The G7 Loses Ground to BRICS

M.K. Bhadrakumar | 14 Jun 2024

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With the failure of the Western project to isolate Russia, the G7 is meandering and has lost its sense of direction.

One hidden transformation of the international system in the most recent years has been the hijacking of the G7 by Washington as its ‘kitchen cabinet’ in the transatlantic system. The G8’s ‘shrinkage’ to G7 in March 2014 following the coup in Ukraine was a defining moment that signalled that there wasn’t going to be any post-Cold War peace dividend. The G7 that was conceived as a group of countries charioting the world economy ended up as the vehicle of big-power rivalry to preserve the US’ global hegemony. Isolating Russia — and lately, China, too — became its leitmotif. 

With the failure of the Western project to isolate Russia, the G7 is meandering and lost its sense of direction. Italy, the G7 summit’s rotating host this year, has made AI (artificial intelligence) a key issue in the summit. And Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni invited by an unlikely guest, the pontiff, to make an unprecedented appearance at the G7 event at the fashionable Italian hotel Borgo Enyatia to advocate for the regulation of AI, a technology he’s called potentially harmful.

Pope Francis was a chemist prior to entering seminary and will apparently draw on his scientific training to inform his stances. Italy under Meloni’s leadership has increasingly scrutinised AI technology, and temporarily banned ChatGPT in March 2023, becoming the first Western country to do so. 

Equally, G7 is desperate to go beyond a closed elite club of Western democracies by piloting an ambitious outreach and issued an unusually long list of invited leaders of the non-Western world to the summit. Aside Ukraine, Meloni has invited the leaders of India, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Algeria, Kenya and Mauritania to attend the meeting. What was the logic applied is impossible to tell. 

But this is realpolitik and G7 is hoping to bridge the ‘West vs. the Rest’ hiatus in the line-up over the Ukraine crisis. In fact, the ‘outreach guests’ will witness tomorrow (June 14) the nail-biting finale of a geopolitical drama, which forms the core of the G7 summit — the months-long attempt by the group’s leaders to make a decision on using dividends from frozen Russian assets for Ukraine’s military needs.

To recap, as part of the West’s ‘sanctions from hell’ against Russia in 2022, the European Union, Canada, the US and Japan froze Moscow’s assets in the western banks to the tune of $ 300 billion. (Some say, the actual figure is closer to $400 billion.) Only about $5-6 billion is located in the US, while $210 billion is stored in Europe, but the decision to use the proceeds from Russian assets was initiated by Washington with a hidden agenda to make Europe pay for the war’s consequences. 

Unsurprisingly, the European members and Japan opposed the US pressure to include a provision on the use of income from frozen Russian assets in the joint G7 statement to be adopted. The CNN reported on Monday that American officials are still trying to agree on the “most sensitive financial details” of the plan for Russian assets, since the G7 countries are yet come to a consensus and discussions are continuing as regards “the exact form of providing assistance, as well as guarantees for the return of these funds.” 

That said, don’t be surprised if the recalcitrant Europeans ultimately fall in line. There is no question that the G7 move to appropriate Russian money in western banks was bad enough but to use the profits out of them to fund the needs of Ukraine is, to put it mildly, an act of brigandage. 

The US gains if the current freeze in Russia-Europe ties reaches a point of no return, as Europe is sure to bear the brunt of Moscow’s retaliation. If the G7 adopts such a move, it will weaken the global financial system. By brazenly violating international law, the G7 will be setting a precedent that undermines confidence in European institutions. 

It will be interesting to see how the G7 leaders explain to the ‘outreach’ countries, drawn largely out of BRICS, that Russia is an exception and such a practice will not one day be used against India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia or some other state. 

To be sure, the spectre of the 16th summit meeting of BRICS at Kazan (October 16-18) under the chairmanship of Russian President Vladimir Putin haunts the G7. Moscow has let it be known that if the past three years ended with the expansion of the BRICS, the new phase going forward will ensure that the participants in an expanded format create a viable structure in which the member countries work purposively to develop a viable structure. 

An important topic at the BRICS summit meeting in Kazan will be the creation of a single currency within the grouping, which will significantly simplify and expand the economic relations of the member countries against the backdrop of mounting pressure from the West. 

Speaking at the SPIEF conference in St. Petersburg last week, Putin announced that such an independent payment system would be created. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later confirmed that a platform for payments in national currencies is being developed. 

The BRICS countries have realised that the creation of a single currency has become a necessity today due to the ongoing sanctions from the US and the European Union. Lavrov noted that “recent international events have thrown off the masks” of the West, which has tried to impose its own values on other countries under the guise of universal ones and replace equal dialogue with “narrow coalitions” that assign the right to speak on behalf of the whole world. 

BRICS, Lavrov underscored, implies a completely opposite type of partnership — that is, anything but a bloc structure, and on the contrary, a fundamentally open format, which involves working only in those areas that are of mutual interest to all participants, big and small. Reports suggest that around 30 countries have sought BRICS membership.

Meanwhile, in ‘systemic’ terms, G7 is entering uncharted waters. Far-Right parties are storming the power centres of Europe. With an eye on the G7 summit, Politico wrote: “Dream on. The G7 summit in the southern Italian coastal resort of Borgo Egnazia features arguably the weakest gathering of leaders the group has mustered for years. Most of the attendees are distracted by elections or domestic crises, disillusioned by years in office, or clinging desperately to power. 

“France’s Emmanuel Macron and Britain’s Rishi Sunak are both fighting snap election campaigns they called in last-ditch efforts to reverse their flagging fortunes.

“Germany’s Olaf Scholz was humiliated by far-right nationalists in last weekend’s EU Parliament election and could soon be toppled himself.

“Justin Trudeau, prime minister for nine years in Canada, has spoken openly about quitting his “crazy” job.

“Japan’s Fumio Kishida is enduring his lowest personal ratings ahead of a leadership contest later this year. 

“And then there’s Joe Biden.

“The 81-year-old U.S. president’s son, Hunter, was found guilty of gun charges on Tuesday, barely two weeks before his father’s first crucial debate with a resurgent Donald Trump in a presidential campaign the Democrat is in serious danger of losing.” 

Above all, the angst in the European mind is palpable that if Trump wins in a democracy-altering climax in the November election, he may not even have time or patience to tolerate an archaic forum like G7. Surveying the bleak landscape, it comes as no surprise that Meloni took matters in her hands and decided to use the summit to her purposes by designing an agenda that cleaved to Italy’s strategic interests — Africa, migration and the Mediterranean.

MK Bhadrakumar is a former diplomat. He was India’s Ambassador to Uzbekistan and Turkey. The views are personal.

