ws READ RIGHT INSTITUTE a IMPORTANT ARTICLES FOR ESSAY AND CURRENT AFFAIRS Nov to 30th Nov CONTENTS: US & South Asia Climate adaptation US-China thaw? Geoeconomic pivot Foreign trade debate Palestine conflict Crisis of humanity Make companies pay for climate change WHATSAPP @ 03130443344 TO ADD IN WHATSAPP GROUPiw READ RIGHT PAKISTAN’S strategic ties with China are the keystone of its foreign policy. But it also wants friendly ties with Washington and has been concerned that the US-China rivalry could restrict its relationship with either country. The encouraging outcome of the Bidenxi meeting on the sidelines of the recent APEC summit in San Francisco may ease some of Pakistan's concerns. Washington appears focused on containing China's military and technological ascent more than its economic rise, which is beneficial to the US and the global economy, and may be open to healthy economic competition with Beijing. Geopolitics, too, is opening to a wider contest. As the US and China compete to reorder the world according to their respective visions, many countries are aligning with both to maximise their global engagement and optimise their interests, so as to be comfortable with any future international order. BRICS is just one example of this ‘multi-vector foreign policy. But Pakistan lacks the strategy and capacity to benefit from the opportunities. Its ties with China and the US evoke conflicting public emotions: a romanticised image of ties with China versus an adverse view of the US. US & SOUTH ASIA Yet officials are conscious of the risk of Pakistan becoming overly dependent on China, and feel the country must have a working relationship with the US, its leading export destination, a major foreign investor, a lifeline to its IMF-dependent economy, and a key stakeholder in South Asian stability, Rivalries and geopolitics have become more complex. But public reservations against the US remain. tis true the benefits of ties with the US have come at a heavy cost. By supporting the elitist-led, security-dominated, ideologically rooted, and externally dependent outlook on the country, the Us hindered Pakistan's political process. Its wars fomented instability and extremism in Pakistan. But the public must understand that Pakistan's leadership that partnered with Washington was equally invested in US policies and should share the blame. There are other misperceptions. For decades, Pakistan's leaders, strategic community and public believed in the centrality of Pakistan-US ties to US policies in South Asia, largely because of the high-profile aid relationship. They are now disappointed the US has abandoned an ally and ‘switched’ to india. In fact, substantial US aid was not equivalent to a substantive relationship.c2 READ RIGHT policy. But it found Pakistan's services valuable in meeting specific and sporadic geopolitical and security challenges from time to time. That is why it found no contradiction between relations with Pakistan and its support to non-aligned India following the 1962 Sino-India war. It was not until the rise of China, the onset of globalisation, the advent of _ information technology, and emergence of _ religious extremism that America started seeing certain lasting strategic, economic, and security interests in South Asia, Through its relationship with India, it hoped to contain Chinese influence in the region and beyond, and sought Pakistan's cooperation in meeting security threats. Since then, Great Power rivalry, geopolitics, and regional politics have become more complex, with the assault on globalisation by trade wars, Covid- 19, supply chain issues, and national security concerns. After a failed attempt by the US to de- globalise, efforts at re-globalisation, as qualified by geopolitics, are now afoot. They are marked on the one hand by China's expanding economic footprint, which has spurred the US to enhance its global economic influence, and on the other, by the attempts of rising middle powers to create a multipolar world across ‘geopolitical barriers. This has blurred the distinction between geo- economics and geopolitics. And rising India finds itself at a crossroads. Its geostrategic position on the Indian Ocean and border dispute with China make it America's natural geopolitical partner, while its technological and economic potential make it an attractive partner in geo-economics. The US wants to accelerate Al development and feels India can help meet its shortage of “scientists, technologists and engineers’. America's ties with India and Pakistan are thus not comparable. Pakistan has not lost its value for Washington but its ties of the past won't be its future. The country will have to reinvent its relevance to America's South Asia policy by focusing on its economy and shared security interests. Geopolitics though relevant will not drive the relationship. Bottom line: Ties with the US are not perfect but are still necessary. Ties with China are indispensable but not sufficient for Pakistan's needs. The writer, a former ambassador, is adjunct professor Georgetown University and Visiting Senior Research Fellow, National University of Singapore. Published in Dawn, November 