Water conservation failure leads to desertification (Credit: rendezvous.blog.nytimes.com)
ISLAMABAD, Feb 14 — Energy-starved Pakistanis, their economy battered by chronic fuel and electricity shortages, may soon have to contend with a new resource crisis: major water shortages, the Pakistani government warned this week.
A combination of global climate change and local waste and mismanagement have led to an alarmingly rapid depletion of Pakistan’s water supply, said the minister for water and energy, Khawaja Muhammad Asif.
“Under the present situation, in the next six to seven years, Pakistan can be a water-starved country,” Mr. Asif said in an interview, echoing a warning that he first issued at a news conference in Lahore this week.
The prospect of a major water crisis in Pakistan, even if several years distant, offers a stark reminder of a growing challenge in other poor and densely populated countries that are vulnerable to global climate change.
In the interview, Mr. Asif said the government had started to bring the electricity crisis under control, and predicted a return to a normal supply by 2017. But energy experts are less confident that such a turnaround is possible, given how long and complex the problem has proved to be.
Now the country’s water supply looms as a resource challenge, intensified by Pakistan’s enduring infrastructure and management problems.
Agriculture is a cornerstone of the Pakistani economy. The 2,000-mile-long Indus River, which rises in the Himalayas and spans the country, feeds a vast network of irrigation canals that line fields producing wheat, vegetables and cotton, all major sources of foreign currency. In the north, hydroelectric power stations are a cornerstone of the creaking power system.
A combination of melting glaciers, decreasing rainfall and chronic mismanagement by successive governments has put that water supply in danger, experts say.
In a report published in 2013, the Asian Development Bank described Pakistan as one of the most “water-stressed” countries in the world, with a water availability of 1,000 cubic meters per person per year — a fivefold drop since independence in 1947, and about the same level as drought-stricken Ethiopia.
“It is a very serious situation,” said Pervaiz Amir, country director for the Pakistan Water Partnership. “I feel it is going to be more serious than the recent oil shortages.”
Shortages of resources have climbed to the top of the political agenda in recent years. Fuel shortages last month, for which government officials blamed mismanagement by the national oil company, caused lengthy lines outside fuel stations that embarrassed the government at a time of low global oil prices.
Mr. Sharif’s government was already grappling with the seemingly intractable electricity crisis, which regularly causes blackouts of 10 hours a day even in major cities. And Mr. Sharif has been visibly distracted by grueling political duels, with the opposition politician Imran Khan, who accuses him of stealing the 2013 election, and with powerful military leaders who have undermined his authority in key areas.
Mr. Asif, the water and energy minister, said the government had started to turn the corner. But he acknowledged that the country’s resource problems were, to a large degree, endemic. “There is a national habit of extravagance,” he said, noting that it extended across resource areas, whether gas, electricity or water.
“I will be very careful not to use the word ‘drought,’ but we are water stressed right now, and slowly, we are moving to be a water-starved country,” he said.
Evidence of chronic water shortages have been painfully evident in some parts of Pakistan in recent years. A drought caused by erratic rainfall in Tharparkar, a desert area in southern Sindh Province, caused a humanitarian emergency in the region last year.
“The frequency of monsoon rains has decreased but their intensity has increased,” said Mr. Amir of the Pakistan Water Partnership. “That means more water stress, particularly in winters.”
Water is also tied to nationalist, even jihadist, politics in Pakistan. For years, religious conservatives and Islamist militants have accused rival India, where the Indus River system rises, of constricting Pakistan’s water supply.
Hafiz Saeed, the leader of the militant group that carried out the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, Lashkar-e-Taiba, regularly rails against Indian “water terrorism” during public rallies.
Mr. Asif said that contrary to such claims, India was not building reservoirs on rivers that flow into Pakistan. “We will never let it happen,” he said, citing the Indus Water Treaty, an agreement between the two countries that was brokered by the World Bank and signed in the 1960s.
One major culprit in Pakistan’s looming water crisis, experts say, is the country’s inadequate water storage facilities. In India, about one-third of the water supply is stored in reservoirs, compared with just 9 percent in Pakistan, Mr. Amir said.
“We built our last dam 46 years ago,” he said. “India has built 4,000 dams, with another 150 in the pipeline.”
Experts say the country’s chaotic policies are hurting its image in the eyes of Western donors who could help alleviate the mounting resource crises.
“The biggest looming crisis is of governance, not water — which could make this country unlivable in the next few years,” said Arshad H. Abbasi, a water and energy expert with the Sustainable Development and Policy Institute, a research group based in Islamabad.
For decades, royal Arab hunting expeditions have traveled to the far reaches of Pakistan in pursuit of the houbara bustard — a waddling, migratory bird whose meat, they believe, contains aphrodisiac powers.
Little expense is spared for the elaborate winter hunts. Cargo planes fly tents and luxury jeeps into custom-built desert airstrips, followed by private jets carrying the kings and princes of Persian Gulf countries along with their precious charges: expensive hunting falcons that are used to kill the white-plumed houbara.
This year’s hunt, however, has run into difficulty.
It started in November, when the High Court in Baluchistan, the vast and tumultuous Pakistani province that is a favored hunting ground, canceled all foreign hunting permits in response to complaints from conservationists.
Those experts say the houbara’s habitat, and perhaps the long-term survival of the species, which is already considered threatened, has been endangered by the ferocious pace of hunting.
That legal order ballooned into a minor political crisis last week when a senior Saudi prince and his entourage landed in Baluchistan, attracting unusually critical media attention and a legal battle that is scheduled to reach the country’s Supreme Court in the coming days.
Anger among conservationists was heightened by the fact that the prince — Fahd bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the governor of Tabuk province — along with his entourage had killed 2,100 houbara over 21 days during last year’s hunt, according to an official report leaked to the Pakistani news media, or about 20 times more than his allocated quota.
Still, Prince Fahd faced little censure when he touched down in Dalbandin, a dusty town near the Afghan border on Wednesday, to be welcomed by a delegation led by a cabinet minister and including senior provincial officials.
His reception was a testament, critics say, to the money-driven magnetism of Saudi influence in Pakistan, and the walk-on role of the humble bustard in cementing that relationship.
“This is a clear admission of servility to the rich Arabs,” said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physics professor and longtime critic of what he calls “Saudization” in Pakistan. “They come here, hunt with impunity, and are given police protection in spite of the fact that they are violating local laws.”
The dispute has focused attention on a practice that started in the 1970s, when intensive hunting in the Persian Gulf nearly rendered the houbara extinct there, and with it a cherished tradition considered the sport of kings.
As the houbara migrated from its breeding grounds in Siberia, newly enriched Persian Gulf royalty flocked to the deserts and fields of Pakistan, where they were welcomed with open arms by the country’s leaders.
For the Pakistanis, the hunt has become an opportunity to earn money and engage in a form of soft diplomacy.
Although only 29 foreigners have been permitted houbara licenses this year, according to press reports, they include some of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the Middle East, including the kings of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the Emir of Kuwait and the ruler of Dubai.
Their devotion to the houbara can seem mysterious to outsiders. The bird’s meat is bitter and stringy, and its supposed aphrodisiac properties are not supported by scientific evidence.
But falcon hunting, and the pursuit of the houbara, occupy a romantic place in the Bedouin Arab culture.
In Pakistan, the lavish nature of the winter hunts, which take place largely away from public scrutiny, have become the stuff of legend. In the early ’90s, it was reported, the Saudi king arrived in Pakistan with a retinue of dancing camels.
To curry favor with local communities, the Arab hunters have built roads, schools, madrassas and mosques, as well as several international-standard airstrips in unlikely places.
The only airport, at Rahim Yar Khan in the south of Punjab Province, is named after Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan, the former ruler of Abu Dhabi.
In recent times the hunts have also played a role, albeit unwitting, in the United States’s war against Al Qaeda.
Osama bin Laden took refuge at a houbara hunting camp in western Afghanistan in the late 1990s, by several accounts, at a time when the C.I.A. was plotting to assassinate him with a missile strike.