Courtesy: Indian Punchline

 

Brazil: Feminists Mobilise Against Bill That Equates Abortion With Murder

Peoples Dispatch | 15 Jun 2024

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The Chamber of Deputies surprised many by pushing forward the discussion on a bill that equates abortion with murder and prohibits abortion even in cases of rape.

Abortion rights demonstrators mobilize in Brasília (Photo: Matheus Alves / Mídia NINJA)

On Wednesday, June 12, Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies approved the urgent discussion of a bill that equates abortion with murder. Officially named Bill 1904/2024, it will now be voted on by the plenary of the Chamber of Deputies, without first going through the relevant committees.

The bill could result in prison sentences as long as 20 years for those who administer abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy.

The Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira, of the Progressive Party, put the matter on the agenda without informing the federal deputies and without announcing the bill’s number. He asked Pastor Henrique Vieira of the left-wing Socialism and Freedom Party about the position of party members on the matter under consideration, but he did not respond. Lira considered the urgency of the matter approved in symbolic voting, in which each deputy’s vote on the electronic panel isn’t recorded, which lasted just 23 seconds. In general, symbolic voting occurs when there is already agreement among parliamentarians on the matter on the agenda.

The bill adds articles to the Penal Code to make the penalties for simple homicide the same as those for abortions carried out after 22 weeks of gestation, even in cases where the practice is legally allowed. The text also prohibits abortion even in cases of pregnancy resulting from rape, if there is fetal viability.  

At the time of the vote, there was no reaction in the plenary. On social media, however, members of the progressive spectrum attacked what they called Lira’s “maneuver”.

“Lira has just struck a blow against women’s rights. He approved an emergency request without even announcing the vote. The request allows voting on the bill that forces girls and women who suffer sexual violence to have the child of a rapist,” wrote Natália Bonavides of the Workers’ Party.

Congresswoman Sâmia Bomfim of the Socialism and Freedom Party also spoke out on social media. “Using a maneuver, Lira approved the urgency of the Child Pregnancy Bill, so the bill can go to a voting at any time in the plenary,” she posted.

The Nem Presa Nem Morta (Either Jailed nor Killed, in a rough translation) Campaign, which defends the decriminalization of abortion in the country, called Lira’s stance “cowardly.”

The National Front for the Legalization of Abortion described the urgent approval as “dishonest and undemocratic.”

Protesters across Brazil denounce “Child Pregnancy Bill”

On Thursday night, many Brazilian cities saw feminist protests against Bill 1904/2024, dubbed the Child Pregnancy Bill for the impact it could have on young girls who are victims of sexual violence.

The Front Against the Criminalization of Women and For the Legalization of Abortion led protests in 17 Brazilian cities and engaged in mobilizations in many other places.

Hundreds gathered at the Republic’s National Museum in Brasília for the protest. According to Thaísa Magalhães, Women’s Secretary of Brazil’s Central Workers’ Union of the Federal District (CUT-DF, in Portuguese), the protests show that women listened to the call of many feminist and social organizations. “Women expressed their solidarity with the urgency of going to the streets to say no to the Child Pregnancy Bill,” said Thaíssa.

According to Brazilian pedagogue Leila Rebouças, the discussion of this agenda in the Chamber of Deputies represents a negotiation over women’s bodies. She also points out that in election years, such as 2024, when municipal elections will be held, conservative agendas are, once again, debated in Congress. “This is yet another strategy to put these agendas forward to negotiate votes,” she said.

In São Paulo, the demonstration took place at the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP, in Portuguese) on Paulista Avenue, and brought together hundreds of demonstrators. According to Ana Paula, an activist with the National Front Against the Criminalization of Women and For the Legalization of Abortion, the demonstrations are women’s response to the attack on a right already legally guaranteed.

“It was a moment of revolt for women and all pregnant women about the urgency for the Bill 1904/2024, which was done without any decent consultation with parliament, because it wasn’t even announced. In 23 seconds, Lira has ruined the lives of thousands of girls and women who have access to a legal right guaranteed by the Penal Code, which dates back to 1940: abortion in cases of sexual violence and risk to life. This is truly revolting and led to this movement,” she says.

At Cinelândia, downtown Rio de Janeiro, people gathered to defend the right to legal abortion.

This article was based on two reports originally published in Brasil de Fato.

Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch

 

Death of Petrodollar is a Biden Legacy

M.K. Bhadrakumar | 15 Jun 2024

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The end is nearing for the unfettered freedom US enjoyed to print dollar currency at will and living it up far beyond its means and imposing its global hegemony.

The Deep State should have been alert five years ago when Candidate Joe Biden announced that he, if elected as president, was determined to make the Saudi rulers “pay the price, and make them in fact the pariah that they are.”

Biden was blunt to the point of being brutal about the Saudi royal family, saying there was “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia” under King Salman’s rule.  

But, instead, the Deep State felt delighted that Biden was just the man to succeed Donald Trump and reverse the Trump-era practice of forgiving Saudi human rights violations in order to preserve jobs in the American arms industry.

Biden probably knew by then that the American intelligence had concluded about the role of Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince and the de facto leader of the country, in the killing of the dissident-journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was a ‘strategic asset’ of the CIA for navigating the next Saudi succession and the ensuing regime change to a happy ending. Khashoggi’s decapitation crippled Washington’s game plan to instal a pliable ruler in Riyadh. 

Today, all that is history. But unlike the Bourbons, the Saudi royals never forget or forgive. They also have infinite patience and their own concept of time and space. And last Sunday, June 9, they struck. 

In great royal style, last Sunday, Riyadh simply let the 50-year-old petrodollar agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia to expire. 

To recap, the term “petrodollar” refers to the US dollar’s pivotal role as the currency used for crude oil transactions on the world market per the US-Saudi deal dating back to 1974 shortly after the US went off the gold standard. 

In the history of global finance, few agreements have wielded as many benefits as the petrodollar pact did for the US economy. At its core, the agreement stipulated that Saudi Arabia would price its oil exports exclusively in US dollars and invest its surplus oil revenues in US Treasury bonds — and, in a quid pro quo, the US would provide military support and protection to the kingdom.  

The ‘win-win’ deal ensured that the US gained a stable source of oil and a captive market for its debt, while Saudi Arabia secured its economic and overall security. In turn, the denomination of oil in dollar elevated the dollar’s status as the world’s ‘reserve currency’. 

Since then, the global demand for dollars to purchase oil has helped to keep the currency strong, not only made imports relatively cheap for American consumers but in systemic terms, the influx of foreign capital into US Treasury bonds supported low interest rates and a robust bond market.

