|
 Lifting the Lid on Foreign
Investment Contracts: The Real Deal for
Sustainable Development
Dr.Shaheen Rafi Khan and Moeed Yousaf
et al
This is a report on a little known, little understood area of foreign investment relations between corporations and governments. It is an area that is largely hidden from public scrutiny. Yet it has far-reaching implications for the way of life, the rights, and the natural environments of millions of people in countries around the world. (Download paper  )
Alternative Resource Mobilization Strategies for Pakistan’s Health Care
Working Paper No. 102
Dr. Shafqat Shehzad
The effort to improve ways to finance health care has been the guiding force for improving health outcomes in many developing and developed countries. However, total spending on health varies sharply across countries. Whereas, in many developed countries populations enjoy universal access to range of health services financed through general tax revenues, social insurance, private insurance and user charges, in many low-income countries, financial protection against the cost of illness is still incomplete. The proportion of populations sharing risk is low, and differential between access to health care services among the rich and poor is wide. The paper presents evidence on current practices of Pakistan's health care finance and delivery, and suggests ways through which alternative resource mobilization strategies can be devised for health care in Pakistan. Some popular methods of health care financing being practiced in other countries are community financing, user fees, health insurance, and assistance from donors. However, resources can also be saved from wasteful and ineffective uses of health technology (services, programs and procedures), and result in improving efficiency of existing health care services. Reallocation of resources within the health sector can be cost effective. The paper develops a criterion for choosing a financing system that takes into account factors like ease of use of the system, revenue generating ability, effects on service provision, and community participation in the socio-economic context of Pakistan.
Main words: Resource mobilization, health care finance and delivery, health insurance, community participation, health expenditure.
JEL Classification: H51, 118, H0
How the International Trading System is Changing, and why this may not be Good for Developing Countries
Working Paper No. 101
Dirk Swart and Adil Najam
The essay looks at the proliferation of bilateral and minilateral preferential trading agreements from the perspective of the developing countries. The proliferation is so dramatic that when considered collectively might even signify a fundamental change in the nature of the world trading system – an emergence of a “shadow” international system. The changes – especially the increase of bilateral and regional trading arrangements – may not necessarily be good for the developing countries. Three aspects are considered. First, the benefits of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) for the developing countries are often not trade related. They tend to be limited only to a few products. The proliferation of such arrangements can distract the attention and resources of the developing countries away from global multilateral arrangements. Second, historically the developing countries have been wary of the WTO, but it has become more South friendly. More Southern members have joined, more Southern countries have become important trading players, and more Southern countries have become comfortable in using the WTO dispute resolution mechanisms. More importantly, WTO remains the forum where long-lasting trade rules are set. Finally, even though preferential trading arrangements might seem to give developing countries more voice, they do not necessarily promise more say to the South. Developing countries should tread into the growth fields of PTAs with some care, and they should certainly not do so at the expense of their full participation in the WTO system. Resource Mobilization for Pakistan’s Health Care: Myth or Reality?
Policy brief 20
Shafqat Shehzad
The policy brief highlights the importance of exploring alternative resource mobilization strategies for Pakistan’s health care. The need arises because the conventional methods of health care financing through tax revenues have failed to meet the health care needs of all, resulting in differential access to health care facilities by different income groups. Whereas, in many developed countries, universal health coverage and financial protection against the cost of illnesses is almost complete, in the developing countries, access and utilization of health care is low and selective. For Pakistan to expand its access to health care for all, alternative resource mobilization strategies need to be developed and proposed. Pakistan needs to learn from the experience of other countries, because the process of generating extra resources for health care has resulted in mixed experiences for different countries. Pakistan needs to start the process with caution, not blindly importing models of health care financing, but designing policies that are suitable for its own socio-economic context.
The policy brief presents evidence on current practices of Pakistan's health care finance and delivery, and suggests ways through which alternative resource mobilization strategies can be proposed. Some popular methods of health care financing being practiced in other countries are community financing, user fees, health insurance, and assistance from donors. However, resources can also be saved from wasteful and ineffective uses of health technology (services, programs and procedures) that may result in improving efficiency of existing health care services. Reallocation of resources within the health sector can therefore, turn out to be cost effective. The policy brief discusses a criteria for choosing a financing system that takes into account factors like ease of use of the system, revenue generating ability, effects on service provision, and community participation in the socio-economic context of Pakistan.
