Pakistan was supposed to launch The
National Sustainable Development Strategy (NSDS) during UN conference of
sustainable development (also known as Rio+20) held on June20-22 at Rio de
Janerio, Brazil. But, it could only succeed in launching an unapproved draft of
NSDS on June 22 on the sideline of the conference.
According to sources in Pakistani
delegation at UN conference, despite several attempts officials of Climate
Change Ministry could not convince the minister to present the strategy to
federal cabinet for approval.
It was quite embarrassing that Pakistan was
among the first countries to prepare and present National Conservation Strategy
(NCS) in 1992, at the first Earth Summit but was unable to launch its official
NSDS 20 years down the road.
The NSDS is now established in more than
106 countries of the world and in almost all countries of south Asia. The NSDS
has been in the policy pipeline in Pakistan for a number of years now and the
rolling draft has been revised twice before in 2006 and then in 2009 without
getting through the approval process. It got delayed due to a host of
logistical and administrative reasons which can often work to block such
initiatives.
The NSDS by its very nature is a document
which endeavours to shift the traditional development pathway. Officials say it
is also an attempt to define sustainable development and the pathway to a
‘green economy’ in Pakistan’s context.
“NSDS has more than 120 clearly defined
goals spread across a wide range of priority sectors. It lays out an adaptive
system and approach that can be continuously improved, through regular updates,
to respond to evolving challenges. The focus has been on integrating not only
across the three overall dimensions of economic, social and environment, but
also integrating the goals with the existing development paradigm with the aim
of shifting it on to a more sustainable pathway,” Jawed Ali Khan, director
general (environment), Ministry of Climate Change tells TNS.
The drafted strategy emphasises on the
adoption of sustainable development and green economy for Pakistan. According
to ‘Pakistan: Strategic Country Environment Assessment’ prepared by the World
Bank in 2007, environmental degradation cost Pakistan six percent of GDP per
annum.
Experts say the economic growth and
development in Pakistan over the last decade has faced certain unique and
unprecedented challenges such as a string of mega-natural disasters, most of
them climate change triggered, and including two devastating floods in 2010 and
2011, two major droughts of 1999 and 2002, three big cyclones hitting the
southern coast and the horrific earthquake, which shook the Northern Areas and
parts of KPK and AJK in 2005.
“During the last three years, Pakistan has
been going through a difficult phase with economic growth averaging a meager
2.6 percent against 5.3 percent in the last eight years,” says Jawed Ali Khan.
“The cost of environmental degradation in Pakistan is one billion rupees daily.
For us the foremost step towards greening of economy is to minimize this cost.
If we would have been able to decrease this cost by 50 percent in next 10
years, it would be a good achievement”, he says.
The strategy, according to him, is an
attempt to define sustainable development and the pathway to a ‘green economy’
in Pakistan’s context. “The focus has been on integrating not only across the
three overall dimensions of economic, social and environment, but also
integrating the goals with the existing development paradigm with the aim of
shifting it on to a more sustainable pathway.”
Khan tells TNS that Pakistan’s economic
progress is marred with a number of inefficiencies in the water, energy and
agricultural sectors. “Overall, it is challenged by the exponentially high
population growth, rapid urbanisation, weak enforcement of environmental
regulations and move towards unbridled consumerism all of which further drain
an already strained economy.”
To ensure an effective implementation of
the NSDS the enlisted strategic goals are translated into a focused agenda
encompassing three levels of national governance — federal, provincial and
local - along with an accountability structure. In this regard, the NSDS has
identified ten core programme areas under a “Green Action Agenda” within the
three globally accepted development dimensions.
Climate change, according to NSDS, directly
and very strongly impinges upon future planning for sustainable development in
Pakistan. It poses a major threat to food, water and energy security in the
country.
The estimated cost for adapting to future
climate impacts ranges from $6 billion to $14 billion annually for Pakistan
over the next 40 years— the number of which is likely to escalate. “These
figures re-enforce the inescapable linkage between climate impacts and
sustaining future development in the country,” it reads.
The concept of the “green economy” is still
a vague one and the Rio+20 meeting failed to deliver the expected clarity. It
has only formulated a plan and time frame for countries to collectively define
it in the coming year.
