PAKISTAN

Textile exporters blame govt for ‘economic disaster’

Recorder Report Published February 15, 2024

KARACHI: The interim rule has again drawn severe criticism for “intruding” into the economic matters that left the national economy in disaster by increasing the energy prices to a “historic” level, textile exporters said on Wednesday.

They said that the interim government was responsible for mainly holding the elections and not wrestling with the economy. They also blamed it for “deliberate” and “engineered” motives that caused industrial slowdown and sabotaged the country’s exports during its entire tenure.

Muhammad Jawed Bilwani, Chief Coordinator Value-Added Textile Forum, Mubashar Naseer Butt, Chairman Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers & Exporters Association, Muhammad Usman, Towel Manufacturers & Exporters Association and Khalid Majeed, Chairman, Denim Manufacturers & Exporters Association jointly held the interim setup for the economic downturn.

Pakistan’s textile exports plunge 12% year-on-year in September: APTMA

Repeated increase in the gas and electricity prices to an unbearable level by the interim government has left the value-added textile export uncompetitive on the world markets, blaming it for ensnaring the country in the IMF plans. They added that the transitional setup had also poor economic policies that unleashed the free fall of rupee against the dollar, ensuing in input cost escalation to pull down the manufacturing growth and brought the industry near to a close.

The textile export industry is also grappled with gas cuts for twice a week, besides the discount policy rate has also touched the highest limit of 22 percent and export refinancing and LTFF 19 percent with a bank spread, they said.

Showing their profound concerns, they said that the country’s exports have nosedived comparatively by 12.71 percent from $31.78 billion in July-June 2021-22 to $27.74 billion over the same period in 2022-23, citing the “harsh” factors, which is hurting the industry.

“This is 16.61 percent decline to the export target of $32.35 billion set for the fiscal year 2022-2023,” they said that the export-oriented industries are faced with the “greatest” ever challenges in terms of the “highest” cost of manufacturing. Many industries, they claimed to have already stopped their production in the country with several others fearing a closure because of the unviable trade, which may also pulled the country’s exports further down.

The interim rule has raised gas tariffs to “the highest” ever levels by 118 percent from August 2023 and added on with a 40 percent cost of RLNG. This move overall gave a steep rise of 191 percent to the gas prices to the historic levels, they added. The exports industry is also compelled to pay the “exorbitant” gas price, which is tagged with the cross subsidy that the fertilizer, feedstock, domestic consumers and power generation sector enjoy, they pointed.

“The circular debt is additional. The export industries cannot pass on the exorbitant effect of the high gas tariff and costly industrial inputs,” they added.

They again accused the intern setup of its plan to further increase the gas tariffs to Rs2950 per mmbtu for the industrial consumers. “For RLNG blend previously the ratio of Indigenous gas was 50 percent and RLNG 50 percent, which has now been changed to 33:67,” they added.

The OGRA, which has determined the tariff of two gas companies including SSGCL and SNGPL without consulting the industry, they said and called it “deplorable” that the industry has no representation on the oil and gas regulator board.

They requested to the Prime Minister to intervene in the matter and invite the stakeholders to a meeting for a deliberation to solve the energy problems that the industry is facing.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024

 

MPS MUST OPPOSE US/UK NUCLEAR ARMS ACCORD

A little known but long standing nuclear weapons agreement between Washington and London is up for renewal – and must be challenged.

KATE HUDSON
15 FEBRUARY 2024

Sunak visits Biden in the Oval Office. (Photo: Simon Walker / No 10)

The “special relationship” is a longstanding refrain in British politics, used to justify so much that’s bad in UK foreign policy choices.

I recall in 2002 when Tony Blair agreed Britain had to pay a “blood price” to secure its special relationship with the US. We all know how that ended up. 

But it wasn’t Blair who paid the blood price – it was 179 British service personnel, killed in an illegal war, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and countless more injured, displaced and traumatised.

Much that feeds war can be notched up to the US/UK special relationship, but it goes far beyond providing diplomatic and military cover and assistance to US enterprises. 

That relationship is also responsible for the development of the UK’s nuclear arsenal and its continued possession of these weapons of mass destruction. 