An Extended Model of the Determinants of Child Survival in Pakistan
Research paper 29
Shafqat Shehzad
The critics of Mosely and Chen framework (1984) for “proximate determinants” of child survival argue that besides socio-demographic factors, other factors such as economic and physiological are important for child survival. An earlier study by Naushin and Kiani (1994), estimated only socio-demographic factors as important determinants of child survival in Pakistan. This study incorporates the critique of Mosely and Chen framework and extends the model for child survival probability in Pakistan. The study discovers that simple application of Mosely and Chen model may undermine the crucial effects of other important factors. The study estimates these effects, and finds out that household income, child’s age, premature births, and average number of births turn out to be significant predictors of child survival in Pakistan. They were not estimated in the earlier work.
Contamination of Chicken Eggs Near the Dump Site on The Edge of Peshawar, Pakistan by dioxins, PCBs and Hexachlorobenzene
"Keep the Promise, Eliminate POPs!"
Campaign Report
Prepared by Dioxin, PCBs and Waste Working Group of the International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN) Secretariat, Sustainable Development Policy Institute - SDPI (Pakistan) and Arnika Association (Czech Republic)
Islamabad - Prague - 24 April 2005 Executive Summary
Free-range chicken eggs collected near the dump site in the neighborhood of Peshawar reached levels of dioxins close to the EU limit and exceeded the newly proposed EU action level for these highly toxic compounds. Dioxin levels in chicken eggs from Peshawar was almost 3-times higher than the background levels of these compounds in chicken eggs. In addition, high levels of DDT found in the samples is more than four and a half times higher than the EU limit for the sum of DDT in eggs. To our knowledge, this study represents the first data about U-POPs in any food item from Pakistan. Bad practices in the disposal of mixed wastes, including ashes from waste incineration and open wastes burning that occurs occasionally at the dump site (near the sampling site) were found to be a most obvious sources of contamination in eggs from Pakistan. This conclusion is based on comparison of dioxin congeners patterns and other considerations.
The toxic substances measured in this study are targeted for reduction and elimination by the Stockholm Convention which holds its first Conference of the Parties beginning 2 May 2005. Pakistan signed the Convention on the 6th December 2001 and intends to ratify it. The Convention mandates Parties to take specific actions aimed at eliminating these pollutants from the global environment. We view the Convention text as a promise to take the actions needed to protect Pakistani and global publics health and environment from the injuries that are caused by persistent organic pollutants, a promise that was agreed by representatives of the global community: governments, interested stakeholders, and representatives of civil society. We call upon Pakistani governmental representatives and all stakeholders to honor the integrity of the Convention text and keep the promise of reduction and elimination of POPs.
View Report File Size 611 kb
Information and Telecommunications Technologies Leading the Way: Pakistan’s Response
Working paper 100
Brig. (Retd) Mohammad Yasin
Abstract
Global trends in information technology and telecommunications are the adoption of higher speeds, broader bandwidth, optical fiber and convergence. Internet connectivity and mobile cellular telephony have evolved very rapidly. In many countries, including Pakistan, cellular telephones have outnumbered fixed line phones. Four words sum up today’s telecommunication market: private, competitive, mobile and global. Pakistan now has a tentative roadmap in the form of policies on information technology, telecommunication deregulation and mobile cellular telephony. A lot of work has gone into improving the telecommunication infrastructure and services in Pakistan. However, the existing infrastructure and services are unfairly distributed. Vast areas in the country remain unserved and underserved. A deregulated and competitive environment with good investment in the field of information technology and telecommunications seems to be picking up momentum. However, because of PTCL’s strong standing and its 88 percent ownership by the government, potential domestic investors are fearful of the company.