30th, 2023is) wo SOCIETIES across the globe face the hardest and most long-lasting challenge to human progress in terms of climate change. Many regions are already feeling the severe impact of climate change. The developing countries, with their limited preparedness to respond to natural disasters triggered by climate change, are especially vulnerable. Thus, reducing the risk of climate catastrophes and developing the resilience of vulnerable communities has become an increasingly urgent task. However, tackling the impact of climate change in fragile settings requires transformative, and not incremental, action. This is practically impossible without having adequate resources and the technical expertise required to make infrastructure and livelihood resilient to climate change. Yet, there is a substantial shortfall of resources, resulting in an adaptation gap, which is the difference between the climate adaptation needs of a society in terms of resources and what has been done to make social and economic systems resilient to climate change. Recently, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released its flagship report on the adaptation gap. The report claims that the adaptation finance gap is between $194 billion CLIMATE ADAPTATION and $366bn per year, which is at least 10 times less than adaptation finance needs. As per the report, over time this gap has widened further, and conservative estimates show that it is about 50 per cent higher than the previous estimates. Adding insult to injury (owing to the reluctance of the developed country parties), the limited progress on establishing the Loss and Damage Funds also disheartening. The adaptation gap is more severe in developing countries. The UNEP report elucidated that the current trajectory of temperature increase is putting us on a dangerous path of an expected two-degree Celsius increase in temperature by the end of the century. This means that even achieving the ambitious mitigation targets would not prevent unfavourable outcomes, hence adapting to a changing climate is a matter of survival. However, as climate change is becoming more frequent, intense, and abrupt, and the risks of irreversible damage are rising, climate finance flows have contracted. Thus, the need to taper the adaptation finance gap and speed up global efforts for climate adaptation has never been more crucial. The adaptation gap is more severe and pronounced in developing countries, such asc2 READ RIGHT Pakistan, due to their lack of capacity and preparation to mobilise climate finance. This is also because climate finance is an underdeveloped subject, while the share of resources allocated for climate adaptation is often very small. Furthermore, adaptation planning and implementation are missing at the local level where the vulnerable communities are located, resulting in their greater exposure to natural disasters driven by climate change. In the current state of affairs, Pakistan must focus on three things: developing technical and institutional capacity to seek adaptation finance; mobilising resources to invest in climate adaptation from international, domestic and private sources of finance; and reforming domestic financial institutions to eliminate hostility, and adopt modern practices which encourage financial flows and pave the way to financial inclusion, including adaptation finance investment flows. Adopting novel approaches to seek climate finance and investing in the resilience of developing communities are not only beneficial from the business point of view but they also have the potential to reduce climate risks and improve equity and social justice. Planners in Pakistan must understand that climate-induced shocks and stresses will threaten fiscal stability, resulting in undermining the developing progress and worsening the prevailing economic downturn. Governments across the world have already recognised this and are in the process of setting aside the budget for investment in climate adaptation. Research indicates that just a small fraction of the total wealth can develop climate resilience, saving millions of lives and trillions worth of damage to assets. Setting aside a climate budget is thus inevitable, except that post-disaster payouts and the rehabilitation of affected populations would be in addition to the cost of the damage and losses to infrastructure and livelihood. Hence, investment in making social and economic systems more resilient would not only help guard the population against the impact of climate catastrophes but would also cushion the dividends of economic growth which are otherwise exposed to climate risk. The writer has a PhD degree in economics from Durham University UK and works as the director of research programmes for the Social Protection Resource Centre Islamabad. Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2023i OVERSHADOWED by Israel's war on Gaza, the meeting earlier this _month between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping didn't receive as much media attention as China-US summits usually do. But it yielded a welcome thaw in their long frosty relations. Their meeting on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic (APEC) forum in San Francisco was their first face-to-face interaction in over a year, and ranged over bilateral and global issues and alll the contentious areas that divide them. Both sides saw the summit as an opportunity to stabilise ties, which in recent years have sunk to an all-time low, ‘The meeting was preceded by a series of visits to Beijing by top American officials, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, CIA chief Bill Burns and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi also visited Washington in October. These multiple diplomatic engagements helped to bring down the temperature and also create a helpful environment for the California summit. No big breakthrough was anticipated at the summit. And there wasn't one. However, agreement on several fronts marked a step towards easing tensions, holding out the possibility of building on the modest progress pao US-CHINA THAW? achieved for a more predictable and stable relationship. Improvement in the tone of the relationship was significant, with positive vibes from both sides. Xi told Biden that the “planet was big enough’ for both the global powers. Biden spoke of the need to responsibly manage the competition “so it doesr't result in conflict’, He also said that “a stable relationship between the world's two largest economies is not merely good for the two economies but for the world’. In his solo press conference, Biden later repeated a remark he made earlier this year that he saw Xi as a “dictator”, This provoked an angry response from Beijing but did not detract from the diplomatic advance made at the summit. The Chinese media described the meeting as “a new starting point’ for bilateral relations. China's foreign ministry spokeswoman called the summit “a positive, comprehensive and constructive meeting of strategic and far-reaching significance”. The three areas where the two sides were able to reach agreement were: to restore high-level military-to-military communication, establish a presidential hotline, and cooperate to restrict the production of fentanyl, a precursor chemical responsible for drug overdoses in the US.sp w READ RIGHT Re-establishing military relations, suspended by Beijing since 2022, was, of course, the most significant. This means the resumption of China- US Defence Policy Coordination Talks, China-US Military Maritime Consultative + Agreement meetings, and telephonic contact between theatre commanders. If implemented without hurdles, this should help to reduce the risk of miscalculation, especially given the fraught situation in the South China Sea, where both sides have air and naval deployments. The future trajectory of this critical relationship has {far-reaching repercussions for the world. The agreement on counter-narcotics involved China's commitment to check the production of fentanyl precursors to prevent their ending up with drug cartels and contributing to America’s drug problem. Biden is reported to have conveyed his appreciation for Xi's commitment, while also saying he would “trust but verify’ Chinese actions in this regard. The creation of a counter-narcotics working group is expected to coordinate these efforts. Cooperation in these areas and the mutual desire to strengthen communication channels may help to halt the slide in China-US relations. But while the talks were said to be wide-ranging and also covered the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the summit didn't see differences between the two global powers narrowing over the major issues and disputes that drive tensions in their strategic competition — Taiwan, trade, technology curbs and military postures. Indeed, both sides used the summit to again spell out their positions and red lines on Taiwan. Xi told Biden to cease arming Taiwan and reiterate that reunification was inevitable. The Chinese foreign ministry readout later said Beijing expected the US side to now “follow through on its statement of not supporting Taiwan independence and support Chinas peaceful reunification". Biden called for restraint by China on Taiwan while reiterating US support for its ‘One China’ policy. Western analysts noted that Biden seemed to step back from his tough rhetoric of a year ago, when he repeatedly referred to China's coercive posture on Taiwan, and in a departure from previous US policy, even said American forces would intervene militarily to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion. Taiwan, however, continues to be a dangeroussp w READ RIGHT flashpoint in the China-US confrontation. This was. laid bare earlier this year when there was a near collision in June between a Chinese warship and a United States Navy guided-missile destroyer. This underscored what the _ international ‘community has long feared — an inadvertent drift into a conflict that neither side wants but may be unable to avert in a region bristling with heightened military activity. Thus, the renewal of high-level military contacts acquires importance in enabling the two countries to reduce the risk of a full-blown crisis or conflict. US-China competition has also intensified in the