A falcon, right, tried to catch a houbara bustard during a falconry competition in Hameem, the United Arab Emirates, last December. Baluchistan is a popular place to hunt the bustard. Credit Karim Sahib/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The journalist Steve Coll wrote in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Ghost Wars,” that American officials declined to take the shot, fearing that the Arab sheikh who was hosting Bin Laden would have been at risk of dying in the attack.
For several years starting in 2004, the C.I.A. used an Arab-built airstrip at Shamsi, a barren desert valley in central Baluchistan, to launch drone strikes against Islamist militants in Pakistan’s tribal belt.
When news of the American base stirred a scandal in Pakistan’s Parliament in 2011, the country’s air force chief sought to deflect blame onto the United Arab Emirates government.
The deserts around Dalbandin, where Prince Fahd landed on Wednesday, were the site of Pakistan’s first nuclear test explosion in 1998, and are an established way station for heroin smugglers and Taliban insurgents.
But the growing influence of Gulf Arab countries is not universally appreciated. Progressive Pakistanis bemoan their conservative influence on society, and the infusion of petrodollars for jihadi groups.
The hunts have also come under attack. In Baluchistan, where the houbara is the provincial symbol, some royal hunts had to be curtailed after Baluch separatist rebels opened fire on hunting parties.
Now the battle has shifted to the capital, Islamabad. The prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, enjoys close relations with the rulers of Saudi Arabia, where he spent much of his exile between 2000 and 2007 — one reason, critics believe, for the indulgence shown toward Prince Fahd.
Mr. Sharif sent his federal planning minister, Ahsan Iqbal, to greet Prince Fahad in Dalbandin, as well as Baluchistan’s minister for sports and culture.
“Not a single political leader reacted against illegal hunting by Arab princes,” Asma Jahangir, a prominent human rights campaigner, posted on Twitter.
Although Mr. Sharif never confirmed it, Saudi Arabia is widely believed to have injected $1.5 billion into Mr. Sharif’s government last year to help prop up the ailing economy. Last year in Islamabad, Mr. Sharif laid out a lavish welcome for the other Saudi hunting permit holder: Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, who last month was inaugurated as king.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has termed the houbara a vulnerable species, and India has banned the hunt. The Baluchistan court order in November cited Pakistan’s obligation to international conservation treaties.
Hunt supporters say the houbara population has never been scientifically surveyed, and complain that the royal visits are being unnecessarily politicized.
“The foreigners are a blessing, not a problem,” said Ernest Shams of Houbara Foundation International Pakistan, a charity that works with the United Arab Emirates government to boost houbara stocks. “They bring so much money into the country.”
In a bid to overcome the court ban, the Baluchistan government has lodged an appeal in Pakistan’s Supreme Court that is likely to be heard on Wednesday, officials in Islamabad said Friday.
Prince Fahd is currently at his hunting camp in Bar Tagzi, surrounded by his falcons and a contingent of security — and most definitely not hunting any houbara, according to Pakistani officials.
“They are visiting development sites,” said Obaidullah Jan Babat, an adviser to the Baluchistan chief minister. “They are not hunting.”
Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.
Karachi mega city (Credit skyscrapercity.com)Well, first of all, Kanak, Himal and the India International Centre, thank you so much for having arranged this and having invited me. Delhi is special to me. I was born here, and left Delhi on the last train that ever went from Delhi to Karachi. That was the 15th of August, 1947. So it’s always nice, in a way, being back in Delhi.
The contents of my talk are drawn from my research work, teaching and activism in Pakistan in general, and in Karachi in particular. But you know, I have had the privilege of having been associated with programmes and projects in a number of cities in Southasia and in Asia in general, and over the last two and a half decades, I worked on a number of projects in these countries and have had the benefit of meeting their planners, government officials and NGO activists, and on occasion spent some time with the communities that live in these cities.
The subject of megacities has been discussed almost to death. It is something that is written about. The economists write about the economic aspects of it; environmentalists write about the terrible environmental conditions. The planners write about the infrastructure issues that are so damaging to the lives of poor communities. And now, you can add climate change to it. All these discussions take place in the press all the time, and also are subjects of academic research. They are all available on the net. I will approach this issue from a somewhat different perspective. I will talk about the socioeconomic change that is taking place and the state’s response to that socioeconomic change in physical and in investment terms. Since most of my research is on Karachi, I will refer to Karachi often. But I think you will be able to identify similar trends in your own cities.
One statistic stands out regarding the megacities of Southasia. And that is the phenomenal increase in their populations, especially after the last census. This holds true of them, all except for Calcutta. For instance, the Delhi population, according to the 2011 census, was between 16 and 17 million. Today, it is being claimed that it is more than 24 million. I don’t know how accurate it is, but serious writings claim that it is 24 million. Then, you have Dhaka. It was projected at 18 million for 2015. I am told by my Bangladeshi friends that it shot way beyond this. They talk of 22 million today.
I would believe none of this, by the way, because the figures are so large. I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t come from Karachi, because Karachi has grown at a phenomenal rate. It was 11 million in 1998. Today, it is about 21 million – almost double that amount. Not only that, it has expanded, it has increased, by 100 percent – spatially, the city has expanded by 23 percent, swallowing up villages and their pasture lands and ruining the districts’ rural economy. Now there are two points of view here. A very able Karachi planner, Farhan Anwar, has documented the terrible damage this expansion does to rural communities and how it impoverishes them, whereas my colleague Parveen Rehman supported this expansion because she said it was going to benefit the poor who were coming into the city. Now you have two very pro-poor planners thinking in very different terms. I think this is a subject that needs attention.
The only areas where the poor can find affordable land, and that too informally developed or only for occupation, is on the extreme city fringe, which is far away from work areas.
Also in 2011 it was estimated that the total urban population of Southasia was 243 million, of which 34 percent lived in megacities. If we take today’s figures, it’s already 40 percent. I find it very difficult to believe, but evidence suggests that this is so. But the question I’ve been engaged with is why is this phenomenal increase taking place? Roland deSouza, another Karachi planner, has argued that this expansion is simply because Southasian populations have grown by about 550 percent between 1941 and 2011, whereas in other countries the growth has been much less. For example, Thailand increased in about the same period by about 280 percent, and Britain by 160 percent. Roland argues that if we had increased by only 300 percent, we would be living in a very different world. So, as he says, our positive achievement is that we have produced so many children. As he puts it: growth less, migration less; growth more, migration more. Percentages do not tell us the truth anymore because the figures are so large. So for one thing, I think we should talk more in terms of figures rather than percentages.
Our own research on Pakistan has established that the most important reason for increases in migration is the changes that are taking place in the socioeconomic condition of rural areas. Through a long process, which I have documented in my writings, the rural economy has transformed from a barter economy to a cash one. And in the process, the link between caste and profession, which made village self-sufficiency possible, has either vanished or is under pressure. As a result, the village no longer – at least in Pakistan, in most of Pakistan – has a lohar, a kumhar, a barai, a chamar, a raj, etc. They have all migrated to the cities. The village today depends entirely on urban-produced goods and is no longer self-sufficient – a self-sufficiency that Gandhi admired very much. The landless labourer and the traditionally lower-caste cannot afford the city-manufactured goods, and so migration is the only option left.
The earlier migrants, made a conscious decision to migrate, to improve their livelihoods and families back home. They came from stable societies where local community governance systems functioned, even if they were questioned. The present migrants come from societies where the jirga has no moral authority – jirga is a form of inter-tribal association to sort out disputes. They come from societies where the jirga has no moral authority and the chaudhry, panchayat, the mukhi, the patel and the numberdar are all non-existent. Also, the clan and extended family is disintegrating, so there is a freedom to choose, move, and freedom from community controls and loyalties. This is the trend. It’s a very powerful trend, and it’s not going to be reversed.
For the first time, lower castes, such as bheels, kohlis, meghwars and jogis, who did not migrate before except as individuals now have the freedom to migrate en masse. And they do. However, due to their lack of skills, there are, in essence, large, circulating populations going back to the rural areas during the harvesting season and having no permanent residence. All this is new. It’s in Pakistan, and it’s in the last 15-20 years that these changes have started consolidating themselves.