Suffice to say, the expiration of the 1974 US-Saudi ‘oil-for-security’ deal has far-reaching implications. At the most obvious level, it highlights the shifting power dynamics in the oil market with the emergence of alternative energy sources (e.g., renewables and natural gas) and new oil-producing countries (e.g., Brazil and Canada) challenging the traditional dominance of West Asia. But this is more the optics of it. 

Crucially, the petrodollar’s expiration could weaken the US dollar and, by extension, the US financial markets. If oil were to be priced in a currency other than the dollar, it could lead to a decline in global demand for the greenback, which, in turn, could result in higher inflation, higher interest rates, and a weaker bond market in the US.

Suffice to say, going forward we may expect a significant shift in global power dynamics with the growing influence of emerging economies, the changing energy landscape and a tectonic shift in the global financial order as it enters a “post-American” era. The bottom line is that the US dollar’s dominance is no longer guaranteed. 

There is no question that Saudi Arabia has a roadmap worked out. Four days before the expiration of the oil-for-security deal, Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia has joined a China-dominated central bank digital currency cross-border trial, “in what could be another step towards less of the world’s oil trade being done in U.S. dollars.” 

The announcement on June 4 came from the Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements [BIS], an international financial institution owned by member central banks. It means that Saudi central bank has become a “full participant” of Project mBridge, a collaboration launched in 2021 between the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates. 

The BIS announcement took note that mBridge had reached “minimum viable product” stage — that is, it is ready to move beyond the prototype phase. By the way, 135 countries and currency unions, representing 98% of global GDP, are currently exploring central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs.  

The entry of Saudi Arabia, a major G20 economy and the largest oil exporter in the world, signals a scaling up of commodity settlement on a platform outside of dollars in a near term scenario, with a new technology behind it. Interestingly, the mBridge transactions can use the code China’s e-yuan is built on! 

The intention is to modernise payments with new functionality and provide an alternative to physical cash, which seems in terminal decline anyway. China dominates the mBridge project and is carrying out the world’s largest domestic CBDC pilot which now reaches 260 million people and covers 200 scenarios from e-commerce to government stimulus payments. 

Indeed, other big emerging economies, including India, Brazil and Russia, also plan to launch digital currencies in the next 1-2 years while the European Central Bank has begun work on a digital euro pilot ahead of a possible launch in 2028.

Now, add to this Russia’s master plan to create a new BRICS payments system bypassing the dollar altogether. Moscow stock exchange announced on Wednesday that it will stop trading dollars and euros from Thursday, June 13.  

Thus, the expiration of the US-Saudi deal last weekend is emblematic of a cascading challenge from various quarters to the dollar’s pre-eminence as ‘reserve currency.’ In particular, the end is nearing for the unfettered freedom America enjoyed to print dollar currency at will and living it up far beyond its means and imposing the US’ global hegemony. 

There is growing unease among US elites that good life may be ending as the crushing debt burden sinks the American economy. In a CNBC interview yesterday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that high interest rates are also adding to the burden as the US manages its massive $34.7 trillion debt load.  

Of course, there are no clear alternatives yet to the US dollar as the world’s leading reserve currency but the writing on the wall is that global trade strains and increased use of tariffs or sanctions could undermine its role sooner than later, as foreign investors’ concerns are rising about America’s public debt sustainability. 

The Fitch Ratings noted yesterday (June 13) that “Large primary deficits and higher interest service costs will keep the U.S. sovereign debt burden increasing after November’s elections, regardless of who wins.” 

In sum, what seemed hitherto a geopolitical rivalry over NATO expansion and Taiwan — or setting trade/technology standards in the Fourth Industrial Revolution — is taking on an existential dimension for Washington as the future of dollar is at stake. There are enough hints testifying to coordinated moves by Moscow and Beijing to accelerate the “de-dollarisation” process.

On the one hand, Russia is pulling all stops to present to the world at the forthcoming BRICS summit in October a non-dollar payment system to settle trade, while, on the other hand, China is systematically dumping its holdings of US treasury bonds that will give it a freer hand when the crunch time comes.  

MK Bhadrakumar is a former diplomat. He was India’s Ambassador to Uzbekistan and Turkey. The views are personal.

Courtesy: Indian Punchline

Extreme Weather Events: Why Outdoor Workers' Rights Are a Matter of Climate Justice

Sheeva Dubey, Prasad Pathak | 

17 Jun 2024

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Ensuring health and livelihood safeguards for outdoor workers against climate change impacts, such as heat, rain, cold, should be seen as a matter of their rights.

Multiple research and journalistic reports confirm the double whammy of excessive heat on outdoor workers -- on health as well as on livelihood. The impact on health ranges from minor ones, such as dehydration, body ache, weakness, exhaustion, fever, to major impacts, such as fainting, and death.

Livelihoods are impacted due to reasons like diminished productivity of workers, inability to work in excessive heat, loss of business, and income. There have been similar findings in a study on heat stress impact on the street vendors in Pune, Maharashtra.

While the heatwave predictions are at district levels, it exacerbates within urban areas and outdoor workers, such as street vendors, face the brunt as they can’t control their working environment unlike office-based workers who may have fans and air-conditioning.

This summer, unprecedented duration, intensity, and frequency of heatwaves were witnessed across India. According to India Meteorological Department, heatwaves are a period of unusually high temperatures as compared to what is normally expected over a region. While the criteria slightly differ for plane, hilly areas and coastal areas, temperatures should remain higher for more than 2 days to become a heatwave.

In India, heatwaves occur mostly during March to June. Records indicate that since 1956 till now, 11 summers had heat waves (temperatures more than 45 Degree Celsius). However, the frequency has increased in the 21st Century. Consecutively, 2022, 2023 and 2024 have experienced heat waves, while 2024 has experienced the highest temperatures of 52.9 Degrees. The death toll so far has been more than 200 this year.

As per predictions, this trend (heat wave) is likely to increase every year, primarily because of climate change. Concerns are, therefore, being raised about lack of policy and action to protect outdoor workers, such as agricultural workers, construction workers, transport workers, street vendors, and brick kiln workers.

However, safeguards from climate change impacts are still far from being seen as rights that outdoor workers deserve and must claim, although protection from climate change has been recently acknowledged by the Supreme Court as a part of the fundamental rights to life and equality. Yet, an understanding of climate justice is starkly missing in the entire discourse.

A fight for justice and rights

Why is there a question of justice when we speak of climate change? Because climate change is caused by human activities. Also, different communities have contributed differently to global warming that causes climate change. Western nations have amassed tremendous wealth by colonising and industrial activities that have caused far more carbon emissions than the rest of the nations, many of which have also been colonised and exploited by the West.