The special nuclear relationship is facilitated by the US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement (MDA) – the world’s most extensive nuclear sharing agreement. 

Even though it comes up for renewal in parliament every ten years, few seem to know of its existence.  

Neither do many know the extent to which it makes us dependent on the US – or indeed that it underpins the wider relationship between the US and UK.

Nuclear weapons

Its full name is the “Agreement between the UK and the USA for cooperation in the Uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defence Purposes”.

The agreement initially enabled both countries to exchange classified information to develop their respective nuclear weapon systems.

But at the start, the MDA prohibited the transfer of nuclear weapons. However, an amendment in 1959 allowed for the transfer of nuclear materials and equipment between both countries up to a certain deadline.

This amendment is extended through a renewal of the treaty every ten years, most recently in 2014 without any parliamentary debate or vote.

The British public and parliamentarians initially found out about that extension and ratification when President Obama informed the US Congress. The next renewal is due in parliament later this year, and we are determined that this time it will not go unchallenged.

Renewing such agreements on the nod, without transparency or accountability is never a good thing. When it ties us so tightly to nuclear cooperation with the White House, at a time of increasing nuclear risk, this is an even greater cause for concern.

Usable nukes

Recent US policies have pursued “usable” nukes, for deployment in an increasing range of scenarios, with a bottomless pit of funding available for nuclear modernisation. The time has come to really vigorously oppose this Agreement.

It also puts us at odds with our commitments under the international Non-Proliferation Treaty, which seeks to stem the spread of nuclear technology.

The relationship and activities which are enshrined by the MDA confirms an indefinite commitment by the US and UK to collaborate on nuclear weapons technology and violates both countries’ obligations as signatories to the NPT.

The NPT states that countries should undertake “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to… nuclear disarmament”. Rather than working together to get rid of their nuclear weapons, the UK and US are collaborating to further advance their respective nuclear arsenals.

Indeed, a 2004 legal advice paper by Rabinder Singh QC and Professor Christine Chinkin concluded that it is “strongly arguable that the renewal of the Mutual Defence Agreement is in breach of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”.

This was so since it implies “continuation and indeed enhancement of the nuclear programme, not progress towards its discontinuation”.

Independent foreign policy

It’s just not possible for the UK to have an independent foreign policy, or defence and security policies, if it remains attached at the hip to the US nuclear programme.

The UK government’s claim that its submarine-based Trident nuclear weapons system is independent is false. It is technically and politically dependent on the US, largely due to the MDA.

Due to the MDA, the UK relies on the US for many aspects of Trident. The UK’s nuclear warhead is a copy of the US one, with some components directly bought from the US.

With the UK’s warheads expected to be non-operational by the late 2030s, a decision on their replacement will be intrinsically linked to the work taking place as part of the MDA.

“The US exercises significant leverage over the UK’s foreign and defence policy”

The UK leases from the US the Trident II D5 missiles it uses and British submarines must regularly visit the US base in Kings Bay, Georgia, for the maintenance and replacement of these missiles.

By having such direct involvement in Britain’s nuclear weapons technology, the US exercises significant leverage over the UK’s foreign and defence policy.

Even the most establishment characters must now be able to see that unquestioning allegiance to the US is out of the question.

So with the MDA coming up for renewal again, now is the time to start asking the questions, raising the protest, and making the case for independence.

It’s time for the special nuclear relationship to end. CND will be ensuring that the issue is raised vigorously within parliament, and calling on all our supporters to lobby their elected representatives to that effect.

TAGGED: 

• Alternatives
• Nuclear
• US

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kate Hudson is General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the UK.

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Haiti says it is working on an agreement with Kenya to secure a long-awaited police deployment

Women and children gather outside a police station after fleeing their homes in Cite - 

Odelyn Joseph/Copyright 2024 The AP. All rights reserved

By Rédaction Africanews
with AP 

Haiti's government announced Wednesday that it is working on an official agreement with Kenyan officials to secure the long-awaited deployment of a police force from the east African country.

High-ranking officials from both countries met in the U.S. for three days this week to draft a memorandum of understanding and set a deadline for the arrival of Kenyan police forces. The closed-door meetings included top U.S. officials and were held weeks after a court in Kenya blocked the U.N-backed deployment of police to help Haiti fight a surge in gang violence, saying it is unconstitutional.