There, something else has happened. Most of the migrants used to work on building sites. Building roads, building buildings; mechanisation of construction projects has limited their jobs. We just studied a road-building project, a small road-building project, in which everything was mechanised. Excavation was mechanised, earth refilling was mechanised, compaction was mechanised, the laying of the tarmac was mechanised, and we asked the contractor how many people had he employed and he said 60. And we said if you didn’t have these machines how many people would you have employed? He said about a thousand. Now, this is a very big factor in demitting of jobs. This is a study that we are currently doing to see how this works and how it affects migrant labour. There are other reasons for migration as well which I will talk about later, but one very important factor is that the cities that we are talking about are becoming cities of migrants – increasingly. And the local population will have less of a presence. In Karachi it’s already so.
Also, the cities to which migration is taking place have also changed. For one, they have expanded spatially and land and real estate has replaced gold as an investment. As my friend, he says, whatever happened for, “Jo bhi sone kiliye hota tha, zamin kiliye hota hai” (Whoever used to deal with gold now deals with land). ‘You kill, you occupy, you pressurise’, has replaced gold as an investment. It is no longer possible to squat near the city center and work areas as it was before. The Katchi Abadis of Karachi history, they are not going to be there anymore, because the land is not there. The only areas where the poor can find affordable land, and that too informally developed or only for occupation, is on the extreme city fringe, which is far away from work areas. If I look at land values in Karachi, which we’ve studied to some extent, in 1991 one square metre of land on the city’s periphery used to cost 1.7 times the daily wage at that time. Today, it is 40 times the daily wage, far away, even further away from the city than it was in 1991. So, there are other problems. The non-regularised informal settlements and even regularised ones are needed for middle-class housing whose demand has grown by 300 percent in the last decade. And this demand is likely to grow as the middle class increases.
Living on the fringe is more expensive than renting within the city. Utilising transport costs on the fringe means expensive commuting and time, and there are also social costs. Our studies show that women cannot work on the fringe. Fathers often do not see their children because of long hours of travelling. Entertainment and recreation cannot be accessed. People are fatigued due to commuting in uncomfortable and expensive transport in terrible environmental conditions. The worst affected are women, there’s transports studies, which will be out soon, where 62 percent of the women interviewed said that if they lived nearer to their places of work, they would have better job opportunities. Many said they would work, which they don’t, if they lived nearer the city, or if transport was cheaper and better. The impact on men was less. So what has happened now is that these informal settlements which were single-storey and double-storey and were near the city are now becoming five-storey, six-storey, 10-storey buildings. In Bombay it has already happened. And these are informal ownerships because this is informal high-rise development. They are becoming extremely overcrowded and they suffer from all the negative aspects of overcrowding, which are very serious. And this overcrowding is increasing, since the renters are increasing because of the rise of these multi-storey buildings. Before you had a house, you lived in it. Now, you live in a building, and your house has become six floors or ten floors.
The environment, the place has changed, it is not the same place. And people have come here whom you don’t know, the street is no longer a public space, so these are the changes that are taking place.
Meera Bapat, an architect planner in Pune, she and I made some studies, she on Pune and me on Karachi. We went back to the settlements that we knew 30 years ago, and what did we find? We found that the settlements’ infrastructure had improved, their social indicators had improved, but they had become overcrowded. And the quality of life, in spite of the improvement in infrastructure and social indicators, had declined considerably. So, apart from that, a very important aspect was the vulnerability of the renters in these settlements because the buildings are owned by musclemen and the renter can be thrown out whenever they like, and the rent can be increased whenever they want. So this also has been documented in fairly great detail.
Living on the fringe is more expensive than renting within the city.
Now what has the government’s response been? I won’t go into the statistics of the gap between supply and demand, but what has the government’s response been? After the 1990s, the government’s response has been ‘go and access the market’. That has been the response, both in India and in Pakistan, except for small projects that really don’t make much of a difference. To access the market, the government has liberalised finance. But this has benefited the developers more than anyone else because they can access finance for their clients. But if individually one wants to access a loan, the requirements are such that the poor cannot access it. You need a formal job, you need an asset that you can mortgage, etc. In spite and in addition to that, these additions to the loan capital can serve only 16 percent of the demand. So to make affordable the product, the units are becoming smaller and smaller, both in the formal and in the informal sector. And they are becoming so small – 24 square metres, 30 square metres – that a family cannot live in them. Yet, you have 10-15 people living in these homes.
Now, I was in Delhi in 2007 and some of my friends said that there is a lot of development, informal development, taking place in Jamuna Path, so I decided to go there and take a look. My taxi driver was a sardarji, I told him “Jamuna Path chale”.
He said, “Waha kya karenge aap?” (What will you do there?)
Maine kaha, “Mujhe plot kharidna hai.” So he was very excited he said he knew exactly the place where I could get a plot. And he asked me how big a plot. I said, “About 60 to 100 metres.”
He said, “Aap usme kaise rahenge?” (How will you stay there?)
Maine kaha, “Nahi, mere driver ke liye hai.”
So he was very excited, and he took me there. And so, we went, it was all in Hindi, the billboards, so I couldn’t read it; I don’t read the Devanagari script. But underneath it was written ‘Property Advisor’, so we spoke to him. He showed me the map, he showed me which was the best plot, he showed me, told me I couldn’t take any corner plots because they had already been given to those who had helped him in setting up this colony. Finally, we agreed on a price, and I said to him, “Is this sort of approved by the government scheme?”
He said, “No, it is not approved by a government scheme.”
I said, “Why should I buy a plot there?”
He said, “Hojayega, approve hojayega na.” (Approval will come)
I said, “I don’t believe it. I construct a plot here, I have no proof of ownership?”
He said, “You have. I’m giving you the proof of ownership. I’m giving you a paper.”
This paper, he said, is acceptable for all transactions: renting, building, etc. So I said to him that I don’t believe this. This will cause me great problems. He said, “Tusi kyu rafte ho? Main hoon na.” (Why are you flustered. I am here to help you).
Now, this is exactly how development takes place on the fringe of Karachi as well. No difference. And in the case of what I saw in 2007, it was a very huge development, enormous in size. Now you have all these informal systems of ownership, transfer, etc. They exist. They are not recognised. What do we do about them? How do we deal with them? I leave that as an open question.
The second change that I would like to talk about is in the older settlements that were built between 1970 and 1980. They have changed. When I began working the settlements, older people always used to come as the community leaders and they used to talk in a flowery – they were illiterate – they used to talk in a flowery Urdu. They used to say janam, husoor, sahi, nyadman sharfhasidua etc etc. Today, when you go there, there are young men who can read and write and sometimes women who call you uncle and that too in English. So these schools have changed, these settlements have changed. They are no longer purely working class settlements. Truckloads of women go to work into the factories everyday which they didn’t before. There are beauty parlours, lots of them, marriage halls, community centres and schools that the people have set up themselves. Now these settlements, their needs are less about water, electricity and sewage. Their needs are that their aspirations should be fulfilled, that they should be integrated into the middle class of the city. So they want more schools, they want vocational training, they want health, and they want culture. This is, again, something that they are fighting to get, but are not conscious that they are fighting specifically for this.
The voting patterns of these old settlements have also changed. Whereas previously they voted for progressive parties who promised them regularisation of their settlements, they now vote for the more conservative parties and increasingly have middle-class values. Unlike before, they are reluctant to join movements against evictions and/or reform. The nature of their relationship with officaldom has changed from protest to negotiation. They also constitute the largest group of voters in Karachi and are listened to. Meanwhile, shopkeepers, mandi operators and transporters have become very powerful political agents. They have not yet exercised their power, but they are in a position to do so and I don’t think it would be too different in the rest of Southasia.