Similarly, the capitalist class owning industries has contributed far more to global warming than the working class that is engaged in mostly in manual labour, gets underpaid in return, and survives on the least resources causing minimal carbon emissions.

However, when it comes to bearing the impact of climate change, it is the poor, the marginalised, the working class, and the underdeveloped nations that find themselves more disadvantaged because of their inability to protect themselves and cover their losses. Climate change “vulnerability” is commonly understood to increase with one’s “exposure” to climate conditions and her “sensitivity” to it, and decrease with improvements in “adaptive capacity.”

Outdoor workers are far more exposed than others to climate conditions, such as heat, rain or cold. They are also more sensitive to adverse impacts of climate change than those with access to better locations, infrastructure, resources, livelihood security, nutrition, and healthcare.

Even the spatial composition of the outdoors affects the heat experienced for workers, such as street vendors. For example, crowded market places where vendors work, usually lack vegetation, water bodies, and have densely packed buildings that retain heat and increase minimum temperature (night) and maximum temperatures.

Next, most outdoor workers struggling to make ends meet in India’s vast informal economy, also have poor “adaptive capacity,” that is, one’s ability to minimise loss and damage or maximise profit with changing climate conditions. Socio-economically marginalising factors, such as gender, caste, race, ethnicity, age, or disability, render individuals and communities further vulnerable to climate change impacts.

Outdoor workers having made the least contribution to global warming but are in the forefront of bearing the impact of climate change. This is a matter of injustice. Not being given the needed policy framework and funds to cope with their climate vulnerabilities further adds to this climate injustice.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines climate justice as “justice that links development and human rights to achieve a human-centred approach to addressing climate change, safeguarding the rights of the most vulnerable people and sharing the burdens and benefits of climate change and its impacts equitably and fairly.” Securing the “rights” of climate vulnerable communities is very much at the core of IPCC’s idea of climate justice. Ensuring safeguards for outdoor workers against climate change impacts should thus be seen as a matter of their rights.

A lacking policy

India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change, released in 2008, has no component that addresses the vulnerabilities of outdoor and informal workers. These workers have thereby been excluded from many state-level climate change action plans as well. Not surprisingly, none of the projects funded under the National Adaptation Fund for Climate Change, as listed on the NABARD website, address the vulnerabilities of outdoor workers.

In disaster management policy, such as the National Disaster Management Plan, 2019, outdoor workers are acknowledged to be vulnerable to disasters, such as heat waves, chemical (industrial) disasters, and biological and public health emergencies. However, no measures have been included in the plan that are specific to outdoor workers besides assessing their vulnerability and improving their awareness. Outdoor workers’ particular vulnerabilities to disasters are not addressed. Also, there is no attention paid to outdoor workers in the plan for urban flooding, which specifically affects outdoor workers in urban areas.

In India, Heat Action Plans (HAPs) are prepared to deal with heat waves by increasing preparedness to reduce the impacts of heat. These HAPs are being prepared at state, district and city levels. It is observed that there is no consistency of scale – i.e., not every state or district or city would prepare HAPs.

The most prominent lacuna in the HAPs is that it does not consider local conditions but follow national guidelines. These HAPs focus on individuals but ignore their socio-economic differences and thus, ignore the vulnerable populations having collective vulnerabilities. It is also not clear how much budget gets allocated to prepare HAPs and then subsequently for mitigation measures. Thus, it is difficult to for the transition from preparing HAPs to effective implementation.

Further, while outdoor workers have received some attention in the country’s HAPs, this attention has been mostly limited to construction workers. Other outdoor workers, such as street vendors, gig workers, transport workers, sanitation workers, waste pickers, and hamaal workers get no mention. The focus being highly urban, agricultural workers, mining workers, fish workers, saltpan workers, cattle-rearers and the likes have also received no attention. Similar lapses are there in the 2018 draft of the National Action Plan for Climate Change and Human Health and the National Action Plan on Heat Related Illnesses, 2021.

On the other side, the laws and policies on workplace safety in India do not acknowledge and address climate change vulnerabilities of workers. These include the new Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 and the National Policy on Safety, Health and Environment at Workplace, 2009. The various schemes and missions on skill development and livelihood support such as Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Urban Livelihoods Mission and Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana are equally myopic and lacking in acknowledging and addressing climate change risks that workers face.

Workers’ challenges

The International Labour Organisation has recommended that workers and workplaces should be at the centre of conceptualising climate change action. It has clearly directed that heat action plans should address workers’ safety and health. However, India’s outdoor workers remain excluded from the nation’s climate change policies. This keeps them in a marginalised position, incapable of accessing resources to protect themselves or even participating in the climate change discourse and decision-making.

Moreover, when the law of the land does not secure workers’ right to protect themselves from climate change, the discourse is unable to move past the language of aid, assistance and charity to that of rights and justice. As a result, we are not finding outdoor workers in India demanding resources to cope with climate extremes as their rights. They themselves are yet to realise that it is their right and a matter of justice. 

At the global level, the discussions on climate change have started paying serious attention to loss and damage due to climate change. An understanding of climate justice is at the heart of these discussions so as to make sure that those with least contribution to global warming should not have to pay undue cost of it. These international conversations should be brought to regional and local levels to question how the losses of outdoor workers should be compensated.

Meanwhile, as we also found in our study with street vendors in Pune on heat stress impact, they continue to bear economic losses without any social security, insurance or compensation from anywhere to cover them. Such losses include but are not limited to loss of customers due to severe weather conditions, goods spoiled, and loss in productivity. A loss of income that is already at the subsistence level, further renders them incapable of coping with worsening climate. Diminished income can further push them to work in severe weather conditions, risking their health and safety.

There is no escape from acknowledging outdoor workers to be at the frontline of bearing the climate change impacts, and unfairly so. Also, there is no better recourse than safeguarding their right to protect themselves from climate change impacts through appropriate law, policy, and funding. Any delay in this is further adding to the climate injustice they are experiencing. 

The writers are faculty at FLAME University, Pune, Maharashtra. The views are personal.

DENTING MODI’S 1000-YEAR REICH

Has Indian democracy been pulled back from the brink, or will this humiliation lead to Modi digging in his heels?



Siddharth Varadarajan 

DAWN

Published June 16, 2024

Voters in India have done for Indian democracy what the country’s election commission and judiciary failed to do: discipline and rebuke Prime Minister Narendra Modi for seeking to pit Hindus and Muslims against each other, and for his cosy nexus with big business — whose dubious donations have fuelled government policies that have increased inequality and distress.

