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Scarcity causes frustration.Running Out of Everything: How Scarcity Drives Crisis in Pakistan
David Steven | 03 May 2011
While pessimism is not in short supply in Pakistan, other resources are increasingly scarce. This is driving the country toward a crisis characterized by interlocking economic, political and security dimensions, and has already brought the government close to fiscal collapse.
Yet the dangers are poorly understood. Few of the country's policy elite fully grasp how Pakistan's energy, food and fiscal challenges intersect, nor how quickly problems will spiral as the country's population grows. Meanwhile, the international community is equally fragmented and short-term in its outlook, still working through sector-based silos that leave it unable to see the big picture. With regard to Pakistan, the United States, along with other international actors, still lacks a coherent vision for what it can do to help build a more stable state. On the global stage, Washington has barely begun to address the impact that an era of higher and more volatile resource prices will have on countries such as Pakistan that are both fragile and strategically significant.
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In 2011, popular uprisings throughout the Middle East finally made it respectable to admit that resource scarcity will be a major driver of global change in coming decades, as high food prices proved a major irritant for the region's young population already starved of other opportunities. There is more turbulence to come. Over the next 15 years, the world's population will increase from almost 7 to almost 8 billion people. The "next billion" will be Asian or African, and most will live in unplanned, and often chaotic, towns and cities. They will face fierce competition for resources from the rich world, long accustomed to dominating commodity markets, as well as from increasingly assertive middle classes in China, India, Brazil and the other rising powers.
At the same time -- and depending on levels of investment, rates of innovation and political foresight -- the world will bump up against limits to the sustainable consumption of highly strategic commodities such as energy, land, water, food and "atmospheric space" for greenhouse gases and other emissions. The fallout will play a crucial role in the "long crisis" of globalization (.pdf).
In an age of resource constraints, Pakistan is a canary in the coal mine. On any given day, newspaper stories about food prices, energy subsidies and water shortages jostle for space with those on suicide bombings, corruption and the government's failure to deliver basic services to its citizens. When asked what they think is the country's greatest problem (.pdf), 55 percent of Pakistanis single out inflation, which is overwhelmingly driven by food and energy prices. That compares to just 21 percent who pick terrorism -- in a country where a few thousand people are killed by terrorists each year -- and 16 percent who choose unemployment, at a time when only 70 percent of men and 21 percent of women have jobs (.pdf).
The average Pakistani eats less than the average African, while last year's devastating floods pushed rates of acute malnutrition (.pdf) among the country's children to nearly 25 percent in the worst-affected areas. This winter, trees throughout Pakistan's major cities were stripped bare for fuel by people desperate to heat their houses and businesses. And the government is running out of money as it struggles to pay energy subsidies that it lacks the political strength to reduce, while the security implications of resource scarcity are growing in what is already an extremely insecure country.
Going Hungry?
To understand scarcity in Pakistan, one needs to start with the country's demographics. While Pakistan's population growth rate peaked at 3.5 percent in the early 1980s, it is still well more than 2 percent today. There will be 60 million more Pakistanis by 2025, at which time the population will still be growing by 4 million every year. The country is very young, with almost half the population below the age of 20. The scale of its projected population alone presents Pakistan with daunting demographic challenges (.pdf). It must find ways to educate its youngest children (.pdf), who currently make up more than 10 percent of the global population of children not attending primary school. It also needs to build a city the size of Lahore every three years, as population growth begins to peak in rural areas but continues to soar in urban ones.
Most of all, Pakistan needs jobs. A "baby boom" generation is entering the workforce in growing numbers, its members bringing with them a toxic combination of high expectations and extremely meager skills. If improved economic prospects allow them to find work, the country could enjoy a demographic dividend. If they remain unemployed, a demographic disaster beckons.
Unfortunately, Pakistan has few natural resources, and land is also in short supply. The country now has only 0.32 acres of arable land per capita, and this will decline by almost a third by 2025 if new land is not brought into production. Water is similarly scarce. Per capita freshwater availability is less than a third of that of India and will fall to less than 35,000 cubic feet by 2025 (.pdf). Already, groundwater is becoming increasingly expensive to extract and surface water steadily more polluted. These are worrying trends, since competition for water and land, when combined with the demographic stress of a young population, have been shown to increase the risk of conflict (.pdf) within, and perhaps between, countries. That prospect, it should go without saying, is something Pakistan can do without.
A shortage of land and water has an inevitable impact on agriculture. Pakistan has long been a net importer of food, but its agricultural trade deficit (.pdf) has grown considerably over the past decade. Imports have declined somewhat in recent years, but this actually reflects worsening, rather than improving, food security. World food prices saw rapid increases after 2007, with prices spiking a year later, when the FAO Food Price Index reached 200. Prices subsequently eased, but they have recently shot up again and are now well above the previous 2008 peak. Pakistan is importing less food, not because it doesn't need it, but because it is being priced out of the world markets. Domestic agricultural production, meanwhile, remains soft, registering only 2 percent growth in 2010 in spite of booming prices (.pdf). That this can be ascribed in part to the floods is a sobering reflection of how vulnerable the sector is to regular droughts and irregular, but devastating, natural disasters. A good crop is expected this year, as is usually the case after a flood, but this cannot be taken as a sure sign that Pakistan's agricultural sector is on an upward path.
Unsurprisingly, Pakistani consumers have seen rapid increases in the prices they pay for food. The Asian Development Bank Food Price Index for Pakistan, which is set at 100 for 2001, reached 216 in 2009, with prices up by 45 percent on the previous two years (.pdf). More recently, food inflation has been more than 20 percent for the past six months. Prices have also been increasingly volatile, with commodities hit by a series of mini-shocks: including the sugar crisis of 2009, the flour crisis of 2010 and the onion war of 2011, among others. Food inflation in Pakistan is greater than in any of the Middle Eastern countries that experienced civil unrest this year (although Iran has seen its prices rise even faster). At the same time, Pakistan also has lower per capita income and higher rates of poverty than any of these countries.
A near empty stomach leads to fatalism and a return for solace in religion.
A dangerous chemistry.
And with a non functional government it is explosive!
The situation in Pakistan is serious and it can lead to further international chaos (and they have nukes too)!
The Pakistan's democratic Govt is no Govt. It is subservient to the Army and the ISI.
The Army to remain relevant requires conflicts to justify their existence.
Terrorist organisation, as per international media reports, are propped up by the ISI as 'strategic assets'.
These 'strategic assets' are used liberally and encouraged.
The terrorist organisations havoc the neighbourhood, while Pakistan claims ignorance and innocence.
Therefore, what is the answer?
Will a better fed Pakistan be an end to the turmoil?