KLEIN DEREGULATION DOOMS US

Alberta needs a greener grid but access fees could swamp us if we don't fix the system

Kristen van de Biezenbos - 


There's no escaping it. Calgary's commitment to net zero is going to require more electrical infrastructure — more high-voltage transmission lines and better connections throughout neighbourhoods.

So if you think the add-on fees on your utility are high now, just wait.

Access fees for the provincial grid and local power lines doubled in the past 10 years and now make up, on average, half of a residential bill.

Those costs will keep growing, in part, because of the need to decarbonize. But also because here, in Alberta, the electricity market system is vulnerable to overcharging by utilities. Those inflated costs are passed on to ratepayers.

And if that's not dealt with now, the cost of achieving net zero could be much more painful.

But first, let's look at how we got here.

Alberta's power market is unique in Canada but is similar to "unbundled" competitive markets in other parts of the world, including the U.S. and Europe.

Starting in the 1990s, Alberta unbundled or split the former electricity monopolies into the component parts of the power system — electricity generation, or power plants; transmission, or high-voltage power lines; distribution lines and poles in the cities connecting power to homes and businesses; and retail, or billing services.

The intention behind this was to create competitive markets for generation and retail services and to use regulation to keep transmission and distribution rates fair for both utilities and customers. But the pressure to expand and overbuild is baked right into the system.


© David Bajer/CBCAn aerial view of power lines in Edmonton in April 2022.


Transmission and distribution are still owned by companies with monopolies in different areas of the province, and so, to prevent them from engaging in monopoly behaviour, their rates are reviewed and approved by the Alberta Utilities Commission.

The commission is supposed to allow companies to charge back only the capital projects and other assets the system really needs.

But companies face pressure from their shareholders to get higher rates, and the simplest way for a company to push rates up is to add more infrastructure because the value of a monopoly's assets is the backbone of its rate — it earns a profit based on what it owns.

Relying on a whistleblower

Plus, as the recent overcharging scandal involving an ATCO transmission line to Jasper shows, transmission companies can deliberately inflate costs. In the ATCO case, it granted a single-source contract to a subcontractor, knowing the company was overcharging by 30 per cent, because this contract was part of a promise to secure lucrative work for one of ATCO's affiliates.

That 30 per cent overcharge would have been passed on to ratepayers had a whistleblower inside ATCO's own accounting department not alerted the commission before the costs could be added.

How many other deals or examples of fudging of numbers slip through because no one risks their career standing up to say stop?

The incentives to overbuild and overcharge are a problem that needs to be addressed now, because more lines will almost certainly have to be built over the next decade. Both wind and solar require considerable space, so new farms tend to be built in rural areas where transmission infrastructure is absent. New lines will be needed to connect the facilities.

Estimates vary, but transmission lines can cost up to $3 million per kilometre. That adds up, and you will see the cost on your bill in the fees.

A deeper need for change

Alberta will require significant distribution upgrades within cities, too, to handle more rooftop solar and other demand-side generation, to accommodate increased power draws from electric heating systems, major appliances, heating and cooling (especially with extreme weather on the rise) and electric vehicles without causing rolling blackouts and brownouts.

The province needs more wind and solar power and a better, smarter transmission and distribution system. But these things will likely involve high upfront costs, and too many Albertans are already buckling under the weight of existing bills, especially when it comes on top of inflation. We see that in the number of families seeking emergency help or having their power limited.

We need a plan for how to manage those costs, and we need it soon. This could mean revisiting the rate formulas for transmission/distribution and scaling back retail fees, or it could mean asking for federal funding and help from the Canada Infrastructure Bank to finance future upgrades.

Whatever the solution, Calgary's commitment to net zero means waiting to act will only let the bills continue to climb while ratepayers' pain deepens.

Outrage over police response as First Nations marchers hit by truck

Adrian Humphreys

NATIONAL POST

JUNE 6,2022


Witnesses were expressing outrage Sunday over police response to an incident the day before in Mission, B.C., when the driver of a pickup truck drove into a group marching to raise awareness of the treatment of First Nations at residential schools, injuring five.


© Provided by National PostMission RCMP says it's fortunate that no one was

While the RCMP said there was no indication it was a targeted attack, rather than characterizing the incident as a dangerous hit-and-run, officers declared it “an impatient driver (who) tried to get around a group of people marching on the highway,” in a media release .

“The RCMP are totally downplaying what actually happened,” said Garett Dan, of Abbotsford, B.C., who was participating in the march at the site of the St. Mary’s Residential School, where both of his parents attended.

“They shouldn’t be sugar coating anything like that. It was a hit and run. He fled the scene.”

The pickup driver steered onto the shoulder of the road in an apparent attempt to bypass traffic, he said. One of the march organizers stopped him.

“He didn’t like it and then all of a sudden he decided to hit him with his truck,” Dan said. “He drove into him. I was looking into my rear-view mirror to keep an eye on what was going on and you could clear-as-day see he went driving towards him.

“It doesn’t matter who you are, just because you’re in a hurry doesn’t mean you get to ride the shoulder and try to drive through a crowd of people.”

The driver allegedly hit more marchers further along the road.

Chris Robertson helped run the event, the March for Recognition for Residential Schools, which was organized by the B.C. chapter of the Crazy Indians Brotherhood, a drug and alcohol support group.

He said there were children and elders participating but none was hit.

Robertson heard that a truck had hit one of the traffic control flagmen at the back of the march and then saw the truck coming up the shoulder towards him.

Several organizers called for him to stop.

“I turned and looked back at him and at that point he stepped on the throttle and started towards us,” Robertson said.

One of his friends went under the truck and rolled out, while another went over the hood, he said. The truck’s bumper hit Robertson’s knee as it passed. The driver briefly stopped. Some water bottles were thrown at his truck, and he drove off, he said.