It was not immediately clear if or how a memorandum of understanding could circumvent the court's ruling, which the president of Kenya has said he would appeal.

Haiti's government said in a statement that there were "intense discussions" to bring a memorandum of understanding into compliance with legislation of both countries.

"A final decision on the text should come early next week as well as its signature by both parties," Haiti's government said.

It said the talks also focused on the mission's operations, logistics and compliance, as well as surveillance, required equipment and human rights issues.

The deployment was requested by Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry in October 2022 and approved by the U.N. Security Council a year later. But it has since encountered multiple legal obstacles as gang warfare in Haiti's capital and beyond continues to rise.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk recently noted that more than 800 people were killed, injured or kidnapped across Haiti in January, more than three times the number compared with the same month in 2023.

Teaching Musk the rules of the game

Swedish trade unions have staged a historic strike to force Tesla into a collective agreement. Their success could benefit employees worldwide

DPA picture alliance/ Jonathan Ernst

WORK AND DIGITALISATION 15.02.2024 | German Bender

A little over three months ago, on 27 October last year, the electric car manufacturer Tesla was confronted with a strike for the first time ever. The Swedish trade union IF Metall called the strike after five years of refusal by Tesla to negotiate a collective agreement for its employees in repair shops across the country (Tesla has no factories in Sweden, only vehicle maintenance, repairs and charging infrastructure).

It is not surprising that the Swedish union movement is the first to take on the staunchly anti-union firm. Sweden is one of the most unionised countries in the world, with around 70 per cent of the labour force being union members. Accordingly, a vast majority of Swedes support the strike and say that Tesla’s brand has been harmed by the dispute.
Power resources

In addition, Swedish trade unions have power resources that are not available in many other countries. For example, they can strike against companies that do not have collective agreements to pressure them into signing one (the Tesla dispute is a case in point).

Furthermore, they have the right to call sympathy strikes (sometimes also called solidarity strikes or secondary strikes). These are collective action measures that can be used to support a primary dispute. For example, a union can support itself or another union that is involved in a dispute. In the Tesla case, both types have been used.

The first type has been employed by IF Metall. First, when it expanded its strike to repairs shops owned by other companies that service Tesla vehicles. And more recently, when it issued a blockade against the company Hydro Extrusion, which produces a component needed for the production of Tesla’s Model Y in Germany. By doing so, the union hopes to disrupt the production of new vehicles.

To evade the dockworkers’ blockade, Tesla first started transporting ships to other Nordic ports. This move added an international dimension to the dispute.

But the vast majority of solidarity strikes against Tesla have been called by nine other Swedish unions. These collective action measures are not strikes, strictly speaking, because workers have not stopped working altogether. Instead, the workers refrain from performing tasks related to Tesla.

For example, the electrical workers’ union refuses to perform electrical work, such as maintenance or repairs, on Tesla’s charging stations and repair shops; the building maintenance union has stopped cleaning Tesla’s shops and offices; the postal workers’ union blocks deliveries (including license plates for new vehicles) to all Tesla facilities; and the transportation union has blocked disposal of industrial waste in repair shops and also blocks all unloading of Tesla cars delivered to Sweden’s approximately 50 ports, effectively halting Tesla’s car deliveries to Sweden.

To evade the dockworkers’ blockade, Tesla first started transporting ships to other Nordic ports. This move added an international dimension to the dispute, as unions in Denmark, Norway and Finland decided to support IF Metall with solidarity measures by blocking all unloading of Tesla vehicles transported to Nordic ports. Tesla has, in turn, responded to the blockade of Nordic ports by shifting to land transport directly from its factory in Germany (Tesla’s only manufacturing plant in Europe, and the second largest outside the US). Of course, this is more cumbersome and probably more expensive than its usual shipping operations. 

Important for various reasons

The Tesla strike is exceptional both in terms of scope and duration, as it is the longest Swedish labour dispute in more than thirty years. But strikes are an extremely rare occurrence in Sweden, which has one of the most peaceful labour markets in Europe.