Then you have new concepts that are floating around among the more radical planners and academics; the concepts of new urbanism have been promoted. And future architects and planners are being trained in them. This has also been pushed by international financial institutions and Western academia. They are telling us to have higher densities, mixed land-uses and ‘inclusive cities’. However, the three most dense cities in the world are situated in Southasia – Dhaka with a density of 4440 persons per hectare, Mumbai, with 3090 and Karachi with 2800. These densities could not be achieved without the violation of existing density laws. For instance, Karachi’s by-laws permit a maximum of 1625 persons per hectare and Mumbai’s existing density could not have been achieved if its floor-to-area ratio of 1:1.33 would have been followed. The difference between the actual density and rules and regulations is because low-income settlements have extremely high densities. In Karachi, they go up to 6000 persons per hectare, similar to that of Dharavi, while elite settlements have densities of less than 200 persons per hectare. Also, housing units on 400-2000 square metres of land in Karachi are only 2 percent of the housing stock, but they occupy 26 percent of the residential land of the city. Similar figures have been quoted for the other Southasian mega-cities. This form of development not only continues to take place but has increased due to the changes in the urban development paradigm. But the question is, is it sustainable?
Let me summarise. Mega-cities will have to find homes, transport and social services for their new arrivals who are not related to any formally structured group. They will have to cater to the needs and aspirations of the older informal settlements, which can only happen if they are protected from evictions and relocations and supported through laws, regulations and procedures in developing the social and physical infrastructure that they are already trying to develop on their own. They will have to promote new societal values to accommodate the changes that are taking place. I will also briefly mention something else which I had not planned to, but I think I should – the nature of social change in the older settlements. The most important group in the census is between 14 and 24 years of age because it’s the present and the future. In this age group, in 1981, 39 percent of women were married. Today, in this age group, less than 20 percent women are married; 17 percent of men were married in ’81. Eight percent of men are married today. For the first time in the history of the city, we have an overwhelming majority of unmarried adolescents and this is enough to change social structures and gender relations. And that is what has happened. And extended families, clans, settlements based on clan, they are rapidly becoming history. Also there are other factors: court marriages where a couple goes to a court to seek protection because it’s a self-willed marriage. In 1992, we had 12-15 applications per day for court marriages. In 2006, we had 250 plus applications for court marriages per day. And it has probably increased, but a time will come when it will decrease rapidly when the concept of marrying for your own free will becomes acceptable in society. More than half the applications today come from the rural areas. So I think these are important changes that are taking place which are going to affect, I feel, the future of these cities.
Concepts such as ‘it is not the business of the state to do business’, ‘cities are the engines of growth’, direct foreign investment, and concepts linking economic well-being with GDP growth have had a major impact on the national policies of Southasian countries and especially on the mega-cities.
Now, one important thing is the changing nature of official planning. We inherited the welfare state model from our colonial masters. However, we were not able to implement it except on paper due to institutional and financial constraints and a lack of political will. This is what is normally said, but I don’t think that is the only reason. The real reason was well-entrenched anti-poor social systems and land-ownership patterns. I think this was one of the major reasons. This concept has been eclipsed by the neoliberalism of the 1990s and beyond, and has been promoted aggressively both by international institutions and their local partners. Collectively, these organisations and their local partners have promoted what has come to be known as the ‘free market’ economy, which aims to remove subsidies on health, education and housing; increase taxation on utilities; sell government industrial and real estate assets to the national or international corporate sector; and remove restrictions on imports and exports. This had been done. I am not against all this, but there are other considerations.
Whole new terminologies and concepts have been developed to support this market economy. Concepts such as ‘it is not the business of the state to do business’, ‘cities are the engines of growth’, direct foreign investment, and concepts linking economic well-being with GDP growth have had a major impact on the national policies of Southasian countries and especially on the mega-cities. A whole new world, a whole new thinking has become acceptable. Now, from what I read about India, 500 Special Economic Zones have been established and corporate farming has been promoted. And according to some papers that I read, between 2010 and 2015, it was estimated that 400 million people would willingly or unwillingly be forced to move from rural to urban areas. I don’t know how correct this is but these are the figures you get in a number of papers. This is twice the population of the United Kingdom, France and Germany put together. All this has also affected agriculture. It is replacing food crops by cash crops, and in the process increasing the cost and shortage of food and making the state vulnerable to corporate sector pressures and interests. I think this was nicely summed up by a farmer in Tharparkar, who said to me, “Pehle hum jo botai thai, khathe thai, ab jo botai hai, usko bechtai hai, aur khana kharidte hai.” (Before we used to eat what we grew, now we grow it to sell and then buy our food). I think this has happened and it has affected a very large section of our population.
The free market promoted political reforms and deregulations that have also had a major impact on property markets and have reshaped the politics of land development. Trading across borders in gold and contraband goods is no longer lucrative. As a result, the gangs and mafias involved in these underworld activities have become involved in the real estate business and linked up with their underworld partners. The narcotic trade today funds much of the real estate development, at least in my city. All this has introduced an element of violence and targeted killings and kidnappings of opponents, rivals and social activists in the land and the real estate sector.
The state in almost all cases has responded to these market pressures and made land available for development through land-use conversions, new development schemes and the bulldozing of informal settlements. NGOs and CBOs who have challenged this process have faced two constraints (apart from their own internal weaknesses and culture); one is an unsympathetic media, which reports stories but not the causes, and the other is an absence of laws to prevent environmentally and socially inappropriate land conversions. Even where such laws do exist, rules, regulations and procedures and institutions to manage and implement them are often missing. As a result, courts deliver judgments that promote inequity, poverty and social fragmentation. Media too is increasingly being controlled by a few organisations. Eighty-two percent of Karachiites have access to TV according to the census.
I will pass over this because it will take too long, and come to some of the issues. What has been elaborated and said before has had a profound effect on the shape and politics of our cities. The shape that our cities are taking and the reasons behind them are the result of a powerful nexus of developers and investors (many of dubious origins, otherwise such large sums of money could not have been mobilised), compromised government institutions and bureaucrats, and politicians seeking global capital for re-shaping their cities in the image of the West – an image that is promoted (implicitly or explicitly) by the promoters of the market economy. To promote this paradigm, a new term and concept has been developed, and that is of the world-class city.
Karachi, Mumbai, Delhi, all aspire to become world-class cities in their literature. Some wish to become like Shanghai, as with Mumbai, others wish to become like Dubai, as with Karachi, although the context of Shanghai or Dubai is very far removed from them. A world-class city has been defined beautifully and also sympathetically by Mahbubur Rahman (a Bangladheshi planner) in a brilliant paper and in other literature as well. According to the world-class city agenda, the city should have iconic architecture. It should be recognised with something like the highest building or fountain in the world. It should be branded for a particular cultural, industrial or other product or happening. It should be an international event city. It should have high-rise apartments as opposed to upgraded settlements and low-rise neighborhoods. It should cater to international tourism. It should have malls as opposed to traditional markets. This is how it has been described and this is what a global city or a world-class city today is trying to achieve.
For establishing this image, poverty is pushed out of the city to the periphery and already poor-unfriendly by-laws are made even more unfriendly by permitting environmentally and socially unfriendly land-use conversions. This is driving out industry and businesses from poor settlements. The three most important repercussions of this agenda are: 1) that global capital increasingly determines the physical and social form of the city; 2) in the process, projects have replaced planning; and 3) land-use is now determined on the basis of land value alone and not on the basis of social and environmental considerations. Land has unashamedly become a commodity and so the poor cannot be adequately serviced. The city stands divided as never before. My city is now four cities. They speak different languages, they have different types of shopping centres. They even have different education institutions, and they only meet at the beach or in some parks at the city centre.
High-rise buildings, we have conclusively shown that these settlements can be upgraded to four or five storeys with the help of the residents, and could be regularised. So we do not feel the need for pulling down these settlements and re-planning them as the state insists on doing. As far as events are concerned, from what we gather, about 500,000 persons were evicted from Delhi for the preparation of the 2010 Asian Olympics [Commonwealth Games] alone. Numerous studies show how poor people become after relocation: loss of social capital, loss of physical capital, and relocations are often 20-30 kilometres – sometimes much more than that – from where they work. Children’s education is the most serious disruption that is caused. In one of the projects that we opposed, which was partially successful, 2800 students could not take their metric and pre-metric exams because of the bulldozing that took place.