“Had it been any one of us (driving), we’d be in jail already. We would be charged with attempted murder, assault with a dangerous weapon … the book would have been thrown at us already,” Robertson said.

“If that man’s skin tone was another colour he’d be in jail. This is what our people talk about when we say white privilege. I hate going the racial route, because in order to get past things you need to rise up, but when stuff like this happens, this is what we’re talking about.”

Police were called about 12:30 p.m., said RCMP Const. Harrison Mohr, a media relations officer with the Mission detachment.

“It sounds like this driver became upset that his trip was going to be delayed by a few minutes and drove into oncoming traffic to try to get around the group,” Mohr said.

“When faced with oncoming traffic, he drove his vehicle into the midst of the group until the cars went by, then pulled out and passed again. In doing so, he struck several members of the March. Fortunately, none were seriously injured, and the March was able continue as planned.

“There is no indication that this incident was targeted, or that the driver’s actions had anything specifically to do with the people marching or their cause,” the RCMP said.

No one has been arrested and it remains under investigation. Mohr called on the public to provide dashcam or cellphone video.

The first word in the headline of the RCMP’s public statement on the incident is “minor.”

The last line of the RCMP statement says: “Trying to save a few minutes of time by endangering the lives of others is simply unacceptable.”

In answer to questions from National Post, Mohr said on Sunday that while witnesses helped to identify the licence plate of the truck, officers are “still working to confirm the identity of the driver.”

He said several witnesses were “not immediately available to meet with us,” on Saturday and officers wish to speak to more witnesses and gather evidence to support a charge recommendation.

“Our understanding is that only two of the four people who were hit actually went to hospital, and the two that did arranged for their own transportation and did not require an ambulance,” Mohr said.

Witnesses told the Post five people were injured.

By Sunday, Mohr was characterizing the motorist as a “dangerous driver” rather than an “impatient” one. He confirmed witnesses said he was “swerving into the group whenever he needed to avoid oncoming traffic.

“When our officers interview the suspect, they will certainly be interested in hearing directly from him about what his intentions were that day.”

Parts of the incident were caught on cameras at the march. Images show a blue Chevrolet pickup. An engine can be heard revving along with shouts from the crowd.

A white man with glasses and a baseball cap can be seen sticking his out of the window and turning back before driving off.

Iraq's Kurdistan judicial council defies supreme court over oil law

Sat, June 4, 2022

(Reuters) -The judicial council of Iraq's Kurdistan said the region's oil law remained in force, rejected a ruling from the federal supreme court that Kurdish authorities should hand over their crude supplies.

Iraq's federal supreme court ruled in February that Kurdistan's law regulating its oil and gas industry was unconstitutional.

"The actions of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in relation to oil and gas operations are in accordance with the Iraqi constitution of 2005. The provisions of the oil and gas law issued by the parliament of the Kurdistan region in 2007 do not violate those of the Iraqi Constitution," Kurdistan's judicial council said in a statement released on Saturday.

The statement said Article 112 of the Iraqi constitution, announced in August 2005, granted the federal government supervision over Kurdistan's oil and gas fields operating at that time, but that fields that started commercial production after that date did not apply to this article.

It also indicated that all oil and gas fields currently operating in the region started commercial production after August 2005.

The KRG has been developing oil and gas resources independently of the federal government, and in 2007 enacted its own law that established the directives by which the region would administer these resources.

(Reporting by Ali Sultan, Moaz Abd-Alaziz and Enas AlashrayWriting by Moaz Abd-AlazizEditing by Mark Potter)

Afghan musicians in Peshawar: between a rock and a hard place

Manzoor Ali Published June 6, 2022 - 

PESHAWAR: The four Afghan musicians were relaxing in their office in Tehkal area of Peshawar after a performance at an event when police came after them during the early hours of May 28.

Among the four was Javed Khan, (not his real name), who had arrived in Peshawar a few weeks back after a circuitous journey that brought him to Chaman. He was picked up by police that day.

“I have a large household, including an ailing father, to take care of; therefore, I came to Pakistan,” he said. Mr Khan said police checked their documents and took them into custody for illegal stay in Pakistan under Section 14 of the Foreigners Act 1946.

The musicians spent a week behind bars and their arrests created social media uproar. Civil society organisations arranged two protests against their detention until a local court granted them bail on Friday (June 3).

Mr Khan said the dire economic plight of Afghanistan had pushed him into exile. “I had no source of income; therefore, I came to Peshawar.”

The detained musicians are among thousands of Afghans who escaped to Pakistan after the fall of Kabul to Taliban in August last year and are living in constant fear of arrests and deportation.

However, the musicians’ detention has highlighted the hard choices Afghans fleeing their country have to make and the inconveniences they have to put up with.

A tale of two exiles

Hayat Khan, 53, (real name withheld on request), faced displacement from Afghanistan twice during the course of conflict in his country. He first fled to Pakistan in his childhood after the Soviet invasion of his country in 1979 and stayed here for 25 years.

Mr Khan’s musical journey started at the same time and he took inspiration from one of his relatives, a rubab player. He became a pupil of Misal Khan Ustad to learn the rubab. Later he went to work alongside Ahmed Gul Ustad, Nazeer Gul and Gulzar Alam.

“I learnt real music from Gulzar Alam and he is my Ustad (teacher),” Mr Khan said.

The US invasion of Afghanistan opened the second chapter in Mr Khan’s life. He had returned to Afghanistan after Hamid Karzai took over as president in 2001.

The US invasion gave birth to a bourgeoning media scene and culture industry. It was during this time Mr Khan went to work with several Afghan television channels like Shamshad, Khursheed, Lamar and Zhuwandun.