area of technology. Washington is engaged in a battle to maintain supremacy with an intense ‘chip war’ underway. A year ago, it imposed sweeping measures to bar American companies and allied countries from exporting chips and advanced chip equipment to China to cripple its semiconductor industry, which manufactures chips and circuits for modern electronics ranging from supercomputers and smartphones to automobiles. Despite the fact that these sanctions proved to be counterproductive, last month the US tightened restrictions on exports of advanced computer chips to retard China's efforts to develop artificial intelligence. The US justified the new curbs as aimed at limiting China's use of these for military purposes. Bejing slammed them as a violation of “the principles of fair competition” and designed to thwart its technological progress. Given unresolved differences on these and other contentious issues in their strategic rivalry, the San Francisco summit represents a tentative melting of the ice between the two superpowers, but little more for now. It suggests that in the months ahead, the focus of the relationship will be on crisis management. Nevertheless, the effort at de-escalation comes as a relief for the international community increasingly concerned about a confrontation that has far-reaching repercussions for the global economy and world stability. The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN. Published in Dawn, Novernber 27th, 2023@ READ RIGHT a GEOECONOMIC PIVOT FOR nearly two years, the subject of geoeconomics has been discussed in Pakistan's academic and official echelons. In an article published in this paper in December 2021, this writer had discussed the prospects of geoeconomics benefiting Pakistan by leveraging our economic geography to address geostrategic challenges — it being understood that geoeconomics is not a replacement for geopolitics and that both must work in tandem. However, it is important to recognise that Pakistan's pivot to geoeconomics is different from the way the term evolved in the Cold War context. US strategists proposed to use geoeconomics to gain geopolitical advantage against adversaries. An elaborate menu of economic instruments was developed: promoting or blocking investments, market access, or infrastructure projects and imposing economic sanctions, tariff wars, and technology wars. This represented a skewed dimension of geoeconomics suiting only stronger economies, while working against. vulnerable ones. This is not the geoeconomic pivot to which Pakistan aspires. For Pakistan, the pivot to geoeconomics would mean benefiting from our unique economic geography. Pakistan is at the confluence of three major theatres of global contestation. First is the Indo- Pacific region, which extends from Japan through the Pacific and Indian Oceans and ends up in India to our east. The region is at the heart of the ongoing US-China competition, Pakistan, as a neighbour of both India and China, cannot shy away from the challenges emanating from this region. Second is the Middle East, which extends from North Africa across the Arab heartland and ends in Iran to our southwest. Momentous winds of change are sweeping across this vast region. We can witness these in the — Iran-Saudi rapprochement brokered by China, waning US influence in the region, and the Israel-Hamas conflict, which has disrupted the Arab-Israel normalisation process. As a neighbour of Iran, and located in the vicinity of the Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, which itself is undergoing a socioeconomic transformation of historic proportions, Pakistan cannot stay aloof from these developments. A fresh approach to connectivity can open up a new world.sp w READ RIGHT Third is the Central Asian region, which is connected to both Russia and China, and straddles the energy and mineral-rich lands down to Afghanistan, Pakistan's northwestern neighbour. Russia sees this region as its backyard, while China and Turkey are both seeking to extend their influence. Here, too, the US seems to be losing ground. Any changes across Central Asia, particularly in Afghanistan, are bound to be of direct concern to Pakistan. While this economic geography is throwing up geostrategic challenges as major power competition intensifies in all the three regions, there will also be opportunities which Pakistan can avail only if it plays its geoeconomic hand in tandem with pursuing its geopolitical goals, while understanding its limitations, These challenges and opportunities have been discussed at length ina recent booklet, Pakistan's Geoeconomic Pivot, authored by Moeed Yusuf and Rabia Akhtar, which was discussed at a recent conference in Islamabad. When the concept of geoeconomics was introduced in the National Security Policy 2022, sceptics felt that geoeconomics cannot work without first addressing Pakistan's geopolitical realities, internally and externally; e, the so-called hard security issues. This is a valid observation. However, to keep potential geoeconomic gains unharvested until we make progress on the geopolitical and security agenda may not deliver the hard security Pakistan is looking