fields for wheat sowing.

 

As a consequence of this (and also of low-grade fuel, industrial emissions and dust particles), many cities in Punjab experience a sharp deterioration in air quality. One known technology for eliminating stubble burning is the “happy seeder” which breaks down rice stubble (mulching it to the ground), and plants wheat seeds simultaneously.

 

Options to subsidise this technology to make it financially viable for the farmers by approaching environmental organisations (such as the TNC above) to fund crop stubble burning abatement can be explored.

 

Pakistan’s coal fleet is fairly young when compared to coal-fired plants in the US, Russia, and Europe, which have a higher average age of 30-40 years. The government can use this to its advantage when negotiating coal plant retirements.

 

Who would de-commission a young coal-fired plant without some sort of concessional financing? It should be possible to borrow enough from multilateral/ bilateral development financial institutions to (i) buy out the investors for major coal-fired plants and pay de-commissioning costs, and (ii) generate revenue from carbon credits for future emissions prevented to pay off this borrowing.

 

Potential climate financiers will appreciate a more fully developed presentation of emission reduction plans. It will be important to show specifically what changes would be needed in Pakistan to reduce 2030 emissions to 50pc below the baseline projection.

 

For example, major increases in renewable energy are contemplated, however, goals for achieving these targets have not been laid out clearly. Specific projects, and the emissions cut contribution for each, should be identified and grouped by suitability for receiving concessional climate finance.

 

It will also be important to generate credible investment costs projections, for example, the estimate for buying out new coal power plants and Thar coal mines is placed at $18 billion, which is significantly greater than the investments in the five electricity generation public-private partnerships (PPPs) that reached financial close since 2016 and totalled only $6.6b.

 

The International Capital Market Association (ICMA) is a non-profit association and is responsible for the development and monitoring of the Green Bond Principles that provide guidelines on transparency, disclosure and reporting on funding to projects that contribute to environmental sustainability.

 

Ease of doing business

In September 2021, the Securities Exchange Commission of Pakistan’s (SECP) approved the national guidelines for green bonds. These guidelines recognise, but go beyond the ICMA principles for green investment requiring more work for the issuer and regulator. THE SECP should refine domestic guidelines for green bonds to minimise the burden on investors.

 

A country’s risk rating can affect the overall credit rating for a public private partnership (PPP) project company, and hence the cost of its debt and the rate at which it can profitably sell an infrastructure service (for example, electricity) within the country.

 

Pakistan currently ranks at around the 25th percentile from the bottom on rule of law indicators, well below the averages for South Asia and other regions. To raise Pakistan’s attractiveness to potential foreign investors, it will be important to work to improve the country’s rule of law rating on contract enforcement, property rights, and physical security indicators to enhance investor confidence.

 

To summarise, in order to achieve the 2030 emissions target, and make our cities liveable, Pakistan will need to attract investment in climate change initiatives.This will require Pakistan to de-commission coal plants, expand renewable sources of energy, invest in green technology more broadly and deepen the green finance market for bonds by improving perceptions about country risk.

 

More importantly, it will be critical to build capacity and technical expertise within the Ministry of Finance, which is leading the country’s climate finance efforts, so it can identify and mobilise financing from the range of climate finance instruments and means available internationally.

 

In recent weeks, there has been much talk about the developed world compensating the developing nations for catastrophic climate-related events — the current floods are a case in point — fuelled by their high-emitting economic activities. The time is here to work with international partners to support the country’s climate change efforts. https://www.dawn.com/news/1708561/how-pakistan-can-leverage-international-climate-financing

What Gwadar can learn from India’s Mundra port

 

What Gwadar can learn from India’s Mundra port   

Pakistanis who want to see Gwadar reach its true potential would do well to learn from Mundra’s success.

Uzair M. Younus Published August 25,  

Located on the northern shores of the Gulf of Kutch, the Mundra Port is the largest private port in India. Handling almost 150 million tons a year, the port began operations in 1998 and is operated by Adani Ports & SEZ Limited, whose CEO is Karan Adani.

Karan is the son of Gautam Adani, one of the world’s richest men whose net worth is estimated to be almost $140 billion. Mundra’s rise and the strategy followed by Indian policymakers, especially Narendra Modi, first as Chief Minister of Gujarat and then as Prime Minister of India, offers many lessons to Pakistani policymakers seeking to realise the full potential of the Gwadar Port.

The modern era for the Mundra port dates back to 1994 when the Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB) gave an approval for a captive jetty. Four years later in 1998, the first terminal began operations under the Gujarat Adani Port Limited and by the end of 1999, there were multi-purpose berths operating at the port. Recognising the economic importance of this facility, a private railway line was completed in 2001 and by the end of 2002, this line was fully integrated with Indian Railways, allowing efficient transportation of cargo to and from the port across India.

What began as a facility handling commodity cargo — the port was handling crude oil by 2002 — became a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) by 2003.