The reversal of fortunes for Mr Khan came when the Taliban rolled into Kabul last year. That fateful day he locked his office in Jade-i-Maiwand area of Kabul and went into hiding.

After a hide and seek lasting two months, he decided to move to Pakistan and came to Kandahar. Then he crossed the Pak-Afghan border via Chaman, reaching Quetta. From there he came to Peshawar, where he is currently staying with his family.

While in Kandahar, his teenage son went missing, but the boy contacted the family after several months, telling them that he had managed to sneak into Turkey via Iran.

Looking at his son’s jubilant face in the picture and pondering over his uncertain fate as a refugee, Hayat Khan’s eye welled up. “If Turks get hold of him, he will be deported to Kabul on the next flight,” he feared.

About their stay in Peshawar, Hayat Khan said “we cannot even think of venturing out” to Qissa Khawni Bazaar since “we have no visas” and could be deported to Afghanistan if police arrested them.

In case of deportation, he said, “we face threat to our lives at the hands of Taliban”.

According to Hayat Khan, he and many other people lost their livelihood after the fall of Kabul and were now living in penury under constant threat of arrest and deportation.

Public support for musicians

According to Rashid Ahmed Khan, president of Hunari Tolana, about 150 Afghan artists had made Peshawar their home since August last year.

His organisation took up their case with the KP culture department. “We have shared their names with the culture department. The department will now share them with police,” he said.

He said since Pakistan was not issuing visas for Afghans, most of them were coming via Chaman.

Hunari Tolana, Mafkoora Research Centre and other organisations staged a protest against the musicians’ detention last week.

The Human Rights Commi­ssion of Pakistan (HRCP) also expressed concern over the detention.

Following the protests, the authorities decided the culture department would issue cards to the musicians after registration in order to avoid a repeat of the May 28 incident.

The sword of deportation

The musicians’ fate still hangs in the balance despite an outpouring of support and their release on bail.

Tariq Afghan, a Peshawar High Court lawyer who is representing the detained musicians, said Islamabad should accommodate them on humanitarian grounds.

On the other hand, police sources told Dawn they had registered over 1,700 cases against Afghan nationals and arrested over 1,900 of them.

It was not clear how many of them were deported.

According to Capital City Police Officer Muhammad Ijaz Khan, the Afghans were being arrested for having no valid documents for their stay in Pakistan.

Barrister Muhammad Ali Saif, the KP government’s spokesperson, said police had recently taken action against those illegally staying in the country.

He added that the KP government would chalk out a mechanism to avoid a similar situation in future.

Published in Dawn, June 6th, 2022

Faults of theory
Abrahim Shah Published June 6, 2022 

THE recent surge in petrol prices necessitates that we question the conversation on inflation and economic policy. While supply-side shocks such as Covid-19 and the Ukraine-Russia war carry responsibility for this inflation, it is important to realise how modern economic theory omits mention of elite capture and circumscribes the discourse on inflation and economic well-being.

Ever since the rise of Milton Friedman’s monetarist school of thought following the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, inflation has been attributed to disturbances in the money supply — ‘too much money chasing too few goods’. This narrative, now the dominant paradigm in leading economics schools, envisions controlled government spending and interest rates that prevent the money supply or aggregate demand from rising rapidly.

This emphasis on money supply posits inflation as a ‘technical aberration’ — an outcome of faulty economic policies that result in the excessive circulation of money. It thus conveniently ignores how rising costs of living are products of political decisions and elite capture.

Pakistan’s economy perfectly captures this contradiction. As most Pakistanis reel from the unprecedented rise in petrol prices and the concomitant spike in the cost of living, many individuals have seen their wealth increase substantially through inflated asset prices and speculation in real estate. This speculation, coupled with the mushrooming of private housing societies, has resulted in land prices soaring beyond the financial capacity of most Pakistanis.

Economic policymaking must be questioned.

While many have made windfall gains from the real estate bubble, this sector has continued to evade even minimal levels of taxation. This poses two fundamental challenges and adds major caveats to the discourse on inflation. First, as land prices rise, individuals are forced to move to city outskirts and to live on high rents. This eats into their savings and incomes which are already facing the brunt of stagnant wages.

Second, the missed revenue stemming from the state’s inability to tax this influential sector significantly stymies the government’s ability to fund social welfare programmes such as affordable housing. The state’s failure to provide subsidised services such as housing and public transport thus only further exacerbates the cost of living as individuals are forced to increasingly rely on the profit-oriented private sector for these essential services.

This shift of revenue from the government to private coffers is a hallmark of the neoliberal paradigm and is something that needs to be critically analysed in conversations on inflation and economic policy. For as governments are forced into austerity on account of rising debt levels, they are unable to provide essential subsidies that only further aggravate the plight of the poor. With receding social welfare programmes and the government being unable to fund projects such as developing alternative sources of energy, the cost of living rises significantly. The recent decision of the government to hike price of cooking oil by almost Rs200 in Pakistan, the salvo against the NHS in the UK and burgeoning student debt in the US are all products of this paradigm.

The example of US student debt further convolutes the simplistic take of mainstream economic theory on inflation and economic growth. As Michael Hudson argues in Killing the Host, the direction the finance industry took in the 1980s resulted in industries shifting from ‘equity to debt’, while trade liberalisation policies led to the unfettered flow of hot capital, pushing governments into increasing levels of debt. As debt surged, countries were for­ced to adopt inc­reasing levels of austerity, further disadvan-t­­­a­­ging the least-privileged.

It thus becomes absolutely essent­ial that we quest­ion the turn economic policy­making takes in the wake of global inflationary crises. Emphasis on austerity measures or curbing money supply will stand redundant unless Pakistan embraces major reforms that make the economy more equitable and allow for a social safety cushion for the majority.