It was intended to update an earlier paper written in 1998 titled “Trends in Development of Information and Telecommunications.” However, because of significant changes that have taken place globally, regionally and in Pakistan, this paper contains a lot of new information.
Air Pollution: Key Environmental Issues in Pakistan
Working paper 99
Mahmood A. Khwaja and Shaheen Rafi Khan
Abstract
Air pollution is rapidly growing environmental problem in Pakistan. Highly inefficient energy use, accelerated growth in vehicle population and vehicle kilometers traveled, increasing industrial activity without adequate air emission treatment or control, open burning of solid waste including plastic, and use of ozone depleting substances (ODSs) are some of the major causes of deterioration of ambient air quality.
Some key environmental issues about air quality in Pakistan have been assessed and discussed, using the Pressure, State, Impact and Response (P-S-I-R) framework.
Rapidly growing energy demand, fuel substitution such as high emitting coal and oil, and high-energy intensity are the key factors contributing to air pollution. Some factors contributing to high-energy intensity are transmission and distribution losses in power generation, fuel prices subsidies on diesel and ageing vehicles, which are primarily diesel powered.
The state of air quality has been assessed by examining the emission levels of air pollutants and ambient air quality. The average increase in sulfur dioxide across major emitting sectors (industry, transport and power) has been 23-fold over the past 20 years. Similarly, nitrogen oxides increased to 25-fold in the power sector and carbon dioxide increased an average of fourfold. Pakistan’s per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are far below the global average.
Ambient air quality data show that carbon monoxide levels in Karachi and Lahore considerably exceed WHO’s recommended levels. Particulate matter content cross safety levels in the major industrial cities in the Punjab province. The reported lead levels in ambient air sites in Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Lahore and Karachi are also quite high compared to WHO’s permissible levels.
The health impacts of air, water pollution and productivity losses from deforestation and soil erosion have been assessed at 1.71 billion dollars, or 3.3 percent of GNP, in the early 90s. The losses attributed to air pollution, in terms of health care costs, amount to 500 million dollars a year.
To combat air pollution, the government has formulated acts and policies, including the National Environment Action Plan (NEAP). Pakistan Environmental Protection Act, 1997 (PEPA-97) covers air, water, soil and noise pollution, including hazardous waste disposal and vehicular pollution. Its section 15, sub-sections 1 to 3, pertain to regulation of motor vehicles.
NEAP reflects a renewed commitment to environment and focuses on taking immediate measures in four priority areas of concerns – air, water, solid waste, and ECO system management – to achieve a visible improvement in the quality of environment, including air.
Southern Agenda on Trade and Environment Phase II
Regional Consultation - South / Southeast Asia Background Paper
Working paper 98
Shaheen Rafi Khan, Shahrukh Rafi Khan, Faisal Haq Shaheen, Abid Suleri, Sajid Kazmi, Fahd Ali, Syed Qasim Ali Shah and Moeed Yusuf
Abstract
The momentum of WTO negotiations stalled post the Cancun ministerial. Bolstered by China’s joining their ranks, the increasing assertiveness of the South ground the Northern juggernaut to a halt. As a consequence of the deadlock, the US continued to push its alternative track trade policy, that is to engage in bilateral and regional trade agreements. However, while current US and EU trade policies may be cause for concern, an element of posturing is built into its recent moves. The message quite clearly is that the Doha Round needs to be put back on track and that multilateralism in trade negotiations suits both the North and the South.
Doha fundamentally changed the rules of the game on trade and environment. The issue is no longer whether trade and environment are linked. This is now a given. The challenge is how best to address environmental problems within a rules-based multilateral trading system. The challenge for the South in this changed scenario is to craft a Southern agenda which can counterbalance – as well as benefit from – asymmetries related to affluence, bargaining power, science, technology and institutional capacity. Among others the paper identifies two negotiating premises for the South:
- Persisting with sustainable developmentRe-assessing special and differential treatment
- Recognizing market realities
- Developing regional links
Clearly, the South needs to persist with its stance that the environment can not be divorced from its broader context of sustainable development. In the exclusive focus on inter-generational justice, the environmental movement has left out intra-generational justice that sustainable development reintroduced. To attain sustainable development, or more specifically to eradicate poverty, a goal endorsed by the preamble to the WTO treaty, poor countries need resources. Trade must serve this end via the agency of measures within the WTO, such as SDT and market access, and also by ensuring that trade is not immiserizing. The South also needs to understand in assuming its negotiating positions that the North more often than not negotiates on behalf of multinational corporations (MNCs). Understanding that they are negotiating with “the profit motive” should inject a dose of realism into the positions adopted. Also, the South has little room for maneuver when it comes to dealing with the private sector. Increasingly, businesses in the North are being required by their boards/shareholders to do businesses with firms that meet certain ‘voluntary’ environmental and quality standards. The only option Southern exporters have is to conform or lose markets.