This SEZ was part of a broader strategy to attract investment into the state of Gujarat through consistent policies favouring domestic and foreign investors. A flagship annual event, titled Vibrant Gujarat, was organised starting in 2003 (it continued until 2019) where prospective investors, policymakers, and other business leaders explored investment opportunities in the state.

The port’s growth soon led to the development of a second terminal, increased supply of power through an agreement with Tata Power, and growth in bulk cargo that was handled by the port and in 2008, the port began handling automobile exports through an agreement with Maruti Suzuki.

By 2007, less than a decade after operations began, Mundra Port and Special Economic Zone Limited (MPSEZ) offered equity shares to the Indian public. The shares were offered at about Rs100 per share and the offering was oversubscribed by 116 times. Today, the entity is the largest private port operator in India with 13 ports in the country, representing almost 25 per cent of the country’s port capacity — the company also recently acquired Haifa Port in Israel for $1.18 billion.

The Mundra Port now has almost two dozen warehouses with a combined storage capacity of 137,000 square meters. These facilities store wheat, rice, fertiliser, and other commodities. The port also has wheat-cleaning and rice-sorting facilities, with a cumulative capacity to handle over 1,700 tons of wheat and rice a day. It is also the world’s largest coal importing terminal with a capacity to handle over 40 million tons of coal a year. These coal imports are critical not only for India’s energy sector but also for Adani, which operates coal mines in places like Australia and owns coal power plants in India.

The foundations of success

The dramatic success of Mundra and the Adani conglomerate is built on two key foundations — the consistency of policy priorities, especially at the state government level, and the recognition that the private sector is best placed to generate economic activity.

Gujarat had high levels of economic growth through the 90s and this focus on economic development continues to this day. Despite significant human development challenges related to childhood malnutrition, literacy, etc, successive state governments have developed a set of policies that prioritise economic opportunity at the local level.

Mundra’s success was built on this priority, meaning that before the port could play a role in helping India’s broader economic story, it had to have a positive impact on the people who lived in the state of Gujarat.

The second priority focused on letting private sector entrepreneurs mobilise resources, gain technical knowhow, and take risks to build critical infrastructure and associated industries around it. While the government offered investment incentives, tax breaks, and other support, the onus on developing, growing, and scaling up Mundra Port was on the Adani Group.

And while people may rightfully point to crony capitalism as being the driver of this innovation, the fact of the matter is that Gautam Adani became one of the world’s richest men through productive investments, not just elite capture of state resources.

The fault with our port

These two core principles seem to be missing as Pakistan seeks to build and scale Gwadar. The regular protests by the residents of Gwadar, who have limited access to drinking water, and the broader disenchantment of Baloch citizens is evidence that inclusive economic opportunity through state-led investments remains a distant dream. The question is: can a major port, that is unable to deliver for the people that live closest to it, generate economic opportunity and wealth that benefits Pakistan and its citizens?

Secondly, the thrust of the development model being followed in Gwadar continues to be state driven where realities of the local economy are ignored. For example, the core economic activity of Gwadar for centuries has been fishing. Despite this obvious fact, not a lot of effort has been made to mobilise private capital to modernise this fishing industry such that it creates well-paying jobs for local citizens in industries affiliated with seafood, combined with a special focus on exporting these products.

Finally, the lack of political stability in Balochistan and the machinations that are the norm in Quetta, means that there is little local ownership in terms of tackling the province’s chronic economic and human development challenges. Over the last few days, the province has been devastated by rains and flooding, but elites, mainstream media, and citizens remain fixated on the political game of thrones being played out in Islamabad.

The dramatic growth at Mundra Port, the economic activity that it has generated in alignment with Gujarat’s own developmental priorities, and India’s broader development trajectory, where it has become more globally integrated, stands in stark contrast with ours.

Mundra as a case study offers key lessons of how and why this divergence is taking place, especially as it relates to mobilising private sector capital to achieve strategic economic objectives.

Pakistanis who want to see Gwadar reach its true potential would do well to learn from Mundra’s success and apply similar strategies in Gwadar. https://www.dawn.com/news/1706574/what-gwadar-can-learn-from-indias-mundra-port

 

Man-made catastrophes

 

Man-made catastrophes

Ali Tauqeer Sheikh Published August 25, 2022  Updated about 22 hours ago  

The writer is an expert on climate change and development.

PAKISTAN is in the midst of a man-made disaster. Our flawed development model has made our lives insecure in both the urban and rural areas. This pattern of development has robbed us of the monsoons — our season of romance, raindrops, walking in the rain, and singing songs. The monsoons have always been part of our folklore and poetry. They are the soul of our culture, heritage and history, and are connected with our lives, lifestyles and livelihoods. Historically, we have not dreaded the monsoons, but now we have begun to fear them.