As history shows, however, responses to major economic crises have often been skewed to support the privileged over the many. This is evidenced both by the ‘Volcker Shock’ of the 1980s in the wake of the preceding stagflation and the bank bailouts after the 2008 global recession. Both of these interventions resulted in significant increases in inequality and wealth shifting from the bottom to the top of the income pyramid.

Policies that rely on trite and questionable economic fundamentals and which fail to account for political realities such as elite capture are thus no longer adequate to solve the economic conundrum Pakistan faces. What is instead necessary is to strongly question economic principles and the willingness to embrace alternative visions for a progressive society.

The writer is a civil servant and studied at Cornell University and at the University of Oxford.

Published in Dawn, June 6th, 2022

Web of resilience

Ali Tauqeer Sheikh Published June 5, 2022 -

PAKISTAN’S development model has still not recognised the limits of the natural environment and the damage it would cause, if violated, to the sustainability of development and to the health and well-being of its population. Pakistan’s environment journey began with Stockholm Declaration in 1972. A delegation led by Nusrat Bhutto represented the country at the Stockholm meeting, resulting in the establishment of the Urban Affairs Division (UAD), the precursor of today’s Ministry of Climate Change. In setting the country’s environmental agenda, we were inspired by the Stockholm Principles, but in reality, we have mostly ignored them for the last five decades. We’ve paid lip service to environmental sustainability without really thinking how this could make our economic growth robust.

On this World Environment Day, the world is celebrating Stockholm+50 to once again draw attention to the centrality of environment-development linkages under the rubric of ‘Only One Earth’. The 26 principles enunciated in the Stockholm Declaration have catalysed a new era of multilateral environmentalism. The world has in the last 50 years steadily built a complex web of linkages between the environment and development. The genesis of at least four principles of primary importance to Pakistan can be traced to the Stockholm Declaration: i) environmental problems are global, not just local, ii) the principle of precaution, requiring immediate action rather than waiting for conclusive scientific evide­n­­ce, iii) the principle of additionality, further expounded as the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” and iv) the ‘polluter pays’ principle, requiring emitters to bear the cost of damage to society and the environment. These principles were adopted and further refined at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro 20 years later, in June 1992.

These four principles are now embedded in the Earth Charter as well as in numerous international agreements that form the backbone of the international environmental order, including around 18 multilateral environment agreements (MEA) that Pakistan has signed since. Almost all these agreements are inspired by the principles of Stockholm. Pakistan has also ratified all three Rio conventions — climate change, biodiversity and desertification. These conventions are intrinsically linked and represent a way of contributing to the sustainable development goals of Agenda-21, known as the SDGs.

In the last 50 years, the world has built a web of linkages between environment and development.

Forty years after Stockholm, and 20 years after the Earth Summit, in June 2012, world leaders initiated a process in Rio de Janeiro (Rio+20) for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development to negotiate the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 SDGs. Finally adopted in 2015, Pakistan affirmed and adopted Agenda-21 with characteristic enthusiasm. It is sometimes argued that the SDGs have taken the concept of sustainable development that had initially emerged from Stockholm and was subsequently defined by the Brundtland Commission in 1988 as development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

It is, however not just principles, MEAs, or conventions that were triggered by the Stockholm Confe­rence. A recently released series of studies by the International Institute of Sustainable Development has argued that no less significant has been its contribution to the democratisation of environmental governance. Starting with the conference, global environmental negotiations have unlocked the doors to broader participation of diverse stakeholders in international environmental negotiations. This originates from the belief that governments cannot solve environmental problems alone. The Earth Summit recognised nine major groups as card-carrying delegates — women, children and youth, indigenous peoples, NGOs, local authorities, workers and trade unions, business and industry, the scientific and technological community, and farmers. It is now recognised that bringing in industry and the private sector is essential to both responding to environmental challenges and scaling up the implementation of MEAs and the SDGs. It is against this backdrop that the annual climate summits have become the largest congregations of environment interest groups.

While this accountability and inclusion has taken root globally, in Pakistan the soil has been less than fertile. From its establishment in 1973 to the end of the Cold War in 1991, the UAD stayed mostly dormant. The Environment Ordinance in 1983 and the Environment Act in 1997 remained top-down and resulted in two rigid dichotomies. Most importantly, contrary to emergent global trends, Pakistan’s environmental policies glossed over the Stockholm Principles and ignored the intrinsic environment-development link. Secondly, it focused on brown environment (urban) issues without having the necessary regulatory competencies or a culture of compliance. In this way, it laid the foundation for an adversarial relationship between the UAD and environmental stakeholders.

This approach has remained dominant for the last 50 years in Pakistan’s environmental decision-making. There are a few refreshing exceptions like the development of the National Conservation Strategy. Prepared over three years, and under the supervision of the deputy chairman, Planning Commission, it benefited from consultations with more than 3,000 sectoral experts and stakeholders. Its development was based on three operating principles: i) achieving greater public partnership in development and management, ii) merging environment and economics in decision-making, and iii) focusing on sustainable improvements in the quality of life. It was committed to increasing government spending on natural resource management and efficiency of resource use from four per cent of national investment to 8pc by 2000. Authored under the insightful leadership of Syed Ayub Qutub, the NCS recommended 14 areas for action — each area fully immersed in the Stockholm Principles. Presented at the Earth Summit in June 1992, for a moment, Pakistan seemed like a global environment leader.

Fifty years after Stockholm, we face a planetary crisis of climate change, propelled by unabated emissions and biodiversity loss made worse by persistent poverty and growing inequalities. This could not have been imagined in 1973 when the UAD was first set up. Now sustainable development has emerged as a cornerstone of the international development discourse. The collective search for solutions to reconcile economic development and environmental management resulted in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 SDGs in 2015, the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2016, and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction in 2018. They all have 2030 as the culmination year, just to remind policymakers before budgetary proposals are finalised.

