[Holding the government accountable for its lack of preparedness
is crucial. However, given the sheer scale of the impact of the
climate crisis on the Global South, talking about adaptation has its
limitations.]
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PAKISTAN DEMANDS DEBT CANCELLATION AND CLIMATE JUSTICE  
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Tanupriya Singh
December 12, 2022
The Bullet
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_ Holding the government accountable for its lack of preparedness is
crucial. However, given the sheer scale of the impact of the climate
crisis on the Global South, talking about adaptation has its
limitations. _

,

 

Even as the floodwaters have receded, the people of Pakistan are still
trying to grapple with the death and devastation the floods have left
in their wake. The floods that swept across the country between June
and September have killed
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than 1,700 people, injured more than 12,800, and displaced
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as of November 18.

The scale of the destruction in Pakistan was still making itself
apparent as the world headed to the United Nations climate conference
COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November. Pakistan was one of two
countries invited
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co-chair the summit. It also served
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chair of the Group of 77 (G77) and China for 2022, playing a critical
role in ensuring that the establishment
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a loss and damage fund was finally on the summit’s agenda, after
decades of resistance by the Global North.

“The dystopia has already come to our doorstep,” Pakistan’s
Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rehman told Reuters
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Waiting for Help

By the first week of September, pleas for help were giving way
to protests
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survivors, living under open skies and on the sides of highways, were
dying of hunger
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and lack of shelter
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Parts of the Sindh province, which was hit the hardest
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including the districts of Dadu and Khairpur remained inundated
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the middle of November
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Meanwhile, certain areas of impoverished and predominantly rural
Balochistan, where communities have been calling for help
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July, waited months for assistance
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“Initially the floods hit Lasbela, closer to Karachi [in Sindh], so
people were able to provide help, but as the flooding spread to other
parts of Balochistan the situation became dire,” Khurram Ali,
general secretary of the Awami Workers Party (AWP), told Peoples
Dispatch. “The infrastructure of Balochistan has been neglected, the
roads are damaged, and dams and bridges have not been repaired.”

The floods precipitated a massive infrastructural collapse that
continues to impede rescue and relief efforts – more than 13,000
kilometers of roads and 439 bridges
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been destroyed, according to a November 18 report by the National
Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Pakistan.

Speaking to Peoples Dispatch in September, Taimur Rahman,
secretary-general of the Mazdoor Kissan Party (PMKP), said that the
government had been “unable to effectively provide aid on any large
scale, or to ensure that it reached where it was supposed to go.”
This has also led to the emergence of profiteering, as gangs seize aid
from trucks and sell it, Rahman added.

In these circumstances, left and progressive organizations such as the
AWP and PKMP have attempted to fill the gaps by trying to provide
people with basic amenities to survive the aftermath of this disaster.

Cascading Crises

On September 17, the WHO warned of a “second disaster
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in Pakistan – “a wave of disease and death following this
catastrophe, linked to climate change.”

The WHO has estimated that “more than 2,000 health facilities
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been fully or partially damaged” or destroyed across the country, at
a time when diseases such as COVID-19, malaria
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dengue, cholera, dysentery, and respiratory illnesses are affecting a
growing share of the population. More than 130,000 pregnant women
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in need of urgent health care services in Pakistan, which already had
a high maternal mortality rate
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Damage to the agricultural sector, with 4.4 million acres of crops
having been destroyed
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has stoked fears of impending mass hunger. In a July report by the
World Food Program, 5.9 million people in Balochistan, Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindh provinces were already estimated
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be in the “crisis” and “emergency” phases of food insecurity
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July and November 2022.

At present, an estimated
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million people will be in need of emergency food assistance from
December 2022 to March 2023, according to the United Nations Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Malnutrition has
already exceeded emergency threshold
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in some districts, especially in Sindh and Balochistan.

Not only was the summer harvest destroyed
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the _rabi_ or winter crops like wheat are also at risk
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months to recede in some areas, like Sindh. Approximately 1.1 million
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have perished so far due to the floods.

This loss of life and livelihood has taken place against the backdrop
of an economic crisis
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characterized by a current account deficit
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foreign exchange reserves
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Then came the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As part of its
attempt to resume a stalled $6-billion bailout program
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the fund, Pakistan’s government imposed
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hike in fuel prices and a rollback on subsidies in mid-June.

“The conditions that the IMF placed on us exacerbated the inflation
and cost of living crisis,” explained Rahman. “They imposed on
Pakistan tax policies that would try to balance the government’s
budget on the one hand, but on the other really undermine the welfare
of the people and cause such a catastrophic rise in the cost of living
that it would condemn millions of people to poverty and starvation.”