After 10 years in power, Modi has lost the parliamentary majority his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) enjoyed, and will now run a minority government with the backing of coalition partners, some of whom are notoriously fickle.

It does not help that he himself has never run an actual — rather than a notional — coalition. Three years ago, when the Shiromani Akali Dal challenged him over his controversial farm laws, he remained unmoved and it was the Akalis who had to exit. But the allies India’s voters have now dealt him will not quietly pick up their jhola and walk away. They will have the ability to topple his government.

Putting on a brave face, Modi hailed the fact that he has returned to power for the third time as a “historic feat.” The truth is that the result represents a stunning personal setback for a man so convinced of his invincibility that he had begun to claim divine origins.

The politics of hate and division and stark economic inequality championed by Narendra Modi and the BJP has been dealt a chastening blow by the Indian electorate, which returned a verdict for the ruling coalition far short of its hoped-for landslide. Has Indian democracy been pulled back from the brink, or will this humiliation lead to Modi digging in his heels?

“As long as my mother was alive,” he told an interviewer in the midst of the election campaign, “I used to feel that perhaps I have been born biologically. But after her death, looking at all my experiences, I have become convinced… that God has sent me. The energy [I have] has not come from a biological body.” The electorate has brought this self-proclaimed messenger of God down to earth with a thud.

THE MUSLIM SCAPEGOAT

Modi’s claim to divinity came, incidentally, in the same interview where he lied about an election speech he had made at the start of the campaign. At Banswara, he had unambiguously referred to India’s Muslims as “infiltrators” and as people who have “more children.

Modi was not simply abusing Muslims but attempting to stoke irrational anxieties in India’s Hindu voters, about how he was the only leader capable of stopping the opposition from seizing their property and assets and handing them over to the Muslims.

Modi went on to repeat this accusation, with minor variations, at rally after rally. His party created nasty animated videos, aimed at scaring Hindus into believing this absurd claim. In another interview, he distorted the dubious findings of a widely publicised study by researchers in his own office — released to coincide with the anti-Muslim election narrative he was pushing — in order to convince Hindus that India’s Muslim population is growing so fast that they would soon be swamped.

Why is Modi so obsessed with Muslims?

For one, it is part of his political DNA. His career began in the BJP’s parent organisation — the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — and has been built around the RSS’s belief that India is a Hindu nation which was enslaved by Muslims for 800 years. Modi believes that Indian Muslims today — statistically one of the poorest cohorts in the country — are actually ‘privileged’ and enjoy more rights and benefits than Hindus, and that India cannot attain true glory as long as the ‘appeasement’ of Muslims continues.

But there is a second reason for the recent uptick in his anti-Muslim pronouncements. When you go into an election with nothing much to show by way of actual accomplishments — unemployment and rural despair are widespread and 800 million Indians subsist on free grain provided to them by the government — it helps to divert the attention of voters with large doses of Muslim bashing. This is what Modi and his party did.


Rahul Gandhi attends a Congress Party event in New Delhi: hardly anyone foresaw the extent to which voters would back Congress and its allies in this election | Reuters



STACKING THE BENCH BUT STILL LOSING

It is an open secret that campaigning for votes on the basis of direct or indirect appeals to religion is illegal under our election law and can get a politician banned from contesting for six years. However, Modi correctly calculated that the three election commissioners who are meant to enforce this law (and whom he handpicked for the job) would not say anything.

When some citizens approached the Delhi High Court, requesting that the Election Commission be told to file a case against Modi for his hate speeches, they were sent packing with the advice that they must have faith in the Election Commission. The latter, of course, did nothing and, when the Chief Election Commissioner was asked (after voting had ended) why he had not acted, his answer was that the courts had rejected petitions that had asked for the Election Commission to take action.






The courts and the Election Commission may have passed the buck between them and done nothing but, unfortunately for Modi, enough Hindu voters saw through his game and decided they were not going to trade their concerns about the here and now for the civil strife that the prime minister was clearly pushing for.

In Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, the BJP’s vote share collapsed. Even Ayodhya — which was assigned a special place in Modi’s chauvinist politics — decided to dump him. In Rajasthan and Haryana, rural voters angry at Modi’s anti-farmer policies, backed the opposition. Across India, as many as 22 sitting ministers — roughly around a quarter of his ministerial council — lost their seats.

Thanks to an electoral battlefield skewed by the BJP’s money power, the partisanship of big media and his own willingness to use state coercion against the opposition, however, Modi has managed to limit his losses and limp across the finishing line with the help of a coalition.

On Sunday, June 9, he was sworn into office for a third time. The fact that he has been weakened is good news for India’s democracy but, to the extent to which he remains unchastened, it is fair to ask what his priorities will be this time around.

WHERE DOES MODI GO NOW?

Do his electoral losses mean he will no longer be able to pursue his Hindu chauvinist agenda? Will he now have to ease off on his attempts to stifle dissent and undermine press freedom? Will he decide it is time to be less indulgent towards big business? Or might he actually double down on his current agenda?

A Turkish friend reminds me that things can get especially dangerous when a strongman feels weaker. This has been the experience with Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and there is no reason to expect Modi to be any different.

In his second term, Modi had begun to tighten the screws on India’s feisty digital media — which has so far managed to function and reach millions of readers and viewers despite the threats and blandishments that have turned India’s legacy media into a national embarrassment.

In his third term, Modi is likely to be more aggressive in his use of law fare against the media. Similarly, he will attempt to once again use the government’s enforcement agencies to stymie the opposition by going after individual leaders.






If Modi continues on the path he has taken so far, it will be up to his coalition partners and the judiciary to intervene. The fact that Modi is numerically vulnerable increases the likelihood that he will face some resistance from these quarters, but there is no guarantee that this will be so.

In his first two terms, Modi used the support and goodwill of foreign powers, especially the United States and in Europe, as a force multiplier to strengthen himself politically. That too is not necessarily going to change. Back in power, he is sure to leverage the bait of lucrative business opportunities for Western companies and the sharpening rift between the United States and China to allay any squeamishness generated by his open Islamophobia and authoritarian tendencies.

Indians are breathing easier today, confident that they have managed to pull Indian democracy back from the brink. They also know it will not take long for Modi to return to his divinely programmed factory settings. Support for the BJP’s anti-Muslim politics may have peaked in the north and the west of India, but he is keen to extend its reach in the south and east.

This is a man who boasts of having a 1000-year plan for India — a techno-corporate variant of the RSS’s destructive vision — and he is not going to abandon it so easily. The last world leader who dreamt of a millennium for his Reich ended up destroying his country and much more. India’s voters have delivered a body blow to Modi’s ‘vision’, but the truth is that he’s back.