The paper will relate these negotiating premises in four areas of concern to South/South East Asia within the WTO negotiating framework. These are:
- The Agreement on Agriculture (AoA)
- Trade and Environment (T&E)
- General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)
- Trade in Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)
Partition of India: The Case of Sindh
Working paper 97
Ahmad Salim
Abstract
The relative harmony among the Hindus and Muslims of Sindh, established over centuries became directly at risk due to many traditional and non-traditional factors. Traditional factors including the economic exploitation of Sindhi Muslim at the hands of Hindu moneylender arose after the British conquest and the resultant British Civil Code, which offered protection and prospects to the Hindu bania (money-lender). These factors jeopardized the possibilities of continuity of non-violent social infrastructure of Sindhi people. Related to these are non-traditional threats that directly devastated peoples’ lives. They included social unrest flowing from communal hatreds; increasing poverty amongst the Muslims; as well as other immediate threats to human lives from disturbances and riots. It was demonstrated through incidents like riots of 1831, Larkana riots in 1928, Masjid Manzilgah issue and so on. Thus, it becomes far more imperative to consider these issues in detail for a true understanding of the constituents of the socio-political and economic fabric of Sindh.
Another important issue in the history of Sindh was its separation from Bombay presidency, which left the Sindh Hindus very bitter because they thought that their economic and political interests would be at stake in a government dominated by Muslims thus increasing communal bitterness. Partition of Sindh did not prove to be beneficial to the ordinary Sindhi, the status of hari (tenant) never changed. Although, he underwent a change of masters – from Hindu capitalists to Muslim waderas (landlords).
This study first identifies the key factors that increased communal bitterness and then systematically explores how and why they directly affected the lives and social obligations of the individuals. Second, it assesses the communal atmosphere shortly after the Indo-Pak Partition of 1947. The absence of large-scale violence made the Sindhi experience different from that of the Punjabis and Bengalis. Among the Sindhi Hindus, there were fewer dispositions to panic because of violence; they panicked more because of measures adopted by the Sindhi Muslims wielding political power at the time shortly before and after the Partition. An assessment is also made about how with the influx of refugees in Sindh, Muhajir Nationalism was promulgated and Sindhi culture and its indigenous people became handicapped in the hands of people from Punjab and India.
Hazardous Home-based Sub-contracted Work
 A Study of Multiple Tiered ExploitationShahrukh Rafi Khan, Saba Gul Khattak, and Sajid KazmiA growing proportion of the work force in Pakistan’s urban centers-especially in cities like Karachi-is being absorbed into home-based, sub-contracted work. However, there is little rigorous research on the subject.The research conducted for this book indicates that this section of the work force is highly exploited. Wages are low, the hours long irregular, and the work repetitive and often hazardous. There is a concentration of women and children, particularly girls, in the work force.Relying upon empirical data, this book adds to the conceptual and empirical base of the limited knowledge available to date. It focuses, on the national level, on micro and macro issues and on linking home-based work to the global value chain. At the micro level, the authors look at various issues, particularly the health and economic aspects of home-based work, while at the macro level they locate home-based work in the broader labour market and link it to structural.