However, this particular conflict is of principal importance for Swedish labour unions, who see it as a necessary measure to safeguard the country’s heralded labour market model. One of the model’s institutional pillars are sectoral collective agreements, which cover 90 per cent of all employees. Collective bargaining coverage is upheld in part by the strong norm that employers sign such agreements.

Cutting labour costs by refusing to negotiate collective agreements is generally considered unfair competition by unions and employers alike. Unions also see it as a potential risk for downward pressure on wages and working conditions if a large company such as Tesla were allowed to opt out of the model, which could cause others to follow suit. This domino effect would be detrimental not only for Tesla’s employees but also for workers in other companies, and could eventually undermine the Swedish model itself. The alternative to high collective bargaining coverage would be that more regulations on wages and working conditions would have to be regulated through legislation at the national and EU level, which is a scenario that unions and employers want to avoid.

Swedish unions are not the only ones pressuring Tesla.

Another reason why the conflict is of such principal importance for labour unions is the fact that Tesla is emblematic of the rapidly growing electric vehicle market. Securing collective agreements for jobs created in the industrial transition is one of the most reliable ways to make sure that green jobs will also be good jobs, a vital concern for unions.

But the conflict has symbolic significance for Tesla, too. Not for the costs of a Swedish union contract. These would be negligible, given that it would only cover 130 of Tesla’s almost 130 000 employees worldwide. But a concession to the union in Sweden could bolster union demands in countries where a larger portion of Tesla’s employees work, like the US and Germany.

In fact, Swedish unions are not the only ones pressuring Tesla. In the US, the United American Autoworkers’ union is aiming to organise at least one of Tesla’s enormous American factories. And, a week before the Swedish strike, the newly elected president of the powerful German industrial union IG Metall, Christiane Benner, made a sharp statement directed at Elon Musk: ‘you need to be careful. The rules of the game are different here’, she said in reference to Tesla’s attempts to obstruct union organising at its factory in Grünheide (State of Brandenburg, Germany), with almost 12 000 employees.

According to IG Metall, union membership in the factory is growing ‘faster than expected’. Membership numbers are vital for winning upcoming works council elections at the plant and to pressure Tesla to bargain with the union or eventually call a strike.

The rhetoric support by IG Metall for the Swedish strike is both welcome and necessary. But, unfortunately, it is not sufficient.

At the moment, however, no German unions have joined their Nordic fellow unions in launching solidarity action in support of IF Metall. Such measures could include, for example, blocking truck shipments of new Tesla cars from Germany to Sweden, or halting factory production of vehicles for the Swedish market. They would constitute important countervailing forces to the international mobility of capital and provide invaluable support to the Nordic union movement. They would also bolster IG Metall’s own chances of getting a collective agreement for Tesla workers in Germany.

The question is whether or not such solidarity strikes would be allowed under German labour law. The right to solidarity action was confirmed in Germany in 2007 after a decision by the Federal Labour Court, but a case like the Swedish Tesla dispute has not been tried legally.

Therefore, IG Metall and other German unions should urgently perform a detailed legal analysis of the possibility of calling solidarity strikes to support IF Metall’s struggle to achieve a collective agreement for Tesla workers. If the analysis finds that the legal status of such solidarity strikes is unclear, one option would be to let the Federal Labour Court set a precedent, which could prove hugely important.

The rhetoric support by IG Metall for the Swedish strike is both welcome and necessary. But, unfortunately, it is not sufficient. Not when you are dealing with Elon Musk.

Vietnam’s Climate Solutions Are Decimating the Mekong Delta


Shrimp farming along the Mekong may be an economic win in the short term, but it is ultimately unsustainable.

By Quinn Goranson
February 09, 2024


A traditional rice field on an island in the Mekong river near Tra Vinh City that will be harvested and transitioned into a shrimp pond at the end of the wet season.Credit: Quinn Goranson


In the delta region of South Vietnam, where the Mekong River flows into the South China Sea, locals fear that their mother is dying. They see her banks swell and collapse; salt infiltrates higher and farther than it ever has before. The Mekong is sinking.

The Mekong River stretches for 4,350 kilometers, flowing from Tibetan glaciers through six countries and eventually through Vietnam to the sea. The river’s name comes from Mae Nam Khong, a Thai and Lao phrase meaning “Mother Water.” This is fitting, as it brings vital resources to more than 70 million people across mainland Southeast Asia. The Mekong’s banks have historically provided perfect conditions for rice production, with the southern delta provinces affectionately named the “rice basket” of Vietnam.