The world-class city image is all about gentrification and it has no place in it for informal businesses and hawkers except as organised tourist attractions. The link of these hawkers and businesses with low income people (for whom they make life affordable) and with commuters is not recognised and as such, large scale evictions of informal businesses and hawkers have taken place without any compensation in all the mega-cities in Asia, of which Calcutta is perhaps the worst example. This has impoverished millions of families.
Projects should seek to serve the interests of the majority who live in our cities, who are the lower-middle class and the working class.
Then the free market economy has led to a considerable liquidity in banks and leasing companies. This has been utilised for providing loans for the purchase of cars. Karachi registered, in the year 2006-07, 606 cars per day. When I was in Delhi in 2007, I was told that the cars being registered here were 1250 per day. Bangkok was even more – 1750 cars per day. Now, there is a nexus between the automobile industry, the banking sector and the oil sector. We learnt this when we discovered that 1.6 billion USD worth of loans had been given by the Karachi banks for the purchase and leasing of cars. And we went to the prime minister and said, “Can’t we use this for some other purposes?” He was excited, so we had a meeting with 18 bank heads, who said no, that automobiles were the thing they would invest in, because the loans were short, they knew the clients, they were sure of returns, and housing was not something they would invest in. And one of them told me when we were leaving, he said, “Arif, you must realise the automobile industry, the banking sector are one and the same thing, they are not two different things.” So these are the new realities with which we have had to deal with.
Now there are many other factors that I will also just touch on. Transport: We can have all the mass transit systems. We have big plans for Karachi, but when we study them we see that the transportation for people living on the fringe, in large informal settlements, will not improve. The transport that we will be providing them will be far too expensive, unless a very major subsidy is attached to it. It is expensive because we are building on a process of build, operate and transfer, which is also a free market economy concept, whereas if we just let the Pakistan Railways manage it, the costs would be considerably less. That is one aspect I wanted to touch upon.
We have in Karachi, about 80,000 autos and we have an additional 60,000 of what we call Qingqis – these are six-seater motorcycle rickshaws. The Karachiites love them, they find them cheaper, women find them safer, and the government wishes to ban them and they did ban them, but they are still there because the High Court of Sindh decided that they are essential for the people. Now the problem is, what do we do with them, because there is so much antagonism against them. Even though they have a right now to function, the police does everything possible to limit their movement. The other way in which the transport issue is being tackled is by motorbikes. In 2004, we had 400,000 motorbikes, while today we have 1.7 million motorbikes. And all surveys show – we had surveys done at bus stops – everybody wants motorbikes. And if we reduce the price to 20,000 rupees instead of 32,000 rupees, I don’t think we will need a mass transit system, or any expansion of a mass transit system. Now the question is, do we promote these forms of movement, these forms of transport? It is a serious discussion which we have been trying to indulge in, so should they be promoted?
Now, I don’t know any of these cities that have produced an alternative vision for the city. There has been a lot of writing on ‘what should be or should not be’, but a vision that is acceptable or seriously pursued has not been presented. When the Karachi Special Development Plan was being made, I was a member of one of the committees, and we said, “Let’s not have this vision of world-class city, but let us have a vision of a pedestrian and commuter-friendly city.” It would change everything; the whole manner of planning would change if the vision was kept there. But, one of the members of the Asian Development Bank who was a member of the party said, “With this vision, nobody would invest any money in the city.” So, that was out.
The other serious thing is projects replacing planning. Karachi for the foreseeable future will only have projects. There is going to be no serious planning, and planning will be overtaken by projects. Accepting this, I tried to promote some principles on the basis of which projects could be judged and/or modified. These principles are: One, projects should not damage the ecology of the region in which the city is located; two, projects should, as a priority, seek to serve the interests of the majority who live in our cities, who are the lower-middle class and the working class; Three, projects should decide land-use on the basis of social and environmental considerations and not on the basis of land values alone. And four, projects should protect the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of the communities that live in them. In my opinion, this would produce much better projects and improve people projects. But again, at the same meeting, the same gentleman responded, “With your four points, there would be no projects.” So that is another issue which needs to be taken into consideration.
However, to finish, the question is whether the megalomania and opportunism of politicians and planners will accept a new and more humane paradigm that curtails their profits and decommoditises land. I think that this is a very fundamental issue. I do not think that they will unless they are pressurised by city wide networks armed with alternative research and an alternative vision. In this, I think professional education can play a very important role. Right now, professional education is increasingly becoming pro-neoliberal in the bad sense of the word. I have often thought that it might help if graduating architects, planners and engineers could take an oath similar to those of doctors, and if they did not follow the terms of the oath, their names be removed from the list of practicing professionals.
In 1983, after evaluating an important urban renewal project which created poverty and environmental degradation, I made a pledge in writing. I will just quote from that. I wrote, “I will not do projects that will irreparably damage the ecology and environment of the area in which they are located. I will not do projects that increase poverty, dislocate people and destroy the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of communities that live in the city. I will not do projects that destroy multi-class space and violate building by-laws and zoning regulations. And I will always object to insensitive projects that do all this, provided I can offer viable alternatives.” Well I have tried to keep my promise, except that I have violated building rules and regulations, but they were bad ones. But I have put this before the architectural community again and again, “Why don’t we have such an oath?” And one of the architects answered, he said to me, ‘Arif bhai, hum toh bazaar meh bhettain hai.’ (Arif, we are part of a market). And this is a reality that we have to take into consideration when discussing a new paradigm.
Thank you so much.
Arif Hasan is an urban philosopher and social researcher based in Karachi. He has been involved with the Orangi Pilot Project since 1982, and is the founding Chairman of the Urban Resource Centre.
Cyclone Nilofer in Karachi (Credit: thenewstribe.com)
KARACHI, Oct 30: The Sindh government has announced a holiday on Friday, declared emergency in the metropolis and four other districts and made arrangements for the board and lodging of coastal area residents being shifted to safe places in view of the cyclone that is heading towards the coast at a speed of 14 kilometres per hour.
Nilofar — the cyclone heading towards Sindh and Indian Gujarat — may slam the coastal areas here on Thursday afternoon with the possibility of heavy rains in the lower parts of Sindh over the next two days, a weather report indicated.
The Sindh government declared emergency in all the six districts of Karachi, besides Thatta, Badin, Sujawal and Tharparker, while it announced that all government offices and educational institutions would remain closed on Friday, said Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon while briefing media persons in his office in Clifton after attending the cabinet meeting held on Wednesday at the CM House.
The meeting, which was presided over by Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah and attended by ministers, bureaucrats and army and navy officers, discussed a cyclone, the drought in Tharparker and security situation in context of Muharram.
The minister said emergency centres had been set up in all the coastal areas, while appeals were being made to residents of the areas to shift for a few days to safe places within their district. He said Rs10 million was released to the district governments concerned to make proper arrangements to look after them.
He said the Sindh government had also made arrangements for the transportation of fishermen and others from all the coastal areas to safe places, where arrangements had been made for their free board and lodging.
He added that people had been asked to restrict their movement to escape accidents from gusty winds and heavy rains during the next two days.
In order to avoid loss of life, the government started removing large hoardings and also directed the owners to remove their billboards otherwise in case of losses they would be held responsible and action would be initiated against them, he added.
People have been advised not to come out from their homes, unless unavoidable, from Thursday noon until the cyclone threat was over, according to the minister.
However, he added, these measures were not aimed at creating fear and harassment among people but to take all precautionary measures.
In reply to a question, he said 80 per cent fishermen had already returned while remaining were also sent radio messages through coast guards, navy and maritime agencies and hoped that they would also return before the cyclone hit the coastal areas.
In reply to another question, Mr Memon said the Met Office had forecast 30 to 50-millimetre rainfall in Karachi while the coastal areas would receive over 100mm of rainfall and above.
QUETTA, Oct 25: The Balochistan government is under pressure to accept a negotiated settlement in a dispute with a company – Tethyan Copper Company (TCC), which was engaged in mining at Reko Diq Copper and Gold Project and which now seeks monetary compensation for federal and Balochistan governments’ ‘breaches of contract and treaty rights’ at an international court.