The writer is an expert on climate change and development.

Published in Dawn, June 5th, 2022

Population and environment

Zeba Sathar Published June 6, 2022 - 

PAKISTAN’S booming population is at odds with its natural endowments. Environmental stress caused by an imbalance between rapid population growth and limited natural resources is one of the most frightening, but least discussed realities we face. Our already teetering economy — one which can barely generate the three million additional jobs it requires annually for new entrants into the labour force — faces the added threat of water and land shortages. It is a perfect storm waiting to happen — or have the clouds already burst?

Rises in temperatures associated with climate change, and a decline in rainfall, grab public attention and tend to overshadow the underlying and growing threat of the erosion of the projected size of the natural resource base, which informs Pakistan’s National Conservation Strategy, approved in 1992. Even though tackling a rapidly growing population was part of the strategy, policymakers did not foresee that population growth rates would continue at their high levels and that we would add another 120 million to the population between 1981 and 2017. We are expected to add at least another 120m by 2050.

The first alarm bell is the shrinking water base. One direct manifestation of the nature-population imbalance can be seen in the stark decline in per capita water availability from 2,150 cubic metres, or CM, to 860CM between 1980 and 2017. A few simple calculations confirm this trend will continue: the total availability of water resources in Pakistan is currently estimated at 178 billion cubic metres (BCM). At the current growth rate, our population will expand to 242m by 2025 and 290m by 2035. Unless we improve our ability to store and conserve water, per capita water availability will fall to further scarcity levels of 730CM in 2025 and 600CM in 2035.

The second glaring imbalance is in the shrinking land base for agriculture and increasing need for food production. Rural areas have been hit hardest by water shortages and there has been a decline in cultivated land per capita from 0.5 acres in 1980 to 0.2 in 2017. Another striking trend is that while 62 per cent of those working in agriculture owned land in 2005, the equivalent proportion was down to 49pc in 2020. These changes alone directly impact livelihoods, evidenced by the shrinking size of agriculture as a source of income.

Across Pakistan, climate and population pressures will eventually lead to shortages in food.

Rural to urban migration is an immediate outcome of rural stress caused by dwindling natural resources, shrinking economic opportunities and a sharp increase in the numbers seeking work. Migration induced by decreasing agricultural opportunities and the attraction of selling rural land in response to population pressures is an adaptation strategy. However, carefully deliberated policy is required to reduce the stress on cities and towns that were not originally planned for this level of population increase. Improved public service delivery in smaller cities to reduce migratory stress on large urban centres is most definitely required.

There has been greater urban population growth than rural, which is increasing environmental challenges and causing shortages in urban areas. Rapid urban growth was a result of high urban fertility rates and rapid rural-to-urban migration until the late 1980s, when urban fertility rates finally began to decline. As a result, the rates of urban growth in 1951–1972 were close to 5pc per annum at their peak, compared to rural rates of 3.5pc. Urban growth rates have fallen since 1981, but continue to be more than 1pc to 2pc higher than rural areas due to internal migration. The urban population has already risen from 24m to 76m between 1980 and 2017 and will surpass the rural population by 2045.

Population growth is leading to massive overcrowding, high population densities and shortage of land to build upon because of the pressures of additional demand for housing. The number of housing units in urban areas has gone up from 3.6m to 12m units between 1980 and 2017. The quadrupling of housing demand is leading to steep rises in real estate costs and conversion of rural and zoned areas to housing projects.

Projecting forward to 2050, we expect 100m more Pakistanis to be living in urban areas even if there is a moderate decline in family size in the cities. But high population densities and pressures on already overstretched city municipal limits will continue to overload limited facilities, especially water for domestic use and sanitation.

Across Pakistan, climate and population pressures will eventually lead to shortages in food due to the negative impact on our ecology and biodiversity, and possibly also livelihoods, thereby exacerbating inequalities. Already better off regions like the irrigated plains of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will build resilience against climate vagaries, while poorer desert and rain-fed regions in rural Sindh and Balochistan will succumb to pressures. Rising inequalities can lead to huge regional frictions based on the ever-increasing competition for largely limited resources and livelihood opportunities. The prospect of escalating water disputes is inevitable.

Can Pakistan break this cycle, following the example of several other countries in this region where breakthroughs of science, adaptation in agriculture, energy usage and governance, and economic adaptation took over? Importantly, most, if not all of them, did not also have to contend with the pernicious effect of high population growth rates. The lowering of population growth rates, which is a glaringly neglected national priority, would greatly relieve these pressures and mitigate economic and political threats.

The issue requires immediate policy attention and financing for the implementation of the 2018 Council of Common Interests-endorsed Plan of Action to tackle rapid population growth. The new national narrative on population, which has been approved by religious, political, and civil society leaders, supports maintaining a balance between resources and population numbers. What can be more critical than the need to emphasise the deleterious effects of a large, uncontrollably growing population, which is completely at odds with the natural resources we have?

The writer is Country Director, Population Council, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, June 6th, 2022

Health of the Indus
Zofeen T. Ebrahim 

Published June 5, 2022 - Updated a day ago

THE Indus is dying, and it is dying downstream Sukkur, was the unanimous verdict of filmmaker Wajahat Malik and his five friends after traversing the once mighty river on a raft.

To get first-hand knowledge of the health of the river, the six adventurers started off on March 30 and were given a warm send-off by the locals at Hamzigond in Gilgit-Baltistan’s Kharmang district. They covered an estimated 2,300 kilometres of the entire 3,180 km length of this transboundary river on a raft over 45 days. They reached Kharo Chan in the delta, where the Indus meets the Arabian Sea, turned west and ended their journey at Karachi’s Marina Club.