Indians who love and value their constitution — their rights, their civilisation and their fraternity — will have to steel themselves for a more decisive round, which is sure to be just around the corner.

“Chalay chalo,” as Faiz Ahmed Faiz wrote about the search for a new dawn, “ke woh manzil abhi nahin aayi”. A safe harbour is still some distance away.

The writer is a founding editor of The Wire. He was earlier the editor of The Hindu and is a recipient of the Shorenstein Journalism Award and the Ramnath Goenka Award for Journalist of the Year.

By arrangement with The Wire

Published in Dawn, EOS, June 16th, 2024

CASTEISM

Indignity, disease, death: The life of a sewerage worker in Pakistan

84 sewage workers have died in 19 districts of Pakistan over the past five years, according to advocacy group.

 According to WaterAid Pakistan, 80 per cent of sanitation workers in Pakistan are Christians, despite them making up just 2pc of the general population according to the 2023 census.

Zofeen T. Ebrahim 

Published June 14, 2024

DAWN

A dark head emerges, followed by the torso. The balding man heaves himself up, hands on the sides of the manhole, as he is helped by two men. Gasping for breath, the man, who seems to be in his late 40s, sits on the edge, wearing just a pair of dark pants, the same color as the putrid swirling water he comes out from.

This is an all-too-familiar sight in Karachi, with its over 20 million residents producing 475 million gallons per day (MGD) of wastewater going into decades-old crumbling sewerage-systems.

After over a hundred dives into the sewers in the last two years, Adil Masih, 22, says, “I have proved to my seniors, I can do the job well.” He hopes to be upgraded from a kachha (not formally employed) to a pucca (permanent) employee at Karachi’s government-owned Karachi Water and Sewerage Company (KWSC), formerly known as the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board and is commonly referred to as the water board, in the next six months.

Earning Rs25,000 (USD 90) a month, which Adil gets as a lump sum of Rs75,000 (USD 269) every three months, the pay will rise to Rs32,000 (USD 115), which is the minimum wages in Sindh province set by the government once he becomes pucca.


Sewer work is dirty but essential work in a busy city like Karachi. A worker popularly known as Mithoo rests after unblocking sewage. — credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS



“The first time is always the most terrifying experience,” recalls Amjad Masih, 48, sporting a metallic earring in his left lobe. Among the 2,300 sewer cleaners under the employment of the KWSC, to do manual scavenging to unclog the drains, he claims to have taught Adil the dos and donts of diving into the slush. “You have to be smart to outdo death, which is our companion as we go down,” he says.

It is not the army of cockroaches and the stink that greets you when you open the manhole lid to get in, or the rats swimming in filthy water, but the blades and used syringes floating that are a cause for concern for many as they go down to bring up the rocks and the buckets of filthy silt.

But getting into the sewers is a last resort. “We first try to unclog the line using a long bamboo shaft to prod and loosen the waste, when that fails, we climb down into the gutters and clean them with our hands,” explains Amjad, employed with the water and sanitation company since 2014, and becoming permanent in 2017.
Toxic cauldron

Although the civic agency claims the workers are provided personal protective equipment to shield them from chemical, physical and microbial hazards, many, like Amjad, refuse to wear it.

“I need to feel the rocks and stones with my feet to be able to bring them up,” he says. “Nothing happens,” adds Adil. “We go to the doctor for treatment and are back at work.”

A former KWSC official, speaking to IPS on condition of anonymity, said there have been several deaths and injuries. “It is up to the supervisors to ensure they only send men down the manhole who comply with safety regulations.” He said the protective gear must include gas masks, ladders, and gloves as the “bare minimum,” as there are definite health risks as well as the risk of losing your life.

More than the physical hazards, it is the invisible danger stalking these men, in the form of gases like methane, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide — produced when wastewater contains chlorine bleaches, industrial solvents and gasoline — when mixed with concrete in drainpipes — that have taken the lives of these cleaners.

Earlier in March, two young sanitation workers, Arif Moon Masih, 25, and Shan Masih, 23, died after inhaling toxic fumes in Faisalabad, in the Punjab province. In January, two workers in Karachi met with a similar fate while cleaning sewerage lines.

According to Sweepers Are Superheroes, an advocacy campaign group, around 84 sewage workers have died in 19 districts of Pakistan over the past five years. In neighboring India, one sewer worker dies every five days, according to a 2018 report by the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis.

“I had almost died once,” recalls Amjad, of how he got “gassed” and passed out. “Luckily for me, I did the job and came up and then collapsed.”

But there have been quite a few of his colleagues, he says, who have died due to inhalation while still inside.

Adil said he has inhaled gases quite a few times too. “My eyes burn, and when I come out, I vomit and drink a bottle of cold fizzy drink and am set again,” he said. But the last time it happened, he had to be hospitalized as he had passed out.

With time, says Amjad, they have learned to take precautions.

“We open the manhole lid to let the gases escape before going in,” he says. A dead rat floating on the surface is a giveaway that there are gases, he adds.

The KWSC cleaners work as a team of four. One is sent down wearing a harness tied to a rope. If something is not right or he’s done the job, he tugs at the rope, and the three men waiting outside immediately pull him out. But the man is pulled out after three to four minutes have elapsed without waiting for the tug “in case he has become unconscious,” explains Amjad. He claims to be able to hold his breath for as long as five minutes because “I have to sometimes go as deep as 30 feet.”

Adil is only able to do a maximum of seven feet and hold his breath for no more than two minutes, but the gases are found in shallower drains. Along with buckets of silt, the drains are often clogged with stones and boulders that need to be brought up, to allow the water to flow freely.

Amjad and Adil also take on private work, like the rest of the KWSC sanitation workers. The agency knows but looks the other way. “If they can earn a little extra, it is ok,” says the officer.

“We are called to open up blocked drains by residents and restaurant management and for a couple hours of work, we are able to earn well,” says Adil.

Adil Masih and Amjad Masih work in the sewers of Karachi, a dangerous and low-paying occupation. — credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS


Janitorial work reserved for Christians

Adil and Amjad are unrelated but carry the same surname — Masih — which points to their religion — both are Christians. According to WaterAid Pakistan, 80 per cent of sanitation workers in Pakistan are Christians, despite them making up just 2pc of the general population according to the 2023 census. The report Shame and Stigma in Sanitation, published by the Center for Law & Justice (CLJ) in 2021, connects sanitation work to the age-old caste system prevalent in the Indian sub-continent that attached birth to occupations.