In Pakistan, the NSDS exercise was also used
to try to define this concept within our own country driven context and our
domestically defined priorities. “It is believed that the confusion and lack of
clarity at the international level provided Pakistan the flexibility and
freedom to carve out our own version of a future “green economy” which was free
from any global biases.”
These array of goals have been further
prioritized into a “green action agenda” comprising 10 core objectives. “Most
of the defined goals and objectives make perfect economic and political sense
providing opportunities even if the promises of global funds and technology
transfer are not delivered. However, conducive and specialised financing and an
access to appropriate technologies, whenever it materializes at the international
level, will certainly aid this process towards sustainability in Pakistan”,
says Malik Amin Aslam, ex-environment minister of Pakistan and senior
Climate Policy Adviser to UNDP who has
prepared the latest draft of NSDS.
The crux of the NSDS draft that was
launched at Rio+20 is to define a future development pathway for Pakistan which
can balance the needs for social responsibility, economically inclusive growth
while addressing the rising environmental challenges faced by Pakistan. The
reduction of poverty, provision of jobs through an alternate green economic
growth and the positive utilisation of the huge youth bulge of the country
remain the key challenges.
“And definitely we have tried to ensure its
relevance to the ground realities. That is precisely the reason why the
previous version of the NSDS has been updated. The objective being to ensure
that it reflects the social, economic and environmental challenges currently
faced by Pakistan including, very importantly, the issue of climate change which
has now been given additional focus. Also, on the administrative side, the post
18th amendment changes in respective responsibilities between the Federal and
provincial levels has been duly reflected in the implementation arm of the
strategy”, Malik Amin Aslam tells TNS.
The political changes back home is one of
the major reasons which delayed its approval although it had gone through a
very extensive consultation process involving a diverse array of stakeholders.
“
“I was very impressed by the rigour and
commitment shown by various stakeholders in providing inputs for improvement of
the NSDS which were incorporated through the updating process. Thus, as the
NSDS was in its final shape a decision was taken to go ahead with its
international launch at Rio+20 as a final draft policy document. Hopefully the
Ministry of Climate Change will try to get it approved from the Cabinet as soon
as possible”, he says.
Experts doubt that NSDS would change
anything on the ground in Pakistan as it has taken a number of decisions on
sustainable development like adoption of the Economic Growth Strategy 2011,
approval of plans of action on maximising energy efficiency and developing
renewable source of energy, the approval of a Climate Change Policy and the
creation of a Ministry of Climate Change and launching of an ambitious
programme of hydropower generation.
Like all other policy initiatives,
implementation of the stated goals of the NSDS certainly remains one of the key
challenges if not the biggest one. “NSDS is a good document but the main issue
remains what would be the institutional framework to implement it.
The bigger question is how different
ministries and provincial government would establish liaison and who would
provide finances to implement it. It is also needed that NSDS should be made a
living document which can easily be changed according to the changing ground
realities”, Dr Abid Qayyum Suleri, executive director of Sustainable
Development Policy Institute tells TNS.
The strategy has tried to define practical
timeline for implementation along with predefined “triggers” to propel and
sustain the process of implementation. All of this, according to officials, has
been done to ensure that, once approved, the NSDS does not become another
“dustbin” strategy that withers away on an office stack.
These implementation triggers include the
enactment of appropriate legislation in the Parliament within a specified
timeframe, the empowerment of a National Sustainable Development Council along
with similar bodies at the provincial and local levels, creation of a
specialised sustainable development fund and the establishment of Standing
Committees of Parliament on Sustainable Development which can periodically
monitor and guide the process of implementation.
“So far, we have failed to see any
political interest in NSDS. It took us six months to prepare to take part in
Rio+20 but only after two weeks of the conference government transferred the
secretary of climate change ministry while new secretary is going to be retired
in November and has least interest in NSDS. We were hoping that developed world
would make promises to provide funds and transfer green technology to
developing countries at Rio+20 but both things have not happened there. Now, we
once again are going to restart a consultation process to review NSDS according
to the latest situation. It can take several months now on to prepare final
draft of NSDS and then several more to get approval of cabinet to declare it as
official strategy of country”, says an official of ministry of climate change
on the condition of anonymity.
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