South Asia’s security challenge

Part - I

Shahzad Chaudhry

The writer is a retired air-vice marshal,
former ambassador and a security and political analyst.

The decade of the 1980s was a game-changer in Asia and for the rest of the world. China, the sleeping giant, finally woke from its slumber and ushered in a phase of economic activity not witnessed before, in both intensity and pace, . It galloped; very soon gorging on most of the world’s natural resources – energy- coal, oil and gas; minerals and metals.

Soon, the world ran out of steel provisioning the Chinese needs for its tremendous industrial growth; in fact the world hustled to be a part of a revolution that they could identify with. At one time the world ran out of cardboard boxes meeting the needs of the Chinese industry because what was being produced needed to be boxed and shipped to the rest of the world. Around half a billion Chinese were raised out of poverty and ushered into the middle class. Truly revolutionary.

Except that the new and burgeoned middle class came with its own thirst. Urbanisation picked up pace – everyone wanted a part of the miracle. Movement became central; which meant more vehicles and means of transportation. The bicycle was shelved for the diesel and gas devouring motorised vehicles, and the atmosphere began being fed an extraordinary amount of burnt and not-fully-burnt gases, mostly carbon. The un-dissolved carbon created a shield around the Earth literally replacing the good gases, oxygen and nitrogen. The Earth’s heat was trapped within, not being able to simply escape into deeper atmosphere.

Modern gadgetry in modern households used many other contraptions that worked around other damaging constituents which when released into the atmosphere only thickened this damaging cloud. The Earth heated up and disease grew manifold. The Earth inevitably became unhealthy to live on.

The Chinese were not the first ones to get there. The American dream had already been idealised in the form of a two-car family; this family also loved gadgetry and gizmos that needed to be produced somewhere. This cycle of plenty had the entire world in a frenzy of industrial activity to keep the American desire satiated. The Europeans too were addicted to a lifestyle. That meant that while the rest of the world produced, the Western world mostly consumed. Asia became the West’s factory – burning oil, coal and gas and adding carbon in the air.

India, another country of a billion people, joined in the fun in the next decade following the route that China had taken to becoming a richer and an apparently prosperous nation. Eighty percent of the energy needs of this emerging economic giant – not yet a fraction of the Chinese economy – comes from coal. For the uninitiated that means layers and layers of more carbon, despite the technology that claims to mitigate such harmful emissions. We need to know there isn’t yet a perfect burning cycle created in this world; a perfect burning cycle will never have any un-burnt Carbon, and will still emit sufficient burnt Carbon which will hang in the air.

To the poor, prosperity means amassing material wealth that the West aggrandised. In search of prosperity the massive populations of Asia kept burning coal, oil and gas and kept adding to the carbon. Relatively small nations, with growing populations – some at an extraordinary rate – also joined this race to prosperity. Largely places like Vietnam, the Koreas and Japans have gone along the Chinese prescription in search of prosperity. The same is the case of the developing world.

Pakistan has as well, but it also has other problems. While governments sought GDP growth they barely kept up with energy needs to fire the economy that they modelled. Soon Pakistan ran out of electricity and the means to power its homes and its economic system. The subsequent scramble to get at whatever the world offered in power and energy for industry, jobs, growth and greater wealth meant inducting second-hand coal and gas-fired turbines that will add to the carbon already being fired into the atmosphere by the two other over-populous nations.

The effect isn’t yet there but it will get there because the coal-based power plants are not yet fully installed nor yet all in. Already bigger cities, mostly in Punjab where industry is centred, are enveloped in haze and smog that not only makes people fall ill, but also makes normal functioning impossible. Major motorways need to be closed for most part of the night and in the morning and evening hours and flights are unable to operate in and out of these cities.

Satellite views show half of Asia suffering from these winter maladies. The cities are covered by layers of smog obscuring the towns and cities from above. To those living in these cities, both the sky and the sun become invisible. The children of these cities know the stars only from photographs of other locales where humanity has not yet reached.

Although humanity has reached almost everywhere else. From among the six billion who now populate the Earth a large number now live in cities. The suburb and the mofussul increasingly is also urbanised. Just by way of one example China still records its urban population at 36 percent while in reality around 55 percent of its population lives in the cities. In this Chinese analogy this number equals the total population of Pakistan. Imagine the all of Pakistan migrating within the region.

This is internal migration. It may seem innocuous as an example at this moment but wait till you see it as an actual event in human history.

Mass migration destabilises societies and nations. History stands witness to this historical truth. Major wars were fought over such destabilising occurrences. Pakistan lost half its country to that, though the cause for such migration was entirely different. Conclusion: mass migrations are already taking place within countries and regions; they have gone unrecorded till now. Their effects are, however, visible everywhere.

Around 2034, the Arctic will see for the first time in recorded history a summer without its ice and glaciated presence. The 500,000 square kms of the world’s glaciers will retard to only 100,000 square kms by 2035, according to one study. The Himalayan and the Karakorum glaciers recede by an average of 25 meters per year. The global ecosystem depends on these glaciated regions as the major storehouse of freshwater because of the rising Earth temperature. This is all thanks to our irresponsible prosperity.

Weather patterns have undergone changes – droughts or untimely, unending rainfalls have upset ecology as well as the cropping patterns. What used to be green is now brown. Food and crops become scarce and people suffer from malnutrition and face mutating diseases. Poverty is the end result, adding to the miseries of these people. In all cases people die in tragic calamities.

Those who move to the cities in large numbers must also find homes; the cities cater to them by clearing large swathes of natural fauna and flora. What was meant to absorb carbon dioxide is being gradually denuded under the garb of planned development. That adds more carbon without being absorbed or washed because now droughts reign where rains came and the planet is heating up, further compounding what has already multiplied.

This is a vicious, reinforcing circle that feeds into enhancing the challenge of survival for our future generations. We are already moving in that direction, past the point where we could have reversed course. It must now only be met. Our future leadership will need to secure against it. Can we help?

To be continued

Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com