By the end of August, the IMF had approved a bailout of more than
$1.1-billion
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By then, Pakistan’s consumer price index had soared to 27.3 percent
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the highest in nearly 50 years, and food inflation increased to 29.5
percent
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By September, prices of vegetables were up by 500 percent
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“We went to the IMF for $1.1-billion, meanwhile, the damage to
Pakistan’s economy is at least $11-billion,” said Rahman. The
figure for the damages caused due to the floods now stands
at $40-billion
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according to the World Bank. “The IMF keeps telling us to lower
tariff barriers, to take away subsidies, to liberalize trade, make the
state bank autonomous, to deregulate private capital and banking, and
to balance the budget,” he added.

“The ax always falls on the most vulnerable,” Rahman said. “Over
half of the budget, which in itself is a small portion of the GDP,
goes toward debt repayment, another quarter goes to the military and
then there’s nothing left. The government is basically bankrupt.”

“The advice of the IMF is always the same – take the state out,
let the private market do what it does. Well, look at what it has
done: it has destroyed Pakistan’s economy. … Imposing austerity at
a time when Pakistan is coping with such massive floods and the
economy is in freefall is the equivalent of what the British colonial
state did during the Bengal famine – it took food away.”

Pakistan will be forced to borrow more money to pay back its mounting
debt, all while IMF conditions hinder any meaningful recovery for the
poor and marginalized. The fund has now imposed even tougher
conditions
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Pakistan to free up $3.5-billion in response to the floods, not nearly
large enough to address $30-billion
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of economic damage. The conditions
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a hike in gas and electricity prices as well as cuts in development
spending.

It is in this context that activists are demanding
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cancellation of debt, and climate reparations for Pakistan.

The Global North Must Pay

Between 2010 and 2019, 15.5 million Pakistanis were displaced
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natural disasters. Pakistan has contributed
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than 1 percent to global greenhouse gas emissions, but remains at the
forefront of the climate crisis.

Delivering the G77 and China’s opening statement at COP27,
Pakistan’s Ambassador Munir Akram emphasized
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“We are living in an era where many developing countries are already
witnessing unprecedented devastating impacts of climate change, though
they have contributed very little to it…”

“Enhanced solidarity and cooperation to address loss and damage is
not charity – it is climate justice.”

In its February report, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change acknowledged
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“historical and ongoing patterns of inequity such as colonialism”
have exacerbated vulnerability to climate change. Yet, even as the
Global South faces an existential threat, the Global North actively
impedes efforts toward redressal.

“Reparations are about taking back [what] is owed to you,”
environmental lawyer Ahmad Rafay Alam told Peoples Dispatch. “As the
climate crisis grows… this discourse [of reparations] is going to
get stronger. It’s not just going to come from Pakistan, we will
hear it from places like Afghanistan where people don’t have the
infrastructure and are freezing in the winter… We’ll hear it as
the Maldives and the Seychelles start sinking.”

While this struggle plays out globally, there is also justifiable
anger within Pakistan over the government’s failure to
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for the crisis, especially in the aftermath of the deadly floods
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2010.

“Everyone anticipated that this monsoon would be disastrous, and the
National Disaster Management Authority had enough time to prepare,”
Ali said. “However, jknthere is nothing you can find that [shows
what] the NDMA did to prepare for these monsoons. In fact, they do not
even have a division to take precautionary measures.”

Holding the government accountable for its lack of preparedness, which
might have contained the damage, is crucial, Alam said. However, given
the sheer scale of the impact of the climate crisis on the Global
South, talking about adaptation has its limitations. As Alam stressed
– “There is just no way you can adapt to a 100-kilometer lake
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forms in the middle of a province.”

Activists are drawing attention to infrastructure projects
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state is pursuing, and how they put the environment and communities at
risk. “As reconstruction takes place it is important not to repeat
the mistakes of the past,” Alam said.

“The projects that are affecting riverbeds and other sensitive areas
are the development projects themselves,” Ali said. He pointed out
that development often takes place on agricultural or ecologically
sensitive land such as forests, adding to the severity of future
crises.

“It is a very dangerous situation now because imperialist
profit-making is devastating the climate, affecting regions that are
already maldeveloped. We are living under semi-feudal, semi-colonial
conditions in Pakistan, with a strong nexus between the imperialist
powers and the capitalists, all making money off our misery,” Ali
stressed.

“We have no other option but to fight these forces; there is no
other option but a people’s revolution.” •

This article was produced in partnership by Peoples Dispatch
[[link removed]] and Globetrotter
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_Tanupriya Singh is a writer at Peoples Dispatch and is based in
Delhi._

_The Bullet is an online publishing venue for the socialist Left in
Canada and around the world. It solicits, publishes and republishes
articles that advance socialist ideas and analysis of important
events, topics and issues. It publishes articles by socialist thinkers
and activists, movement builders and organizers, workers and trade
unionists, and all those seeking to go beyond capitalism._

_The Bullet is produced by the SP, but its editorial collective
publishes articles that reflect a plurality of voices on the broad
socialist Left–some are SP members, and others are not.  To
subscribe to The Bullet, click here
[[link removed]]. To write for it,
click here [[link removed]]._

* Pakistan
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* climate justice
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* debt crisis
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* Global South
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* International Monetary Fund
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* World Health Organization
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