During the recent two-week long hearing of the case, after which International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in Paris reserved its judgment, the Pakistani legal team was also joined by political leadership – apparently for an out-of court settlement.
“Two committees were formed at federal and provincial level which went to Paris with a sole agenda—to have a negotiated deal with the TCC and out of court settlement,” an insider said on the condition of anonymity.
“The government committees had a separate briefing with the TCC and its parent companies – Antofagasta and Barrick Gold on Reko Diq project,” he said.
He said much before the hearing, the Attorney General of Pakistan had sent a letter to the Balochistan government, saying the case of Pakistan and Balochistan was weak and the latter was likely to lose out. “The AGP said the government would have to pay a fine of billions of dollars. So it was better to make an out-of-court settlement,” he said.
He said the Balochistan government was trapped now as it was trying to negotiate and also protect the interests of its people so that they would not be equally blamed for putting the invaluable resources on sale at throwaway prices.
Upon his return from Paris, Balochistan Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch had said he would protect the interest of his people. He had not revealed anything about the possible deal but said he would take a decision in the best interest of Balochistan.
A government official said that Balochistan government is also trying to resolve the issue with the TCC before International court gives verdict. The TCC has invested over 220 million US dollars in the project since 2006. “The company now claims around 12 billion US dollars in monetary damages,” a source told The Express Tribune.
Another government official said the TCC was not willing to work in Pakistan now. “Government is trying to resolve the issue because if the government is found guilty, then we have to pay billions of dollars in fine,” he said.
He said that since Balochistan did not have resources to pay such a huge amount, the federal government would pay the money from Balochistan government’s funds. Citing previous examples of federal government’s discriminatory policies, he said: “The federal government will pay the money from Balochistan’s National Finance Commission (NFC) Award or Federal Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP),” he added.
Sources in the provincial government said federal government did not care whether the contract was finalised with the TCC or a Chinese company and it only wanted to start the project to get maximum amount.
“Not a single person in Balochistan will agree to have a contract with Chinese mining companies,” an official said, adding that the companies involved in Saindak project at Chagai and Lead and Zinc Project in Dudar, Lesbela did nothing for the local communities or provincial economy ‘but ruthlessly exploited the resources.’
Published in The Express Tribune, October 25th, 2014.
Heavy monsoon rains and flash floods have killed 110 people in Pakistan and 86 people in India, officials said on Saturday, as forecasters warned of more rain in the coming days and troops raced to evacuate people from deluged areas.
The annual monsoon season has struck hard across the region, leaving people to wade through rushing water in towns and villages across Pakistan and in Indian-controlled areas of Kashmir, where authorities say they are seeing some of the worst flooding in decades.
Ahmad Kamal, a spokesman for Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority, said at least 61 people had died in the eastern Punjab province since Thursday. He said another 38 people died in the Pakistan’s portion of Kashmir and 11 died in northern Gilgit Baltistan province.
Kamal said officials believed all those were killed when the roofs of their homes collapsed. He said the deluge has injured 148 people across the country.
“We are dispatching tents and other relief items for those who have been affected because of rains and floods,” he said. He said the army helicopters and boats were evacuating people from affected areas.
In India authorities put the death toll at 86 people, including 27 people killed when a bus filled with those attending a wedding washed away in a flooded stream. Four passengers managed to swim away but around 30 others remain unaccounted for, officials said.
At least 300 federal rescue workers have joined thousands of state police and soldiers to rescue tens of thousands of people stranded across the region. Dozens of bridges have been damaged or washed away.
Authorities fear the death toll may rise in the region as more flooding and rain is forecast for the coming days.
State-run Pakistan television showed inundated villages, submerged roads and damaged homes across Pakistan and in its portion of Kashmir.
Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, said the deaths and destruction caused by the rains and floods were a great loss, noting that some 650 homes had been destroyed already.
“The government will leave no stone unturned to help the people in distress,” Sharif said.
Pakistan’s meteorological service said “widespread rain-thundershowers” were expected on Saturday in various parts of the country.
Pakistan and India suffer widespread flooding during the annual monsoon season. In 2010 flash floods killed 1,700 people in Pakistan
KARACHI, Sept 10: Pakistan’s largest city Karachi, home to around 18 million people, could be “wiped out” by a tsunami, officials said Wednesday after a drill simulating a major earthquake in the Indian Ocean.
The test and one carried out a day earlier, simulating another quake off Indonesia, were designed to check an early-warning system set up after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami which killed more than 230,000 people.
The exercise organised by the United Nations was based on a hypothetical 9.0-magnitude quake in the Makran Trench, where the Arabian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet, off the coast of Pakistan.
“This would create waves of 0.9 to seven metres high (3-23 feet) that could reach Karachi in one and a half hours,” Tauseef Alam, the chief meteorologist who was supervising the tests, told AFP.
“This could wipe out the city as the waves would be immensely powerful.”
Karachi was hit by a tsunami in 1945 that killed at least 4,000 people, Alam said.
A repeat would likely have a devastating effect on Pakistan nationally, since Karachi, the country’s main port, accounts for around 42 per cent of national GDP.
“The city is vulnerable because there is a chance of another tsunami in the same vicinity but we don’t know when,” Alam said.
In the event of a tsunami, real-time data would be sent to the Met Office in Karachi from Indonesian, Australian and Indian centres.
An alarm would sound when an alert was issued and the team would start disseminating the data to around a dozen disaster management departments.
“Our goal is to ensure the timely and effective notification of tsunamis, to educate communities at risk about safety preparedness and to improve our overall coordination,” Alam said.
But it is not clear whether Karachi has a tsunami evacuation plan, or whether one would even be feasible in the chaotic, sprawling city.
“We will evaluate what works well, where improvements are needed, make necessary changes and continue to practice,” the meteorologist said.
As well as the Makran Trench, Pakistan also straddles the boundary between the Eurasian and Indian plates, and is hit by earthquakes from time to time.
A devastating 7.6-magnitude earthquake hit Pakistan-administered Kashmir in October 2005, killing more than 73,000 people and leaving around 3.5 million homeless.
And in September last year a 7.7-magnitude hit Awaran district in southwestern Balochistan province, killing 376 people and leaving 100,000 others homeless.
“Had the income of oil companies been properly spent, towns of Sanghar, Ghotki and Badin would have paralleled Paris.” Supreme Court’s quip is not too far from the reality. Catching a glimpse of scruffy towns and villages in these districts, one would not believe that the areas overlay the wealth of hydrocarbons worth several billion dollars.
Remarks of the judge resemble a resonating speech by Mohammad Mosaddeq, a reformist prime minister of Iran. While nationalising oil resources in 1951, he said “with the oil revenues we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty, disease, and backwardness among our people.” Mosaddeq audaciously nationalised Iranian oil industry hitherto controlled by Britain through erstwhile Anglo-Persian Oil Company, now known as British Petroleum. His act was considered as an unpardonable sin and he was disposed through a CIA-choreographed coup in 1953.
Supreme Court’s impromptu intervention came in the wake of oath-taking ceremony of Tando Adam Bar Association presided by the ex-chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. President of the association, advocate Abdul Hakim Khoso, in his speech revealed facts about woeful remiss of oil and gas companies operating in Sanghar district. He cogently presented issues of environmental degradation, denial of employment opportunities to locals and non-compliance to social welfare obligations by oil and gas companies.
The CJ took notice of the speech that was subsequently converted into a petition through the Human Rights Cell of the court. In the course of discussions an astounding disclosure was made that various companies have deposited a staggering amount of Rs780 billion with federal and provincial governments. However, the amount meant for local development is dumped in the official lockers due to lack of transparent mechanism for its ultimate utilisation. People in Sindh and Balochistan have been decrying apathy of federal and provincial governments and the companies. Wretched communities in the vicinity of oil and gas fields are living virtually in primitive age while precious resources are being pumped out underneath their feet, hardly leaving any mark of wellbeing on their lives.