Now, climate change and environmental degradation from human development present an existential threat to the Mekong. Salt intrusion into the freshwater river, rising sea levels, land subsidence, sand mining, lower base flow, and upstream damming have all contributed to a decline in agricultural productivity in recent years. In 2020, rice farmers in the provinces most impacted by saline intrusion were expected to lose at least 30 percent of their harvest from lack of fresh water.

Recently, international organizations and government programs have encouraged agricultural diversification toward greater economic and climate resilience. For many, this manifests as maintaining traditional rice paddies in the wet season, when the Mekong can provide enough fresh water to sustain the crops, and then transitioning those same fields to shrimp or prawn farms in the dry season. Having shown initial success, this specific model is being touted as a textbook adaptation “win” in the Mekong Delta region.

Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to the negative environmental impacts of this mass transition to shrimp farming, an ultimately unsustainable move.

An Ancient River Cycles From Life Giver to Liability

For more than a century, the Mekong delta has been a space of global contestation, with Vietnamese governments and other outside powers treating it both as a desirable resource and a battleground. French colonial perspectives that prioritized “mastery over nature” through extensive hydraulic works and the heavy-handed American use of tactical arsenic- and dioxin-based herbicides during the Vietnam War predisposed the Mekong Delta to great environmental vulnerability, for which few international powers have taken responsibility.

Coupled with present day mismanagement, government corruption, and developmental errors, the Mekong is ill-equipped to adapt. The appearance of the delta has changed dramatically over the centuries, during which time it has seen rapid urbanization, agricultural intensification, and devastating environmental destruction. Recently, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, addressing the country’s National Assembly, said that the greatest concerns in the Mekong delta region were land subsidence, landslides, drought, and saltwater intrusion.

Land subsidence refers to the decompression of the land from the weight of infrastructure and/or destabilizing impacts of depleting ground water. This hinders drainage, leading to flooding and increased erosion. Saltwater intrusion refers to the contamination of fresh water sources as saline water is able to flow further upstream. This natural phenomenon has presented a significant issue in the Mekong delta, one that is being worsened by illegal sand mining and impediments to river discharge from upstream dams, combined with downstream sea level rises and intense storm surges.

Pointing the Finger: Climate Change or Environmental Degradation?

There is an interesting dichotomy within this framing. In North Vietnam, where the central government resides, and within much international discourse, the greatest threat to Mekong ecosystems is climate change. However, in the South, and among those worst hit by the changing environment, the problem is environmental degradation that has been directly caused by development and exploitation practices like illegal sand mining and unregulated fishing.

When it comes to climate change, Vietnam can see itself as a passive victim. The country contributes just 0.8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet suffers from both the current and historical decisions and emissions of the Global North (and neighboring China). In contrast, environmental degradation refers to Vietnam’s active abuse of its ecosystems through unregulated extraction, contamination inputs, and rapid, unsustainable development as the government prioritizes economic growth, and achieving the status of a middle income country by 2030, over the environment.

While Vietnam has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050, its greatest emissions come from the energy sector. Numerous environmental activists and civil leaders, critical of Vietnam’s contradicting priorities, have been recently arrested and jailed on tax evasion charges. While the country’s increased attention to climate mitigation and adaptation internationally reflects an acute awareness of the economic costs of unsustainable resource exploitation, those who voice concern over Vietnam’s heavy energy sector reliance on coal (49.7 percent) justifiably fear arrest.

This illustrates the tense atmosphere that surrounds the questions of environmental education and transparency in Vietnam, which in turn taints agricultural transition and climate policies. This will ensure further ecosystems damage while making long-term adaptation more difficult.


A farmer removing shrimp from a cast net. The shrimp were caught in her pond for guests visiting her farmstay on Con Chim Island, Tra Vinh. Photo by Quinn Goranson.