“This ruthless practice has died down to a large extent in Pakistan, but sanitation is probably the only occupation where this traditional caste structure continues,” it points out.

The CLJ’s report carries a survey of the employees of the Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa), which provides drinking water and ensures the smooth working of the sewerage systems, and the Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC), which is tasked with collecting and disposing of solid waste from households, industries and hospitals in Lahore city, in the Punjab province. Wasa has 2,240 sanitation workers, out of which 1,609 are Christians. The LWMC has 9,000 workers and all of them are Christians. 87pc of the employees in both organisations believed “janitorial work is only for Christians,” while 72pc of Christian workers said their Muslim coworkers “believe that this work is not for them.”

The same is true for Karachi as well. Till about five years ago, the KWSC would advertise for the job of sewer cleaners, specifically asking for non-Muslims but stopped after receiving criticism from rights groups.

“We removed this condition and started hiring Muslims for the cleaning of sewers, but they refuse to go down the sewers,” said the KWSC official. In Punjab province, the discriminatory policy of employing only non-Muslims belonging to minorities for janitorial work was struck down in 2016.

With half of Karachi being dug and new drainage lines being laid, much of the work is being carried out by Pathans (Muslims belonging to an ethnic group) and, until last year, by Afghans too. “They are wading in the same filthy water,” says Amjad.

He got a much more lucrative job—working as a sweeper in an apartment building and earning more.

“Being a permanent employee with a government department means lifelong security; the job is for keeps,” he explains. “And on a day-to-day basis too, life is slightly easier. You are not harassed by the police, get sick leave and free healthcare, and there are retirement benefits too, and you cannot be kicked out on any one person’s whim.”
Way forward

But Amjad and Adil’s work and how they are treated by their employers are in complete contrast to what the Pakistani government has signed under the Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goal 8 — of improving the working conditions of sanitation workers. It also seems unlikely that targets 8.5 “full employment and decent work with equal pay” and 8.8 “protect labour rights and promote safe working environments” will be met by 2030.

Farah Zia, the director of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, talking to IPS, pointed out that Pakistan had made little progress in meeting the criteria for decent work for sanitation workers, considered amongst the most “marginalised labour groups in Pakistan’s workforce.”

Not being “paid a living wage or to live in an environment free of social stigma,” Zia said they were not even provided ample safety equipment and training to protect themselves from occupational hazards. In addition, she pointed out that the 2006 National Sanitation Policy was outdated and fell “short of addressing these concerns.”

The same was observed in Sindh province, where Amjad and Adil live. “Although the Sindh government had adopted a provincial sanitation policy in 2017, it did not address the concerns related to the working and living conditions of these workers in the province,” Zia pointed out

In 2021, in line with SDG 8, WaterAid Pakistan (WAP) worked with the local government in the Punjab province’s Muzaffargarh district to ensure the safety of sanitation workers. Apart from provision of safety equipment and access to clean drinking water, the organization advocated that these “essential workers receive the respect and dignity they deserve,” said Muhammad Fazal, heading the Strategy and Policy Programme of the WAP.

Naeem Sadiq, a Karachi-based industrial engineer and a social activist who has long been fighting for the rights of these men has calculated the highest and lowest salaries in the public sector.

“The ratio of the salary of a janitor to the senior most bureaucrat in the UK is 1:8, while in Pakistan it is 1:80. The ratio of the salary of a janitor to the senior-most judge in the UK is 1:11, while in Pakistan it is 1:115. The ratio between the salary of a janitor and the heads of the highest-paid public sector organizations in the UK is 1:20, while in Pakistan it is 1:250,” he told IPS.

Sadiq wants a complete ban on manual scavenging. “I don’t know how we let our fellow men enter a sewer bubbling with human waste and poisonous gases,” he tells IPS, adding, “We need machines to do this dirty, dangerous work.”

The KWSC has 128 mobile tanker-like contraptions equipped with suctional jetting machines that remove the water from the sewers so that cleaners can go down a 30-foot manhole without having to dive into it to remove silt, timber and stones that cannot be sucked out and have to be brought up manually,’’ said the KWSC official.

That is not good enough for Sadiq. A year ago, he and a group of philanthropists came up with a prototype of a simple gutter-cleaning machine (using the motorbike’s skeleton), which he claims is the cheapest one in the world, costing Rs1.5 million (USD 5,382).

“It can be sent deep into the sewer to bring up stones, rocks, sludge and silt, and a high-pressure jetting contraption to unclog the lines.”

It is now up to the government to use the design and start manufacturing the contraption called Bhalai (kindness, benefit). “We are absolutely willing to share the design,” said Sadiq.

Header image: A sewerage worker who is popularly known as Mithoo emerges from the sewer — credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS

This article was originally published in Inter Press Service and has been reproduced here with permission.

DAWN

Aljazeera.comwww.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/12/15/it-is-time-to-talk-about-caste-in-pakistan-and-pakistani-diaspora

It is time to talk about caste in Pakistan and Pakistani diaspora

Dec 15, 2020 ... While there are Dalit Muslims in Pakistan, because of the belief that there are no caste hierarchies among Muslims, the castes mentioned as ...

Seismic perils

Masood Lohar 

Published June 17, 2024 

ON June 3, 2024, Karachi experienced a 3.2 magnitude earthquake, a stark reminder of the city’s persistent and potentially increasing seismic hazards. Earlier, on April 24, a quake of similar magnitude struck the area of Malir in Karachi.

The city is situated on one major seismic fault line and close to four minor faults. The Allah Bund fault, the major fault, runs parallel to Sindh’s coastal belt, extending to Gujarat, India, and passing through the area around Pakistan Steel Mills and the area in District East. Another fault lies in the Rann of Kutch; the Pubb fault is located near the Makran coast west of the city; and a fourth fault runs through Dadu district on Karachi’s northern boundary. Additionally, the triple junction of the Indian, Arabian, and Eurasian tectonic plates is only 150 nautical miles northwest, making the entire Makran coast, including Gwadar, vulnerable.

The history of earthquakes along Sindh’s coastal belts, including Karachi and the Makran coast, is marked by significant seismic events that have caused extensive damage and loss of life. Historical records and scientific sources show that a massive earthquake, measuring 7.5, struck the Debal port east of Karachi in the ninth century, killing thousands. The jolt caused the Indus river to change its course.

In 1668, a quake of 7.6 magnitude hit the Auranga port near present-day Shah Bundar, submerging a large portion of the area. Due to increased trade thanks to the activities of the East India Company, the Portuguese, and the Dutch, Mughal Prince Aurangzeb Alamgir, who was then the governor of Multan, had commissioned this additional port to complement the primary Lahari port. This port had started working from 1652.