Sober Reflection: Considering the Rush to
Regionalism
There
are unmistakable signs of a rush to regionalism in international
trade and investment. Of the 273 preferential trade agreements (PTAs)
that had been notified to the WTO as of December 2003, only 120
pre-date 1995.This
SDPI paper, written by Aaron Cosbey, the Associate and Senior Advisor,
Trade and Investment, and Associate, Climate Change and Energy at
the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Winnipeg,
Canada, asks whether the rush benefits developing countries. It
argues that PTAs are harmful to the multilateral trade regime in
a number of possible ways. As well, their contributions to economic
improvement are uncertain at best, and depend on the presence of
a number of other factors. In some ways PTAs may actually harm signatories
(loss of tariff revenue, loss of policy space). However, they do
provide a platform for negotiated progress on a number of important
non-economic objectives, from cementing peaceful political relations
to pursuing common environmental problems. Developing
countries need to pursue a new kind of regionalism: one that avoids
the downside risks of the current model and concentrates on areas
of nigh net payoff, such as lowering trade costs (trade facilitation,
reduced costs of standards compliance). Such agreements could still
provide the forum for the associated non-economic benefits, but
with fewer costs.Aaron
Cosbey is an environmental economist specializing in the areas of
trade, investment and sustainable development and climate change.
He has worked with SDPI as research collaborator, contributing author,
conference participant and like-minded colleague since participating
in the Second Annual Sustainable Development Conference in 1996.
He is a Member of the Canadian Deputy Minister for International
Trade's Academic Advisory Council on Canadian Trade Policy, of the
Canadian Minister for International Trade's Environmental Sectoral
Advisory Group on International Trade, where he chairs the SAGIT's
Working Group on the Free Trade Area of the Americas. He has published
widely for over twelve years in the area of trade, investment and
sustainable development. This paper was prepared and presented by
him at SDPI’s Seventh Sustainable Development Conference ‘Troubled
Times: Sustainable Development and Governance in the Age of Extremes’,
8-10 December 2004 in Islamabad. It is being published as part of
the Conference Anthology and an SDPI paper. View
paper (pdf 208 kb)
Sustainable Development: Bridging the Research/Policy
gaps in Southern Contexts
The
two-volume book results from the SDPI’s concern for translating
specialized multi and transdisciplinary research into effective
policy measures in the global South. For this purpose, SDPI organized
its 6th Sustainable Development Conference titled, “Sustainable
Development: Bridging the research/policy gaps in Southern Contexts,” in December 2003 where researchers, academicians, creative writers,
theorists, activists and policy-makers from different regions of
the world met in Islamabad to debate and discuss issues such as
translating research produced in the third world contexts into effective
policy for sustainable development, sustainable development as a
question of reorienting research/policy connection, and claiming
and putting value into the fragmented and disparate work that speaks
to and about the third world.
The
two-volume book is an end product of the above mentioned conference
papers that were reviewed and approved for publication. The book
was launched at the occasion of the SDPI’s Seventh Sustainable
Development Conference on December 8th 2004 by Maj.(retd) Tahir
Iqbal, Minister for Environment at the Holiday Inn.
 |
|
| Chairman
of SDPI's Board of Governors, Shams ul Mulk presenting the Sixth
SDC Anthology to Maj.(retd) Tahir Iqbal, Minister for Environment,
while Dr. Saba Khattak, Executive Director of SDPI and Dr. Ashis
Nandy, the key note speaker from the Centre for the Study of
Developing Societies, India look on. |
|
The
first volume on Environment examines these issues in the context
of the natural environment and its impact upon human life. Specifically,
the first section in this volume looks at the environmental dimensions
of human security and livelihoods, at natural resource management
and its interface with governance issues, at the design and enforcement
of environmental quality standards in South Asia, and renewable
energy.
The
second volume on Social Policy addresses trade and sustainable development,
globalization and the WTO in the context of people’s livelihoods,
and governance issues. Contributors to the second volume examine
the complex interlinkages between gender issues and labor policy,
peace and conflict, migration, education, language and identity,
mass media and its control, population policy and the pressures
to conform to global agendas. Most interestingly, this volume also
contains a section on the voices and role of fiction writers in
the production of alternative realities.
The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) and the Oxford
University Press (OUP) have jointly published this book.
« previous page
|