Profit and Loss: The Economics of “Sustainable” Development

While the funding landscape in the Mekong delta remains fragmented, especially regarding agricultural issues, farmers and research institutes like Can Tho University are receiving support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development, United Nations Development Program, and bilateral aid from countries like Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Netherlands. Much of this funding supports delta-wide adoption of new livelihood models, including the prawn rice rotational crop (PRRC) model.

The PRRC model sees farmers plant and harvest their rice crops during the wet season, when the Mekong is abundant with fresh water, and transition to crops that are not adversely impacted by salt water in the dry season, when saline intrusion creeps up into the delta. Shrimp are the most common aquaculture crop, as they can survive salinities of up to 45 grams per liter.

In 2020, when saline water intruded as much 40 kilometers inland, and lingered for months longer than expected in the dry season, 240,000 hectares of rice crops were destroyed. Since this disaster, some farmers have transitioned to exclusively farming shrimp, as 45 percent of the agricultural land in the Mekong Delta region now experiences salinity levels well above 4 g/l, the average upper tolerance for rice crops.

The government in Vietnam has encouraged this transition, and initial research has described these models as climate successes. One riparian province, Bac Lieu, is aiming to increase its shrimp production to $1.3 billion in exports alone by 2025, transitioning the industry toward a 95 percent contribution of its total export revenue by that date. Reports show that on average, through rapid industry and export expansion, PRRC farmers see 65 percent higher annual profits than traditional rice farmers.

Studies of these transitions exclusively focus on economic drivers and adaptive capacity instead of long-term environmental impacts.

The True Costs of Lucrative Agricultural Transitions

Shrimp cultivation is not only far more resource intensive than rice farming; it also produces significantly more greenhouse gas emissions at 13 kilograms of CO2e per kg compared to 0.9 kg of CO2e for rice. Many farmers are still using low-efficiency, high energy-intensity paddlewheel aeration systems to manage shrimp pond water quality, which often fare better at introducing disease-carrying airborne particles than distributing oxygen and nutrients. In larger, non-organic farms, chemicals and antibiotics are used to prevent disease and increase yields, causing groundwater contamination and runoff that taints organic aquaculture ponds and the surrounding ecosystem. PRRC farmers have begun noticing the long-term impacts of shrimp ponds on soil quality, as climate change limits the capacity of the Mekong to flush out the salt, making the land less fertile.

Eventually, as saline intrusion worsens from continued sea level rise and ground subsidence, salinity levels will surpass that which is tolerable even to these shrimp species. This observation has encouraged groundwater extraction to dilute the salinity levels of the shrimp ponds. Aquifer depletion has contributed to land subsidence cross the Mekong delta for decades, accelerating delta sinking to an unprecedented rate at 18 centimeters over the last 25 years. This perpetuates a negative feedback loop where saline intrusion encourages agricultural diversification into shrimp aquaculture, depleting the aquifer below the delta. This further contributes to land subsidence, one of the key initial drivers for saline intrusion.


A ferry along the Cổ Chiên River, a tributary of the Mekong, in the Delta province of Tra Vinh. This boat brings tourists from the banks of Tra Vinh City to Cồn Chim Island. Photo by Quinn Goranson.

Moving Forward: Putting the Needs of the Ecosystem at the Center

Further studies are needed to better understand impacts on the Mekong delta’s ecosystem. Currently, proposed climate adaptation policies that encourage drastic agricultural transitions to models like PRRC, while being more profitable, are not environmentally sustainable over the long term. Though difficult, it is important for local governments and the international community to acknowledge the dissonance between dual priorities. Given the existential threats facing the Mekong rice basket, teetering between priorities of economic prosperity and environmental survival, policy alternatives for more sustainable agriculture must be explored.

Some bright spots in agricultural development come from Tra Vinh University, which has conducted research into Alternate Wetting and Drying technology, which allows for traditional rice production using 20 percent less water. Likewise, in the aquaculture sector, companies like Rynan Technologies are developing innovative solutions to nutrient supply and energy intensity with their Pressure Swing Adsorption Unit.

Through policy implementation, research and development, and investment in local initiatives, Vietnam may be able to achieve the concomitant goals of economic growth and climate resilience, while diversifying and intensifying its agricultural sector. But we must remember that the water of the Mekong is the vital thread that knits together all life along the river: respect and humility in the presence of such a great life-giving force should guide all pursuits.