for. In fact, a geoeconomic approach can help Pakistan extricate itself from the security-centric agenda that it has vis-a-vis three of its four neighbours. Fresh thinking is needed regarding how the changes happening in these three regions can be transformed into economic opportunities that would benefit us economically as well as build international stakes in Pakistan's stability. A fresh approach to connectivity, development partnerships, and regional trade can open up a whole new world for us. This may not be easy. A change of mindset is always challenging. Allama Iqbal rightly indicated in his poetry that being afraid of new ways and insisting on old ones is the only difficult stage in the life of nations. The National Security Policy 2022 provides a good beginning by introducing a comprehensive concept of national security — traditional defence, economic security and human security — with primacy given to economic security, and within that realm to geoeconomics. The logicisREAD RIGHT not difficult to comprehend, A stronger economy brings prosperity, renders the country relevant in a global context, and makes ample resources available to defend against any aggression from outside. The writer is a former foreign secretary and chairman of Sanober Institute Islamabad. Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2023 FOREIGN TRADE DEBATE THERE is a debate in Pakistan on the foreign trade strategy we should pursue: export promotion, or import substitution? In much Tr of the world, especially Southeast Asia, the debate has been won by export promotion to spectacular effect. We, however, are still confused, trying to carry out the best of both strategies and ending up with the worst of both. Import substitution is a strategy that seeks to substitute imported goods with domestic production. Take, for example, cars. In the 1980s, our government, while keeping higher duties on imported cars, reduced duties on components such as engines, transmissions, windshields, etc, so that firms that assembled cars here could get a domestic market protected from foreign competition through this duty differential. This tariff protection, paid by consumers through higher prices, was justified by the argument that this was an ‘infant industry’ and the small local market didn't allow companies to quickly reach the production scale needed for global competitiveness. Three decades later, infantindustry protection continues, we have excellent local cars from several international brands but they remain expensive and the market remains small. Both customs duty on parts — which is quite high — and domestic protection through prohibitively high duties on foreign cars, have kept prices high. Moreover, the auto market and firms remain small and therefore inefficient and uncompetitive. There are, of course, certain advantages to the import substitution model. We have nowsp w READ RIGHT eveloped a vibrant engineering and vendor industry, the auto industry provides many jobs, we save foreign exchange compared to importing built-up cars and collect considerable taxes. The downside is that we still have to import a lot of auto components and we have almost no exports from this sector, so it is still a drain on our foreign exchange reserves. If every industry were like that, substituting imports but exporting nothing, we'd have no dollars to pay for the raw materials for any industry. How do we get our exports to finally increase? | have given the example of cars but the effect of protecting markets from competition is the same, whether it’s air conditioners, shampoos, candies, or any other good. By imposing tariffs to protect manufacturers catering to domestic consumers, we let companies remain small and inefficient and not able to export their wares. This is an important reason why Pakistan has such low exports. Export promotion, on the other hand, is a strategy that makes manufacturers better off selling to foreign customers than local ones. This is done through policies that favour exporters with cheap credit, lower taxes, etc. East Asian countries have used this strategy to achieve impressive growth, but even though Pakistan has also offered many of the same incentives, we have not been able to increase exports. The reason is that by pursuing both these stra- tegies simultaneously, we just end up increasing the cost of doing business for all manufacturers, which renders our industry neither competitive in exports nor in substituting imports. Of course, this isn’t the only factor holding back exports; there are others as well. For instance: non-reliable and expensive provision of energy; periodically overvalued rupee; and law and order issues that prevent foreign buyers from visiting Pakistan. But here | want to discuss how, by pursuing both import substitution and export promotion simultaneously, we mess things up. Consider a zipper manufacturer that has to import various metals, say at five per cent duty, to produce zippers. He will typically go to the government and request that it impose a 1Spc duty on the imports of zippers so he can compete with larger foreign manufacturers. Even assuming that the Pakistani zipper