It is refreshing to find out that at a recent webinar arranged by Pakistan Business Council’s Centre of Excellence in Responsible Business (CERB), BR Research’s piece on ‘Economy or environment’ (published Jan 10, 2019) was picked up to kickstart a much-needed debate on the subject.
But CERB’s goods efforts aside, the reality is that most businesses in this country favour coal; some aggressively who even dispute the idea of climate change, others reluctantly on the premise that Pakistan has no option but coal. There is little one can say about the former group, except perhaps say a prayer that may they recover from the poverty of thought. For the latter, here is some food for thought to chew on!
The biggest argument put forward by coal propagandists is that Pakistan’s energy supply is too expensive and that in order to compete with other countries in global export market, Pakistan has no option but to produce cheap power through coal. Then of course there is the classic pro-poor argument that Pakistan must grow at 7 percent to provide jobs to the poor, and if there is no cheap coal power then she won’t be able to grow at that rate, and therefore the poor won’t be lifted out of poverty and joblessness.
To begin with, if that indeed is the choice set, then the poor must be informed and properly made aware about the trade-offs: suffer from poverty now or suffer from the numerous kinds of health hazards that will ensue once coal usage becomes ubiquitous.
Second, it should not be a foregone conclusion that producing cheap power is the only road to competitiveness; there are a host of other reasons why this country struggles to compete globally. Let’s start with fixing those aspects before going down the path of climate irreversibility. It is rather strange to find out that with all their intellectual faculties, and money at their disposal the power sector stakeholders and other industrialists are trying to prepare for tomorrow by setting up an industry of the past. That’s just brilliant!
Well here is the newsflash: there is no Planet-B. And if Pakistan’s coal lobby thinks that the country’s intellectual, business, political, financial elite will be able to fix the damages to climate, air pollution; and hazards to human health, livestock health and farm produce once the genie emerges from increased coal usage, then think again. This country neither has a vibrant representative democracy, nor a China-like single party authoritative model to solve such complex social problems.
This is a country that has not been able to tackle its taxation, effective coordination of tax authorities, land records, poor financial exclusion, equitable distribution of subsidy, electricity theft, kind of problems - solving which are clerical work in comparison to the social problems such as education, health, sanitation, water, basic good quality of milk, which too Pakistan’s polity hasn’t been able to fix.
Coming together – whether under the umbrella of a government or non-government institutions - to solve social issues is a concept lost on this society. Pakistan is no China where the government’s iron hand has been effectively trying to fix air pollution through hard sustained focused efforts. Pakistan’s experience with iron hands (read: military regimes) have taught how weak is their regulatory prowess and power – even in the General Musharraf era the army couldn’t even cut off the politically charged ‘kundas’.
Meanwhile, the country’s political parties cannot even get their own house in order; they have not been able to sow the seeds of representative democracy neither through effective political and fiscal devolution nor even through democratisation of their own party structure. Even businesses have not yet found a way to make their chambers and associations inclusive, representative, research driven, or otherwise come together in an effective, transparent fashion.
Yet the country’s coal lobby thinks Pakistan will be able to solve the climate change problem once it emerges due to increased coal usage. Think again! Unlike other social problems, the multi-faceted problems ensuing coal-led climate change are far too complex for Pakistan. Let’s not bring that genie out of the bottle!
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