Read more: Indus annually delivers 10,000 tonnes of macro-plastics to Arabian Sea, says WB

Theirs was an odd group: three paraglider pilots, one of whom is a karate champion, two white water rafters and one ace swimmer, who could double as a rescuer in case someone fell into the sometimes raging waters — or so they thought. The team had second-hand wet suits (these barely protected them from the frigid glacial waters in the north for more than a minute if anyone fell into the river) helmets, life jackets and a sturdy raft. They could have gone with better gear, but had limited resources.

Though this was not a high-performance, data-intensive computing mission undertaken by environmental field researchers, scientists or anthropologists using state-of-the-art equipment, the six were nevertheless able to see a kaleidoscope of images of the ecological, environmental and socioeconomic devastation of Pakistan’s lifeline wrought by climate transitions, as they slowly moved south.

Whichever town they neared, they would be greeted by floating trash.

They witnessed, and were able to film, the impact of both water shortage, as well as the poor quality of what little was available, on the lives and livelihoods of people living along the river. The reckless dumping of poisonous effluent into the river by factories, hotels and restaurants were some ‘disturbing’ images that were etched on their minds and captured by their cameras.

Whichever town they neared, they would be greeted by islands of floating trash. The flotsam included plastic, bottles and in particular, styrofoam. Little wonder studies say that the Indus contributes 164,332 tonnes of plastic waste (that enters the sea) annually and is the second most plastic-polluted river in the world. The first, third and fourth polluted rivers in this category are in China.

Read: Alarm sounded as water levels in Indus drop once again

But what was most vividly witnessed was the interaction of local people with natural systems, and the resilience of both against manmade climate-induced disturbances and the realisation how critical this was to understanding the river’s ailments.

Throughout their odyssey, they continued to be educated by water experts like Hassan Abbas, Danish Mustafa and Afia Salam, all of whom joined them at various legs of their journey, enriching their knowledge about how the river was being affected by climate change, the built infrastructure, loss of biodiversity, death of the delta, seawater erosion etc.

Come sunset, and they would disembark on land, and put up somewhere for the night. They often met the locals, and held long conversations about the river itself, hearing mesmerising tales, even the renditions of past mystics and poets about the revered Indus. They were able to glean information about the flora and fauna they had seen, such as the king storks, the wild geese, the fruit bats, the blind Indus dolphins and the small turtles.

But if the river was dying, Malik said, so was life in and around it. And yet, to their surprise, they found an invasive plant species, usually found in stagnant ponds in Brazil, happily thriving and floating in the Indus. However, there were other elements that were going to be erased. For instance, the petroglyphs near the Bhasha-Diamer dam, they were told, would be lost if the dam was built. The poverty-stricken Mohanas (indigenous fisherfolk living on bo­­ats) from Tau­nsa in the Punjab to Manchhar lake in Sindh had all but disappeared, the rafters observed. Without fish in the water, they were forced to give up their ancestral occupation and move to cities and work as labourers.

There were parts where they could not traverse as the river had dried up. For example, at one point they had to go up the Kabul river and re-enter the Indus at Attock. And between Attock and Kalabagh, as they came to Punjab, the river shrunk to a trickle and at Tarbela they saw with their own eyes what ‘dead level’ in a dam actually means. In Sindh, the Indus became wide and shallow with sand beds in the middle of the river. Instead of enjoying what could have been a three-hour boat ride, they had to trudge and push the boat as if in a desert for a good eight hours until they were able to find at least six feet of water and get into the raft and sail again. But even more than the river, it was the delta, the rafters said, that seemed to be on its deathbed.

The writer is a Karachi-based independent journalist.
zofeen28@hotmail.com
Twitter: @Zofeen28

Published in Dawn, June 5th, 2022

SOCIETY: WHAT ‘GUN CULTURE’ RESEARCH TELLS US

Peter Squires Published June 5, 2022 -THE CONVERSATION

The number of children killed by guns in the US is 36.5 times higher than in many high-income European countries


In the wake of the most recent US mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 pupils and two teachers were killed by an 18-year-old armed with an assault rifle, a comparison considering how the US compares with other countries on children’s deaths caused by guns is compelling.

As the independent non-profit US organisation the Children’s Defense Fund has pointed out, gun violence is now the leading cause of American children’s deaths. It reported that there are nine fatal shootings of children per day — that’s one killing every two hours and 36 minutes. A minority of these killings involve school or mass shootings; the majority are killings of individual children and link to routine crime and gang violence, and overwhelmingly result in the deaths of African-American and minority children.

The US stands as an extreme outlier among high-income countries. The number of children killed by guns is 36.5 times higher in the US, compared to many other high-income countries including Austria, Australia, Sweden, England and Wales, according to analysis recently published by the New England Journal of Medicine. In recent years, international research has also proven conclusively that greater levels of gun ownership are closely associated with higher rates of gun violence.

An audit by the Democrat-leaning policy and research organisation the Centre for American Progress, of all 50 US states, found a close correlation between the states with the toughest gun laws and states with the lowest gun crime rates. Meanwhile, international research has compared national gun laws, rates of firearm ownership and gun violence rates. The results are striking as the graph, below, suggests.

Gun researchers are now focusing more on wider “gun control regimes” which play a big part in increasing or reducing levels of gun violence

International levels of gun crime

Interestingly, European societies that come close to US rates of gun ownership, in terms of gun owners per 100 people, (but with hunting rifles and shotguns rather than handguns), such as Finland and Norway, are among the safest societies internationally with regards to gun violence.

Researchers talk about “civilised” and “de-civilising” gun cultures, cultures where gun ownership is associated with traditional values of respect and responsibility, and others where gun availability largely empowers the criminally minded and unstable, adding to the violence and chaos. High levels of social cohesion, low crime rates and internationally high levels of trust and confidence in police and social institutions do appear to reduce levels of gun homicide.