has no quality issues and is available in all varieties, our garment exporters will quickly run to the government and say they can't afford to buy the more expensive Pakistani zippers or pay 15pcé {w} READ RIGHT duty on imported zippers as they have to compete in the international market. So the government allows them to import duty- free imported zippers that are then re-exported as part of a garment. As a result, Pakistani exporters still have to buy imported zippers and pay for freight (and hence be at a disadvantage to their international competitors) while the local zipper manufacturer will remain small and inefficient. Rather than win-win, we end up with lose-lose. Our Ministry of Commerce over the years has tried to have an export promotion strategy, but the problem is that more than half of our tax revenues come from the ports — in the shape of customs duty, sales tax and withholding tax. And much of the remaining sales tax is also collected because the government knows who has imported raw materials and therefore those manufacturers have to pay sales tax on goods. So our entire tax system depends on us collecting taxes from imports and therefore the import substitution strategy is not pursued because we ‘want to but because we have to. So, how do we get our exports to finally increase? While our textile industry has done well in spite of mills having to import cotton, not getting gas (in unjab) and buying expensive land and water (Karachi), textile cannot be the only industry that exports. We must diversify. We have, over the years, given allot of benefits to exporters, such as cheap loans. And yet, we have seen these incentives not result in increased exports. (One recent World Bank study has confirmed that export refinancing has had little effect on increasing exports). What we need now is tough love. We need to convert the 10pc supertax on all companies to those that have zero exports and reduce that tax to zero as companies increase their share of exports. Similarly, we need concerted moral suasion on our large business houses to get into non-textile export businesses and only allow new factories that generate at least 25pc of their sales from exports. Finally, there should be a policy, for a few years, of ‘eat what you hunt’ with foreign exchange, whereby industries that are large importers and have a protected domestic market should be asked to, over time, generate at least an equal amount of exports. In short we need to relentlessly focus on exports, whether in agriculture or industry. The writer is a former finance minister. Published in Dawn, November 23rd, 2023i THANKS to social media, a lot of information has been provided to the world regarding the "= background, causes, and the terrible casualties in the Israeli war on Hamas, which has brought about _—_global condemnation. It has also shown to the world that the so-called international community (comprising the US and European powers) supports the genocide of Palestinians being carried out by Israel. It has also made public the manner in which the international media is manipulated, bought over, or coerced into fabricating news by the international community and those anchors and journalists who are not willing to bow to their pressure are sacked. What has also emerged in this conflict is that the UN is being seen as corrupt, with many of its policymakers and bureaucrats in the global corporate sector, part of which works in coordination with powerful Zionist lobbies. Therefore, it is no surprise that as soon as the war began, corporate entities donated over $2 billion to Israel in support of its war on Hamas. Also, for the first time, stories from the Bible have been openly used by Israeli media, civil society and politicians, justifying the murder of Palestinian PALESTINE CONFLICT women and children and the occupation of Palestine by the Zionists. According to the Old Testament, Moses asked the Israelites to kill women and children. This has been Israeli policy for the entire Arab-Israeli conflict for over 70 years. Other war-related issues have also surfaced; one of them is related to the huge availability of petroleum and gas on the Levant coast, which Israel is exploiting off the Gaza coast, and is anxious to expand its exploitation. The oil extends deep into Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon and is the cause of wat in these countries. It is also Israel's desire to control the Suez Canal, the major source of revenue for Egypt, or to create an alternative that could substitute for the canal. As a result of these realities, one can safely say that the UN is dead, as it cannot uphold its own human rights charter and prevent or even censor an unjust war and occupation of another country. Its fate is becoming very similar to that of the League of Nations (1920-1946), which ended in a world war. The presence of US aircraft carriers in the Eastern Mediterranean, constant threats to countries in the region, and a very anti-US and_ Israel population in the Middle East can easily expand into a regional or international conflict.ig {w} Hundreds of thousands of young people are demanding a ceasefire. An understanding