Recent tremors in Karachi are a reminder of seismic risks.

On June 16, 1819, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck Sindhri port on the Pakistan-India border in present-day Badin district, killing over 1,500 people and raising a 90-kilometre stretch of land by 4.3 metres. The tremor was strongly felt in Hyderabad in Sindh. In November 1945, an earthquake and subsequent tsunami devastated the Makran coast, killing over 4,000 people. The epicentre was 408 km west of Karachi. The tsunami generated high waves of up to 12m, destroying a fishing village and causing the waters to rise up to 2m in Karachi. A tsunami also hit Mumbai, washing away 15 people.

The 2001 Gujarat earthquake, which claimed thousands of lives in India, was also strongly felt in Karachi and Hyderabad. Karachi, located just 378 km from the quake’s epicentre, experienced significant tremors. Since 1900, Karachi has been directly hit by 24 earthquakes with magnitudes above 3.0 and up to 5.2 on the Richter scale.

Moreover, Karachi’s capacity to absorb seismic shocks has diminished due to extensive and haphazard urban development. Gizri Creek, once one of the main creeks, has become a housing settlement, leaving Korangi Creek as the only remaining waterway. Sub-creeks of Korangi Creek have been converted into golf clubs and DHAs, ignoring the hazards of disrupting the marine ecosystem. Obhayo, once Karachi’s largest lagoon starting from what was then Kemari Island, has been overtaken by housing settlements and installations like Hijrat Colony, Shireen Jinnah Colony, the Mai Kolachi Bridge, and the areas of Do Talwar and Teen Talwar. It is now reduced to a polluted pond known as Boat Basin.

The construction of the Mai Kolachi Bridge severed the lagoon from the open sea, disrupting a vital marine function. Similarly, the disconnection of the Nai Naar lagoon at Sandspit in the 1950s ended the natural tide cycle that once cleansed Kemari harbour. The flash flood thrust during monsoon in the city’s narrowing two rivers can also create a local seismic activity because of chocked outflows to the sea.

Karachi’s population has skyrocketed from four million in 1980 to over 20m now, leading to unplanned expansion and the proliferation of poorly constructed buildings. Urgent measures are needed to restore Karachi’s marine ecosystem and improve disaster resilience. Undoing the damage is a herculean, near impossible task but that does not mean the whole city should continue to be at risk. The rapidly growing trend of high-rise buildings, and many on reclaimed land facing the open sea calls for serious government intervention. Failure to address these issues could endanger the lives of millions of people and disrupt a vital commercial hub as both ports are exposed and one of them lies right on the Allah Bund fault.

The writer is an expert on climate change and sustainable development and founder of the Clifton Urban Forest.
mlohar@gmail.com
X: masoodlohar

Published in Dawn, June 17th, 2024

Climate debt trap

Jamil Ahmad 

Published June 15, 2024 

DAWN

HEAVY and rising debt has emerged as one of the toughest hurdles for developing nations to address climate change, alleviate poverty, and seek economic development. The total external debt of 118 low- and middle-income countries doubled to $3.1 trillion in 2022 from $1.5tr in 2010, rising to about 15 per cent of their GDP.

The amount of finance required to meet their debt payments has also increased. In 2022, developing countries spent $443 billion to service their public debts, according to the World Bank’s International Debt Report. This number will be overtaken soon, as 2024 is projected to be the costliest debt service year yet this century, according to the Debt Relief for Green and Inclusive Recovery, which focuses on the linkages between debt distress and climate change.

Fuelled by inflation, high interest rates, energy crisis, and economic uncertainty after Covid-19, the implications of all-time high debt service payments are alarming, shrinking the fiscal space for developing countries to scale up investments in climate and sustainable development. About 50 developing countries are sliding towards default as a major chunk of their income is eaten up by debt, leaving little for basic services.

This liquidity crunch is forcing a situation where climate and environment are relegated to the back-burner even though inaction in these two areas poses risks. The inability of developing countries to protect themselves against the vagaries of global warming due to fiscal constraints has ramifications beyond national and regional boundaries. It is risking sustainable development and compounding the global crises of poverty, climate, food insecurity, water, clean air, energy, and health. The world cannot afford this.


What will constitute a lasting solution?

Can there be a quick fix? What will constitute a lasting solution?

Immediate debt relief is one option, which frees fiscal space for climate and development. Lowering the costs of borrowing and extending long-term loans provide relief.

Debt swaps for climate and nature are also considered a win-win, where creditors are expected to forgo existing debt in return for climate- or nature-related actions and policies. Invoking the ‘polluters pay’ principle, the V20, a group of 68 climate-vulnerable countries, has proposed imposing carbon tax on major economies to mobilise finances for sustainable investments in their regions.

However, any long-term solution will not be forthcoming without a comprehensive review of the existing sovereign debt mechanisms. Established some 80 years ago, the international financial system is confronted today by challenges posed by climate change; its strict conditionalities make access to funds difficult for those who need it most, and its old mechanisms are struggling to come to the rescue of emerging and developing economies.

UN Secretary General António Guterres has called for a complete overhaul of the global financial architecture, which he describes as morally bankrupt for its failure to respond to new challenges. The Bridgetown Initiative has also tabled a number of proposals to revamp the global financial system.

While the reform process will take time to unfold, the secretary general has suggested the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) stimulus package of $500bn a year in three priority areas: tackling the high cost of debt and rising risks of debt distress, massively scaling up long-term financing for development through public development banks, including multilateral development banks, and expanding contingency financing for countries in need.

These proposals have generated momentum for discussion in political and technical fora. The UN climate change conferences also deliberate this issue. This year’s spring meetings of the World Bank and IMF focused on how to assist countries address climate change and help the most indebted nations. Last year’s Africa Climate Summit and the Asean meetings discussed how to address the financial challenges of climate-vulnerable nations. Additionally, a group of 100 prominent individuals, including former heads of state and government and industrialists, sent an open letter to the G20 leaders in April during the IMF/ World Bank spring meetings calling for urgent reforms to the international financial system and actions to address the burden of debt hindering progress on climate and SDGs.

While climate action is now part of economic policymaking nationally, international financial mechanisms are yet to effectively respond to developing nations’ funding needs. Removing the burdensome debt, as the letter says, will allow countries to invest in their people and their future. This must be done without delay. Anything less will blow the climate debt trap into a climate death trap for the world’s poor.

The writer is director of intergovernmental affairs, United Nations Environment Programme.

Published in Dawn, June 15th, 2024