The flipside to this finding, however, is that high gun ownership in countries such as Finland, Sweden and Switzerland do have significantly higher rates of suicide using guns. The UK and Japan, with some of the toughest gun laws in the world, always record the lowest rates of gun homicide, chiefly by virtue of their virtual prohibition of handguns, the criminal weapon of choice.

By contrast, the death tolls in recent US mass shootings have been very much exacerbated by perpetrators using assault rifles, with their larger magazines and rapid fire capabilities.

Society as a factor

As a result of the new international focus in gun control research (there was a time when the only academic research on firearms took place in the US, and a large part of it funded, directly and indirectly, by the influential US lobbying group the National Rifle Association) wider questions came under the spotlight.

Researchers started to focus less upon the gun as an independent variable and instead began to address contexts and the different cultures of gun use. They also began to acknowledge, as criminologists have always known, that introducing new laws seldom changes anything on its own — offenders break laws.

Gun researchers now focus increasingly upon wider “gun control regimes” which have a big part to play in increasing or reducing levels of gun violence. These regimes include policing and criminal justice systems, systems of political accountability, welfare safety nets, comprehensive education provision and cultures of trust and confidence. And, although the US is seen as the most exceptional gun culture among affluent democratic nations, in terms of death rates, it is dwarfed by many other poorer and more conflicted societies, such as South Africa, Jamaica and Honduras.

Attempts in the US in recent years to confront shootings, but without restricting gun ownership, include scaling up surveillance — especially in schools where pupils, parents and teachers form part of a network keeping a watchful eye on colleagues and pupils.

They look for signs of trouble and are able to sound the alarm. More ambitiously, the Violence Project has sought to compile evidence profiles, learning from what we already know about rampage killers and trying to predict where their behaviour, social media engagements and utterances might ring alarm bells.

However, the evidence is now indisputable that more guns in a given country translates directly into more gun violence.

It is significant that the immediate reaction to the Ulvade school massacre has tended to focus on narrow questions of school security and an apparent delay in police intervention, rather than the many underlying factors which make the US such a comparatively dangerous place for children.

The writer is Professor of Criminology & Public Policy, University of Brighton
Republished from The Conversation

Published in Dawn, EOS, June 5th, 2022

At 19, Iman Vellani is proud to 'take up space' as Marvel's 1st Muslim superhero

Griffin Jaege

CBC

Actor Iman Vellani has always been an avid fan of the Avengers and comics — so making the move from Markham, Ont., to the Marvel Cinematic Universe to portray its first Muslim superhero is an achievement she finds almost indescribable.


© Courtesy of Marvel Studios

Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in Ms. Marvel. In taking the role, she's Marvel's first Muslin superhero.

Iman Vellani: From Canadian high schooler to Ms. Marvel

Iman Vellani went from being a high school student in Markham, Ont., to being Marvel’s first Muslim superhero after one video call. Vellani talks to CBC’s Ginella Massa about stepping into her dream role as Ms. Marvel. 

"It feels a lot … just a lot of feelings," she said, trying to put it into words at her Toronto red carpet debut. "To be in Toronto and celebrate this with all my friends and family is super weird. But yeah, I'm excited."

Vellani, 19, stars as Kamala Khan in the upcoming series Ms. Marvel, launching on June 8 on Disney+.

Vellani's role also marks the franchise's second South Asian hero — and the first female one. In 2021, Kumail Nanjiani played Marvel's first South Asian superhero in Eternals, taking on the part of Kingo, a Bollywood film star turned superhero.

Before this, despite the abundance of South Asian characters present in Marvel comics — think Thunderbird, Timeslip and Omega Sentinel — the films have limited South Asian roles to supporting characters like Dr. Ratha in The Amazing Spider-Man (Irffan Khan) and Dopinder in the Deadpool franchise (Karan Soni), parts critics suggest were largely built around stereotypes.

Criticism about the lack of diversity for lead actors in the superhero franchise had also been growing.

And Vellani said she sees this role as also being about representing her community and showcasing South Asian culture.

"Film and TV literally shape how we see people in this world. And so, you know, when you're only representing Muslims in a certain type of light, it gets very one-note," the Pakistani-born Canadian actor said.

"I'm so glad that Marvel's providing space for a character like Kamala to exist and to just take up space and tell a very specific story about a very specific girl."

The show focuses on Khan, a Muslim-American teen and superhero mega-fan growing up in Jersey City. She deals with the pressures familiar to many teens: struggling to fit in at school and finding support at home.

Then, she finds out she has superpowers of her own.

Brie Larson, known for her role as Captain Marvel, the franchise's first female superhero, reached out to Vellani shortly after she was cast.

"She was just holding my hand throughout all of it," Vellani said. "It was really nice to kind of have that guidance of someone who's gone through all of this and everything that I'm experiencing right now."

The storyline presents a unique parallel to Vellani's daily life. Being a fan herself, she describes stepping into the world of Marvel as "so much fun."

"I was on set and I was just, like, totally gushing over everything I'm seeing around me," said Vellani.

The show's team didn't let her see the set of the first episode's "Avenger Con" convention until the day they shot the scene — they knew her reaction would be just as exuberant as Kamala's.

"They were like, 'Whatever your reaction is going to be in real life is what we want ... so just be yourself,'" she said, describing the energy she brought to the character.

"That specificity is really what makes a character believable and what is going to represent people … not generalizing all of the brown people into one character."

In this fun clip from the upcoming Disney+ series Ms. Marvel, Kamala tests her powers. The series stars Iman Vellani, Matt Lintz, Yasmeen Fletcher, Zenobia Shroff, Mohan Kapur, Saagar Shaikh, Rish Shah, Fawad Khan, Laurel Marsden, Arian Moayed, Adaku Ononogbo, Alysia Reiner, Azhar Usman, Laith Nakli, Nimra Bucha and Travina Springer, and Aramis Knight.