According to Pakistan Energy Year Book 2013, Sindh contributes 68 and 40.6 per cent of national gas and oil production respectively. Recent oil discoveries in KPK dwarfed Sindh’s share from 56 per cent till only two years back. Sindh province is the largest contributor in national energy basket. Sharing of benefits accruing from natural resources has been at the heart of conflict between provinces of Sindh, Balochistan and the federal government. Before the 18th Amendment, oil and gas resources were directly managed by the federal government, trespassing on the realm of Council of Common Interest. Provinces receive meager benefits through Straight Transfers that are not part of divisible pool. Under this arrangement, provinces were entitled for 12.5 per cent royalty, income from excise duty on gas and Gas Development Surcharge. However provinces had no direct ownership of resources and all key decisions were taken by the Federal Ministry for Petroleum and Natural Resources.
The 18th Amendment made a radical shift in the ownership of oil and gas resources. Article 172 (3) of Constitution now recognizes equal share of provinces in oil and gas resources within their remits. Straight Transfers — though a fraction of real income — have been generating substantial amount for provinces. Provincial governments are equally responsible for plight of people by not devising any mechanism to remit a part of these incomes to those communities.
Sindh has been the largest recipient of these benefits. An analysis of last eight years’ budget documents shows that the province has received Rs475 billion through Straight Transfers. From 1989-90 to 2013-13, share of the province in royalty of oil and gas stood at Rs319 billion. Much of this amount has already been transferred to the province. The amount is enough to revamp shabby towns by developing infrastructure and providing basic services to impoverished communities in the vicinity of oil and gas fields.
Petroleum policy stipulates that 50 per cent of royalty should be used for infrastructure development in the district where oil and gas is produced. While holding federal government and companies accountable for their deeds is fully justified; provincial government is also culpable for its cavalier governance. Hefty budgetary packages are announced for favourite districts at the expense of marginalised resource-producing areas.
The provincial government cannot be exonerated from showering unscrupulous largesse, obnoxiously skewed towards influential political clique. In a report submitted to the Supreme Court, the provincial government has admitted that 10 out of 14 schemes in Thatta, Kashmore and Badin are in violation of the policy. The fund meant for basic services in backward areas have been spent for elitist structures of Gymkhana and Citizens’ club.
Article 30.9 of the Petroleum Concession Agreement (PCA) makes it obligatory for oil and gas companies to undertake social welfare programmes in the concession areas. Amount to be spent on social welfare has been linked with the volume of hydrocarbons produced. An amount of US$30,000/year has also been made obligatory during exploration, which increases substantially on commercial production. Only a few companies manage this portfolio professionally. Similarly, discretionary corporate funds are mostly spent on advertisements, gala dinners, sports events and other such entertainments in urban centers.
Local employment is another thorny issue. Hydrocarbon fields are mostly located in remote and marginalised areas. Oil and gas companies have their opulent corporate offices in big cities like Islamabad and Karachi where people from local areas don’t even make a fraction of their human resources. The companies come up with a frivolous excuse of unavailability of qualified and experienced human resource from those areas. The mundane argument has lost its luster as the provinces have reputed universities and technical institutes producing sizeable number of professionals with required qualification.
The Petroleum Policy also obligates companies to invest in capacity-building. This amount can be used to build capacity of unskilled or semi-skilled locally recruited human resource. The companies outsource most of their work through performance based contracts. These contractors are mostly outsiders and they hire most of their staff from other areas, thus depriving local youth from even low paid jobs.
Contractors recruit a large number of employees who do not appear on the company’s payroll and are often non-locals. Low paid unskilled labour is grudgingly considered from local areas as it is not feasible to recruit them from outside. Interestingly, the PCA asks companies to gradually replace expatriate staff with nationals but does not ask for replacing national staff with locals as they become available. Apart from that, it is moral and professional obligation of the companies to invest in development of local human resources enabling them to compete for mid-level and senior positions in the companies. Some of the companies have made some appreciable investments but at a very limited scale.
Conserving environment and natural endowment of local communities is another brazenly violated obligation. Policy Objective No. 9 of the Petroleum Policy 2012 commits to undertake exploitation of oil and gas resources in a socially, economically and environmentally sustainable and responsible manner. However, the policy document does not delineate any guidelines on environmental aspects.
Environmental Protection Act 1997 provides overall framework of environmental regulation in the country. Under the Act, oil and gas exploration projects are subject to either Initial Environmental Examination (IEE) or Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). After the 18th Amendment, provinces are also in process of developing their environmental laws and guidelines.
The government of Sindh has already approved Environmental Protection Act 2014. The Act requires conducting Strategic Environmental Impact Assessment of environmentally sensitive projects. With the passage of time EIA has been degenerated into a farce. A handful of consultancy firms have perfected the art of drafting EIAs and IEEs to meet the wishes of companies.
Due to rampant corruption and lack of regulatory capacity within the EPAs, the environmental regulation of oil and gas exploration projects is fast losing its credibility. Most of the public hearings of EIAs are conducted in big cities far away from the communities subjected to the wrath of environmental violations. This scenario has provided enough space to the companies to evade environmental obligations.
Poor regulatory mechanism and weak civil society are key responsible factors that provide safe passage to companies with environmental violations. As a corollary, local communities pay the price in the shape of diseases, loss of productive land and contamination of ground water.
In the judgment reserved by the Supreme Court of Pakistan on aforementioned petition 46 of 2013, the court recognized that “the people of Pakistan are the ultimate owners of such resources through their governments and State controlled entities”. However, both federal and provincial government also did not play a proactive role to ensure that these companies fulfill their contractual obligations.
The court in its judgment also concluded that the social welfare obligations imposed on E&P Companies were not being met. People forsaken by the government and maltreated through iniquitous policies of companies have pinned their forlorn hopes on the court for restitution of their ownership on their resources.
Karachi, July 31 – At least 21 bathers have drowned in rough seas off Pakistan’s biggest city Karachi, officials said Thursday, after defying a ban on swimming during the monsoon season.
The bathers were among thousands who had taken to the beaches to celebrate the Eid-ul-Fitr holiday, which began on Tuesday and continues until Friday.
Senior police officer Ibadat Nisar said police discovered three bodies washed up at the upscale Clifton beach on Wednesday evening, which prompted a wider search operation that was suspended overnight but resumed Thursday.
“We started talking to picnickers on the beach and realised that the number of people who drowned was much higher than we thought, people whom we talked to told us about their friends or relatives who had gone missing while swimming,” he said.
Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui, the city’s top administrator confirmed the incident to AFP, adding: “We have just recovered another dead body and the toll now stands at 21, and it might increase.
“The coastal area is very long and we cannot say how many people might be still missing — let’s hope the number is not very big.”
Several ambulances were seen on the beach where the relatives of some of the missing anxiously awaiting word of their loved ones.
Faiz Rehman, 32, said he and his younger brother had came to the beach on Wednesday to go for a swim along with two friends — who were now missing.
He said: “As we were swimming in the sea, I noticed the waves getting bigger and more rough, and I got scared and started swimming back.
“I also called my brother and friends to swim back to the shore. My brother returned but my two friends were still swimming as the waves got bigger I lost sight of them.
“I waited for around three hours but they didn’t return.”
Twenty-four-year-old Muhammad Haroon added he had come to celebrate Eid with his cousins, but refused to swim with them because he did not want to ruin his new clothes.
“I was walking along the shore waiting for them to return.
“We are still clueless about them.”
Administrator Siddiqui added that a search operation had been launched with the help of navy divers and a helicopter, as well as civil authorities.
Thousands of residents regularly throng Karachi’s beaches on public holidays, with few public parks for picnics.
But safety standards are very low with the few lifeguards on duty often unable to exert any authority.
Despite the deaths, hundreds of families including women and children continued to arrive at the Clifton Beach Thursday, as some clashed with police and demanding to be allowed to swim.
“We are still searching for dead bodies and these people can see the dead bodies with their eyes but they are still fighting with us to allow them to swim in the sea,” Fahad Ali, a police official deployed at the beach told AFP.