 

From the earliest agrarian settlements in Mehrgarh to the Indus Valley civilisation and centuries later the Mughal period, we have coexisted with seasonal floods and prolonged droughts. But the development path chosen since then has resulted in a competitive, even zero-sum relationship with our natural environment — forests, waterways, waterbodies and ecosystems.

Gravity propels the water flow, but our development model is insisting on defying gravity. Our settlements, infrastructure, economy, livelihoods and livestock, all have become unnecessarily vulnerable and fragile primarily because we have been obstructing water’s flow. Can this season of biblical rains and deadly floods provide us an opportunity to reflect and re-envision our development model?

The scale, scope and spread of the 2022 floods have surpassed the super floods of 2010. The monsoon rains have created unprecedented havoc in all regions of the country stretching from Gilgit-Baltistan and KP to Sindh, southern Punjab and Balochistan. No doubt the downpour itself was unprecedented in many areas, but the monsoon waters are furious primarily because we have choked their passages and encroached on banks and shoulders. The floodwaters are only reclaiming their right of way. Infrastructure and community assets, including the ones developed since the super floods eg the 11 small dams in Balochistan, are being washed away, damaged or destroyed.

Clearly, no lessons have been drawn or applied to disaster-proof subsequent infrastructural development. Neighbourhoods in villages, small towns, and larger cities have no rainwater or floodwater channels. This absence overwhelms sewerage lines and pollutes drinking water supplies where they exist. Electricity poles are exposed and there are no plans to flood-proof them. Roads and railway tracks are often without culverts; they continue to obstruct the water flow. Land-use changes happen at will, resulting in urban sprawls as well as grand housing societies and villagers’ unplanned hamlets, often clashing with the annual flood cycles.

Flooding has emerged as the worst type of climate-induced disaster for Pakistan, perhaps the deadliest.

To top it all, the country has become a prisoner of the four deadly sins of development: i) top-down development planning and resource allocation, in the belief that it can reduce local vulnerabilities, ii) disparate development schemes, often randomly selected, thinking that it will add up to a sustainable growth rate, iii) archaic and poor standards for infrastructure development, presuming that it will withstand increasing resilience needs, and iv) the statist development model, a political system that has substantial centralised control over social and economic affairs, thinking of it as a substitute for local governance institutions or national resilience standards.

 

Climate-induced flooding is caused primarily by two key processes that also lead to changes in the monsoon patterns: first, warmer air will produce more rain. As global air temperatures increase, the clouds can hold more water vapour resulting in more water-intense or torrential downpours. It is because of this basic science that many climate models project that the South Asian monsoons will see heavier, frequent, and untimely rains.

Second, the seawater rise has increased coastal flooding but the higher levels of temperatures at sea give higher temperature points to the clouds and indeed greater ability to enter farther over land. The increasing frequency of flooding in Balochistan is sometimes attributed to these westerly weather influences, rather than the traditional eastern monsoon originating from the Bay of Bengal. This change in the weather cycle seems to have added to the frequency and severity of floods in the typically non-monsoon areas of Balochistan.

Climate change is fuelling flooding in Pakistan. Flooding has indeed emerged as the worst type of climate-induced disaster for the country, perhaps the deadliest. It is making flooding less natural and more disastrous. The frequency of heavy flooding is also increasing.

After recent flooding in Elbe and other rivers in eastern Germany, studies estimated that flooding was nine times more likely to be triggered by global climate change. Floods are complicated but not only because of the changes in weather patterns; it is also due to the position or location of infrastructure, its designs and the material used to enhance resilience levels. The infrastructure destroyed by floods — houses, roads, dams, embankments, power lines, bridges — are costly to rebuild.

Not ready to accept it as a grand failure of public sector development planning, the federal and provincial governments were quick to blame climate change, instead of poor early warning systems, poorly functioning government departments, poor building designs, construction guidelines, material standards and of course, the unplanned growth of human settlements.

Instead of accepting that our development model is non-inclusive and because of that it is neither disaster-resilient nor climate-smart, policymakers, media and public policy analysts are all creating misleading and fatalist myths as if no steps can be taken to reduce vulnerabilities.

The governments’ response to the loss of lives, livestock, houses, and standing crops was prompt and predictable: extend emergency supplies through disaster-management authorities, followed by cash grants through the Benazir Income Support Programme. Little attention has been given to calculating economic losses or the cost of climate-resilient reconstruction.

Pakistan’s previous effort to ‘build back better’, after the 2005 earthquake hasn’t succeeded. How best can the national and provincial policymakers respond to increasing floods and get a grip on climate resilience?

As architect Arif Hasan said in these pages recently ‘It’ll flood again’. The floods will become costlier, unless Pakistan’s response integrates adaptation and mitigation to reap the co-benefits of resilience. Instead of stopping at cash grant disbursements, it’s time to create a special-purpose vehicle for risk transfer and insurance in five key areas: the lives of bread earners, shelter, livestock, standing crops and small and micro enterprises. https://www.dawn.com/news/1706704/man-made-catastrophes