The News
By Praful Bidwai
12/8/2007
Nothing
exposes the bankruptcy of "GDP-ism", or obsession with gross domestic
product growth, better than India's and Pakistan's performance just
where it matters -- human development. The latest United Nations Human
Development Report shows India has in one year slipped by two notches
in the Human Development Index to the pitiable rank of 128 among 177
countries. And Pakistan has fallen by one rank to 136.
India and
Pakistan remain firmly within the bottom one-third of the world's
nations in human welfare. India's Human Poverty Index rank has fallen
from 55 (among 102 developing countries) to 62 (of 108 countries) --
despite becoming the world's second fastest-growing economy.
Lopsided
elite-oriented growth has ensured that Indian and Pakistani HDI values
remain below the developing (Southern) world's average. This abysmal
performance has little to do with low income. Tajikistan, with a per
capita income 62 percent lower than India's, has a higher HDI rank
(122).
Poor people in big Southern countries like China (HDI
rank 81), Brazil (70), Mexico (52) and Indonesia (107), and even in
smaller Cuba (51), Malaysia (63), Thailand (78), Sri Lanka (99),
Nicaragua (110), Uzbekistan (113), South Africa (121), Namibia (125)
have better life-chances than India's poor. The poor of Laos (130) and
Bhutan (133) are better off than Pakistan's poor. Among all 100
million-plus-population countries, only Nigeria and Bangladesh are
worse off than India/Pakistan.
We're dealing here with massive
(mal) distribution of growth, and deliberate neglect of the
underprivileged. We're condemning a majority to suffer life-long
disadvantage. This warrants a thorough review of our growth models.This
year's HDR should make us sit up for another reason. It's devoted to
climate change, which is the single greatest menace to humanity after
mass-destruction weapons. Global warming isn't an apocalypse waiting to
happen. It's a tangible reality for millions of the world's poorest
people.
Between 2000 and 2004, there were an average of 326
"climate shocks" or disasters a year. These annually affected some 260
million people, more than double the number in the first half of the
1980s. People in the South are 79 times more likely to suffer droughts,
floods and storms.For instance, monsoon floods and storms this year
displaced 14 million people in India, 7 million in Bangladesh and 3
million in China. In sub-Saharan Africa, 10 million were affected by
drought and 2 million by flooding. Drought in the Horn of Africa
threatened the lives of 14 million.
As the world drifts
towards a "tipping point"-- beyond which corrective action becomes
impossible --, it'll leave hundreds of millions facing malnutrition,
water scarcity and livelihood losses. Tragically, the poor, who are
least responsible for the ecological debt humanity is running up, are
forced to bear the biggest human costs of global warming. This is
doubly unjust.
Unless arrested, climate change will lead to a
breakdown of agricultural systems, with 600 million more people facing
malnutrition, an additional 1.8 billion facing water stress, and over
330 million people in coastal areas confronted with displacement.Asia
is likely to be worst affected. Already, glaciers on the Tibetan
plateau, which feed seven of its greatest rivers, including the Ganga,
the Indus, the Yang-Tze and the Mekong, are receding at unprecedented
rates. This will lead first to floods, and then to droughts.
Climate
change is not only depressing crop yields, lowering food security and
increasing human distress. It is also forcing vulnerable people to
adopt harmful coping strategies such as cutting back on food intake,
withdrawing children from school, and reducing spending on health. New
research shows that children born in Ethiopia in drought years are 36
percent more likely to grow up being stunted than those born in normal
times.
These trends menace the long-term health of entire
societies. The HDR, then, establishes a strong connection between
global warming and human development while highlighting the
catastrophic likely effects of a temperature rise of more than 2°C over
the pre-Industrial Revolution period.
The HDR also sharply
criticises United States and European Union policies on global warming,
and argues that they cannot avert dangerous climate change. The OECD
countries are failing to meet even the modest targets for cutting
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the Kyoto Protocol: a mere 5.2
percent reduction over 1990 by 2008-2012. So meagre are these targets
that it will take 30 Kyotos to stabilise the global climate.
The
worst culprits are the US and Australia which haven't ratified the
Protocol and recklessly increased emissions. (Mercifully, Australia's
new Labour government is likely to change this, and major US states
like California and New York are voluntarily cutting emissions.)
The EU has on average achieved emission cuts of only 2 percent instead of its 8 percent commitment under Kyoto.
The
report calls for a "twin-track" approach to combat global warming,
which combines stringent mitigation with international cooperation on
adaptation to climate change. Besides regulatory standards, it demands
carbon taxation, development of low-carbon energy technologies, and
reductions in the profligate consumption of fossil fuels. It estimates
that the cost of stabilising emissions can be limited to 1.6 percent of
global GDP by 2030 -- less than two-thirds of current world military
spending.
It proposes that the developed countries should cut
their emissions from 1990 by at least 30 percent by 2020 and 80 percent
by 2050. The Southern countries should also cut their emissions by 20
percent by 2050, starting 2020. It proposes that the South must be
supported through finance and transfer of low-carbon technologies, and
recommends $86 billion a year, or 0.2 percent of the rich countries'
GDP for "climate-proofing" the South's infrastructure.
The
Indian and Pakistani governments bristle at the suggestion that they
should accept emission cuts because historically, the North's
industrial activities are responsible for global warming. Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh's maximum offer is to keep India's per capita
GHG emissions less than those of the North. India's entire effort at
the climate conference in Bali in Indonesia has been devoted to
averting GHG capping/cutting targets. It has teamed up with China and
Pakistan in this endeavour.
This won't do. China and India, and
to an extent, Pakistan, are imitating the North in profligate energy
use and luxury consumption even as they profit from the irrational and
iniquitous carbon trading system. Chinese and Indian emissions are
rising three to four times faster than the world average. China will
soon replace the US as the world's largest emitter. India has overtaken
Japan to become the world's fourth biggest emitter.
It's
despicable that our governments should hide behind the poor to defend
elite interests. Citing per capita emissions makes no sense in our
deeply unequal societies where the rich enjoy northern levels of
consumption while the majority lives as frugally as ever. To acquire
global credibility and respect, China, India and Pakistan must show
moral clarity, a universal vision, and leadership. At Bali, they must
facilitate the signing of a successor convention to Kyoto, and offer to
cap and reduce their emissions along with all major emitters.
Global
warming calls for new, radical remedies. If the world is to cut overall
consumption while improving standards of living for the poor, it cannot
use current development models and methods, or the prevalent rules
governing trade, technology, investment, and finance
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