“These people have came with their family members, there are women and children and you can see kids as young as six and their parents are fighting with us to allow them to swim in the sea,” he said.
“This is the height of stupidity,” he added.
Nisar, the senior police officer, told AFP the government had imposed a ban on swimming in the sea before the start of the monsoon season in June.
Karachi, a teeming city of 20 million people, is Pakistan’s economic hub and is regularly wracked by political and ethnic violence.
FAIRY MEADOWS, Pakistan June 29 — For more than five decades, locals have called it “Killer Mountain,” a reminder of the risks of trying to scale beautiful, snow-topped Nanga Parbat.
More than 100 climbers and porters have died on the steep, rocky ascent up the world’s ninth-highest mountain — a fact Pakistan once touted in a bid to lure thrill-seekers.
Now, however, local residents are frantically trying to scrub the word “killer” from a mountain that has become a symbol of the threat posed by the Pakistani Taliban.
One year ago this month, about a dozen heavily armed Pakistani Taliban militants executed 10 foreign mountain climbers, including a U.S. citizen, at the base of the mountain. It was one of the worst acts of violence to strike the international climbing community.
Terrorism is hardly unusual in Pakistan; at least 3,000 people died last year alone in the country in violence attributed to Islamist extremists. But the attack at Nanga Parbat was a major blow, horrifying citizens who view the majestic northern mountains as a source of national pride.
“As a Pakistani, I look at it as our Sept. 11,” said Nazir Sabir, who in 2000 became the first Pakistani to climb Mount Everest in Nepal. He now operates an Islamabad-based tour company. “We never, never, ever thought that this could happen.”
The attack also crushed the remnants of Pakistan’s international tourism industry, creating new hardship in a part of the country known for its tolerance and hospitality. The loss of foreign climbers was so distressing that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif cited it as one reason he ordered a military offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in North Waziristan this month.
Pakistan is home to five of the world’s 14 highest peaks, including K2, the second-highest mountain in the world. Nanga Parbat, at 26,660 feet, is Pakistan’s second-highest mountain.
After the attack, the number of foreign mountain climbers collapsed.
“It may take years and years before they will consider going back to a place like Pakistan,” said Steve Swenson, past president of the American Alpine Club, who has been on 11 climbing expeditions in Pakistan over the past three decades. “I talked to a lot of people, even fairly knowledgeable people, about going there again, and their immediate response is: Is it safe? And then a not-unusual response is: Are you crazy?”
‘This is the day we take revenge’
According to local officials and residents, the Pakistani Taliban attackers hiked through the wilderness for three days to reach the base camp on the western side of the mountain, known as the Diamir Face, late on June 22, 2013.
“Taliban! Al-Qaeda! Surrender!” the militants shouted as they marched into the camp, where the climbers and about three dozen porters slept.
officials say security measures have been increased. (Max Becherer/Polaris Images For The Washington Post)
The assailants went looking for foreigners, slashing more than 40 tents with knives. They yanked people from their tents — one Lithuanian, three Ukrainians, two Slovakians, two Chinese, one American and one Nepali — tied their hands behind their backs and made them kneel in a row in the moonlight.
“Then, suddenly, we a heard a shot,” said one 31-year-old Pakistani climber, who was tied up by the militants nearby. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he continues to fear for his safety.
“Then we heard hundreds of ‘brrr, brrr, brrr’ sounds,” like an automatic weapon might make, he said. “Then a leader of the group came and shot all the dead bodies one by one again.”
One militant then shouted, “This is the day we take revenge for Osama bin Laden,” the man recounted — an apparent reference to the United States’ killing of the al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan two years earlier.
Only one foreign climber — a Chinese man who hid in a steep trench clutching a pickax — survived. The attackers also killed a Pakistani cook, apparently because he was Shiite.
Pakistani police later arrested six people who reportedly confessed to the crime.
Before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, hundreds of thousands of tourists traveled each year to Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan district, where the Himalayan, Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountain ranges meet.
There were 20,000 tourists in northern Pakistan on the day of the attacks on New York and the Pentagon alone, but afterward the country was lucky to attract half that number in an entire year, said Tayyab Nisar Mir, a manager at the Pakistan Tourism Development Corp.
Those who did come were almost exclusively mountain climbers and long-distance backpackers determined to explore some of the world’s most picturesque scenery.
Although there were about 150 climbing expeditions a year in the country in the 1980s and 1990s, and about 75 annually after 9/11, only about 30 are likely to occur this year, officials said. And no climbers are expected this summer at Nanga Parbat. (At least two climbers made an unsuccessful attempt this past winter; no one has made it to the peak of Nanga Parbat or K2 in the winter).
The number of backpackers has declined even more dramatically, Mir said.
“Nanga Parbat was the last nail in the coffin of tourism in Pakistan,” he said, adding that the loss of tourism is costing the country $100 million annually.
Officials in Gilgit-Baltistan stress that the massacre was an isolated tragedy. They have been going to great lengths to reassure visitors that the region is safe.
On a pull-off spot overlooking Nanga Parbat on the Karakoram Highway, a sign once read, “Look to your Left: Killer Mountain.”
But Qaria Amin, 33, who operates a gem store at the spot, said that a month after the massacre, a police officer made him paint over the word “killer.” The sign now reads, “Look to your Left: Mountain.”
Local government officials had part of the mountain’s nickname, ”Killer Mountain,” painted over on a sign. (Max Becherer/Polaris Images for The Washington Post)
Kareem’s climbing equipment shop saw a constant stream of customers before. Now, merchandise collects dust. (Max Becherer/Polaris Images for The Washington Post)
Amin says he is lucky if he makes a $100 a week now, compared with the $100 a day he used to bring in selling rubies, topazes and emeralds collected from the nearby hills.
At Fairy Meadows, a village that overlooks the northwest face of Nanga Parbat and the Raikot glacier, the tourism industry has “collapsed, causing hopelessness,” said Raji Rehmal, a resident.
The village of about 50 extended families is so remote that there are few other economic opportunities. To get there, visitors travel an hour by jeep up what locals call “the world’s most dangerous road,” a lane so narrow that vehicles’ tires are inches from the ledge. The road ends at an elevation of about 8,200 feet, and visitors then must hike to the village, elevation 11,154 feet.
Rehmal, who estimates that he is 50 years old, says he has walked at least 13,000 miles working as a guide or porter for foreigners. His work helped pay for the construction of a school for the village. A foreign climber came up with the name Fairy Meadows in the 1950s because the grassy plateau reminded him of a fairy tale, according to tour operators.
“In the good days, there were doctors who used to bring medicine, and Westerners who used to linger longer just to teach the local kids,” Rehmal said. “We would never, ever think of harming any tourist, any foreigner.”
Pakistani hikers in the area also said they miss the foreign visitors.
“We have so little to be proud of, so if there is something as impressive as this, and foreigners come praise it, it’s a psychological lift,” said Nashreem Ghori, a 41-year-old Karachi native who was hiking near Fairy Meadows.
There has also been a steep decline in the tourism business in the Hunza Valley, an oasis of cherry and apricot trees wedged between imposing snow-
covered mountains. The area is one of several Himalayan locations that have been mentioned as the possible inspiration for the mythical Shangri-La in James Hilton’s 1933 novel, “Lost Horizon.”
“Here, we have nice weather, nice mountains, nice people, but tourists are not coming, ” said Mohammad Karim, 34, a guide who also runs a camping store in Karimabad, a town in the valley.
Ghulam Nabi, owner of a campground at Fairy Meadows, said he fears that residents may resort to mining or logging to try to earn a living if the tourists stay away.
“The people of Gilgit-Baltistan have learned a lot from Western people,” Nabi said. “We were taught how to protect the environment, and how to balance tourism and nature.”
Authorities now assign an armed police officer to any foreigner who wants to go hiking near Nanga Parbat. Pakistanis are hopeful that such measures, and the stunning scenery, will eventually draw back tourists.
“Those mountains are not going anywhere,” said Iqbal Walji, a Pakistani tour operator. “Sooner or later the people will come back, because it’s one of the most beautiful places on earth.”