The future is in her hands. Ms. Marvel, an Original series from Marvel Studios, starts streaming June 8 on Disney+. ► Watch Marvel on Disney+: https://bit.ly/2XyBSIW

 

NOW THE CRITIQUE; ITS MADE FOR TWEEN'S

Ms Marvel - How NOT To Build A Hero

The Critical Drinker

The Critical Drinker1.23M subscribers

After watching the trailer for Ms Marvel, the upcoming MCU show on Disney+, I was blown away by how badly they seem to have introduced this character. Join me as I break down what the trailer got wrong, and how it could have been done better.

 

Disney+ releases four-minute documentary on upcoming series Ms. Marvel

PUBLISHED 02 JUN, 2022 
IMAGES STAFF
DAWN.COM
DESK REPORT


The show stars Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan, a Pakistani-American superhero who adores Captain Marvel and wants to be like her.

Photo: Ms. Marvel /Instagram

Before viewers and fans get to see Iman Vellani in action as Kamala Khan in Ms. Marvel, Disney+ has a little present to get everyone ready for the MCU's newest superhero. A documentary called A Fan's Guide to Ms. Marvel just released on the streaming site that guides viewers through the story of Kamala and who the superhero actually is.

On Wednesday, the official account of the upcoming series shared a poster for the special documentary based on the superhero. A Fan's Guide to Ms. Marvel isn't particularly long — according to Collider, the special is for only four minutes. It features new interviews with the cast and crew, never-before-seen footage of the show itself, Kamala and her best friend Bruno (Matt Lintz) living in their bubble and taking over AvengerCon and the odes paid to all Marvel heroes.

The documentary features Vellani giving fans yet another up close and personal look at the newest star of the Marvel Universe. The short documentary also features some behind-the-scenes action sequences, focusing mainly on Marvel's plans to make the show their next big hit.

Vellani plays 16-year-old Kamala, a Pakistani-American teen who lives in Jersey City. Kamala is an aspiring artist, an avid gamer, and a voracious fan-fiction scribe. She is also a huge fan of the Avengers — and one in particular, Captain Marvel. But Kamala has always struggled to find her place in the world — that is until she gets super powers like the heroes she’s always looked up to.

The cast includes Aramis Knight, Lintz, Saagar Shaikh, Rish Shah, Mohan Kapoor, Farhan Akhtar, Nimra Bucha, Zenobia Shroff, Yasmeen Fletcher, Travina Springer, Laurel Marsden, Laith Nakli and Azhra Usman. Fawad Khan was also rumoured to make an appearance in the show, however, his cameo hasn't been confirmed yet.

It was also confirmed on May 26 that Coke Studio's hit 'Peechay Hutt' by Hasan Raheem, Talal Qureshi and the Justin Bibis will also be featured in the show.

The series will be releasing exclusively in theatres in Pakistan in June and July since Disney+ is not available for viewers in Pakistan. Earlier this month, director Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy had announced that Disney and Marvel have created a special theatre format for Ms. Marvel. The six-episode show will be split into three parts, according to the filmmaker.

Episodes one and two will debut on June 16, three and four on June 30 and five and six on July 14.

'A dream come true': Mehwish Hayat praises Ms. Marvel's 'accurate' representation of desi culture

IMAGES STAFF

DAWN.COM
DESK REPORT

The actor said Kamala Khan is the first brown superhero we all can relate to.


Photo: AFP


Disney+ and Marvel's upcoming show Ms. Marvel has been the talk of the town for desis all over social media, be it our very own Pakistani celebrities representing on the red carpet in Hollywood, or some snippets from the show that left many demanding correct representation. But for Mehwish Hayat, Ms. Marvel is an "accurate representation" of Pakistani culture.

On Sunday, the actor shared photos from the premiere event of the show held in Los Angeles. In her post, she wrote, "Working on Ms Marvel and being part of the MCU is a dream come true for me! You cannot believe what it means to finally have the first brown Muslim superhero that we can all relate to and who speaks for us. Words can't describe how happy my inner child is to see my culture being so accurately represented on screen, in a mainstream Hollywood production."

She also wrote that it means a lot that Marvel made an effort to cast Pakistani actors in key roles. "I hope that this will not only show actors in Pakistan that they need to look beyond their own borders but also give Hollywood the confidence to cast talent from Pakistan."

In her post, Hayat credited show creator Sana Amanat, executive producer Jenna Berger and director Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy and the rest of the team's "attention to detail" that made Ms. Marvel something really special. For her, the proud moment was seeing the Oscar winning filmmaker directing the upcoming show. "Couldn’t think of anyone who would have been better," she wrote.

She also complimented the main lead, Iman Vellani, who plays Kamala Khan. For Hayat, Vellani is a "real firecracker" who is destined to be a big name in Hollywood.

Hayat bumping into Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, and Louis D'Esposito, film producer, was the "icing on the cake" of her trip. She also wrote that Marvel needs to be applauded because they have made every little girl, not just brown, believe that they are special and can achieve their dreams if they believe in them enough. "Look at me… a girl from Karachi walking the Red carpet in Hollywood shows anything is possible."

In the show, Vellani plays 16-year-old Kamala, a Pakistani-American teen who lives in Jersey City. Kamala is an aspiring artist, an avid gamer, and a voracious fan-fiction scribe. She is also a huge fan of the Avengers — and one in particular, Captain Marvel. But Kamala has always struggled to find her place in the world — that is until she gets super powers like the heroes she’s always looked up to.

Earlier last month, Chinoy had announced that Disney and Marvel have created a special theatre format for Ms. Marvel. The six-episode show will be split into three parts according to the filmmaker.

Episodes one and two will debut on June 16, three and four on June 30 and five and six on July 14.