of these issues, thanks to social media and an effective Palestinian media campaign, has brought out hundreds of thousands of young people, from all over the world demanding a ceasefire and freedom for Palestine. It is important to know who these people are and why they are protesting. From all accounts, most of them are from the Z and millennial generations. They have been educated to love humanity, the environment, equality between all races irrespective of colour, not to body-shame anybody, and to stand for freedom of choice. Credit goes to their teachers but also to those who, in the 1960s and 1970s, were the creators of the environmental movements and their struggle for the implementation of human rights. ‘Anew world has been born, and even if, because of protest fatigue, these movements die down, they will certainly re-emerge. These movements are also a response to the failure of the welfare state and the search for a cause by the young generation, which is now suffering increasingly in a global order of economic fascism. Many anchors have drawn parallels between the Algerian conflict against the French (1954-1962) and the situation in Gaza. In 1956, the casbah of Algiers, with its narrow lanes and crowded neighbourhoods, launched a movement against the French, which caused the French to lose a large number of their soldiers and supporters. The movement was ruthlessly crushed through rounding up suspected supporters of the movement and carrying out summary executions. Within a year and a half, the French successfully crushed the movement, and, informally, the Algerian national liberation front surrendered, However, in 1957-58, it re-emerged in a more forceful form than before, and in 1962, Algeria gained independence. Many analysts are of the opinion that Hamas will reappear stronger than before, and its freedom fighters will be those men and women who have seen their families, friends, and children massacred before their eyes. The relationship between the pro-sraeli governments and their people has snapped. It is more than likely that there is a new world of conflict, and at the same time of hope, emerging on the globe. Published in Dawn, November 21st, 2023a THE world watched in horror when Israeli forces attacked Al Shifa hospital in Gaza in another atrocity committed by a barbaric occupying power. Backed by tanks, the ground assault rained down terror on terrified patients at the hospital, endangering the lives of people, including thousands of civilians sheltering there. Eyewitnesses spoke of Israeli soldiers destroying medical equipment, interrogating medical staff at gunpoint as well as stripping, blindfolding and detaining people, who were taken to unknown locations. Its pretext for the raid was that the hospital was a base for Hamas — a patent lie. No credible evidence was produced for the claim that, in any case, did not justify the hospital attack, prohibited by international humanitarian law. As the horrific invasion of the hospital unfolded condemnations came from countries across the world. UN officials, global aid and human rights organisations slammed the action. Both the UN's relief chief Martin Griffiths and head of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom said, "Hospitals. are not ', and that “protection of newborns, CRISIS OF HUMANITY all other concerns’. As global criticism mounted, the White House denied it gave Israel a green light for the military raid. A day earlier a US administration spokesman announced it had intelligence information that supported Israeli claims of Hamas using Al Shifa hospital for its military operations. But he offered no substantiation. Subsequently, President Joe Biden defended the raid despite global outrage at the action and without providing proof that the hospital was a Hamas command centre. The raid on AI Shifa took place in the sixth week of Israel's war on Gaza which has left over 11,500 Palestinians dead, including 4,600 children. Over 1.5 million people have been forcibly displaced. Despite the growing global clamour for a ceasefire, US refusal to support a truce has stood in the way of bringing hostilities to an end. At the UN, the Security Council considered another resolution to address the humanitarian dimension of the war. After four failed attempts to pass a resolution, a fifth draft was moved by Malta calling for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses” in Gaza for “a sufficient number of days” to allow full and unhindered access for UN agencies and partners.sp w READ RIGHT It was adopted by 12 votes of the 15member Security Council. The US and UK abstained as the resolution did not condemn Hamas. Russia abstained as it did not provide for a ceasefire. Humanitarian ‘pauses’ will not halt the genocide and forced displacement perpetrated by Israel. They are no substitute for a ceasefire. Ostensibly aimed at protecting civilians especially children, these pauses can only provide narrow windows to get humanitarian aid into Gaza. But as Israel has long defied UNSC resolutions, Tel Aviv is unlikely to abide by it even though itis legally binding. The Israeli ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan denounced the resolution as “meaningless’, indicating his country will not comply with it. The Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour expressed his disappointment with the resolution stressing that what was needed was a ceasefire and cessation of hostilities. The Security Councit' first action since the war began failed to match the catastrophic situation on the ground. The international community has failed the people of Gaza. Nevertheless, with Israel escalating deadly bombings in Gaza, intensifying raids into the West Bank and Palestinian casualties mounting, the White House came under growing pressure from dissent within the US administration, public protests demanding a ceasefire and growing disquiet among its allies. French President Emmanuel Macron called for a ceasefire and said Israel must stop bombing and killing babies and women in Gaza. Cracks in the G7 were also evident from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's call to Israel to end the “tilling of women, of children, of babies" in the besieged Gaza Strip. However, this has yet to affect Washington's unconditional backing for Israel. This was evident from Biden's remarks at his presser after the meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in San Francisco. He reiterated his opposition to a ceasefire and defended Israel's military campaign. He again accused Hamas of beheading babies, even though earlier reports of this proved to be totally false, which the White House too had acknowledged. He also said Israels war in Gaza will only end when the military capacity of Hamas is degraded. Any hope that the US would restrain Israel seemed to fade by these pronouncements. This despite poll findings in the US that indicate most Americans want a ceasefire, A Reuters/Ipsos poll found over two-thirds of people backed a ceasefire and that support for Israel was waning.i A striking aspect of the war has been the extent of disinformation and deliberate lies Israeli leaders and its military have spread, which have been echoed unquestionably by much of the Western media, Worse, some publications have totally disregarded Palestinian casualties, with few exceptions. The Economist argued that Israel must fight on, regardless of the civilian death toll and disingenuously described a ceasefire as an “enemy of peace”. Other news publications justified Israel's relentless, brutal bombardments of refugee camps and hospitals as its ‘right to defend itself. The dehumanisation of Palestinians has characterised much of the coverage by the Western media. With their sentiments inflamed by nonstop bloodshed in Gaza, Muslim publics across the world werent surprised by the Western media's biased coverage as that was nothing new. Their deep disappointment lay with Arab governments who, beyond issuing condemnations, acted as little more than spectators to a genocide and epic humanitarian catastrophe. Reports that some Arab countries opposed and prevented even minimal actions proposed by other states, which could have mounted significant diplomatic pressure on Israel and the US, only added to the popular discontent. Inaction by Arab and Muslim governments represented in the OIC was widely seen as a betrayal of the Palestinians. But then, it is the entire international community that has failed the people of Gaza. It has singularly failed in its response to what UN Secretary General Anténio Guterres has called a “crisis of humanity’. The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN. Published in Dawn, November 20th, 2023With the COP28 event in the UAE having commenced ~—on November 30th, the world is nowhere near close to capping global temperature rise to 1.5C above the pre-industrial level. One wonders whether this latest cA gathering of world leaders being hosted by one of the largest oil and gas producing countries in the world will prove more successful in phasing out fossil fuels than preceding ones. Another important issue worth keeping an eye on over the next ten days or so of COP28 events is what final shape the much anticipated ‘loss and damage’ fund for poor countries will take. Given the current state of the conflict-ridden world, it is unlikely that richer countries with tainted historical emission records would be willing to put aside the needed funds to compensate the global south for climate induced havoc. We will most probably also not see the emissions reductions needed via voluntary pledges or via use of market- based mechanisms such as carbon trading, which allows one company to compensate another for offsetting their carbon emissions footprint by planting forests which sequester carbon. The problem with carbon trading is that it allows s. MAKE COMPANIES PAY FOR CLIMATE CHANGE polluters to carry on polluting till such a time that the transition to cleaner fuels does not impinge on their bottom-line of making profits. While such ‘win-win’ schemes may seem convenient to big polluters, they are not adequate to significantly avert the threshold of irreversible ecological decline, or to provide adequate funds to pay for simultaneously growing climate induced damage. What the world instead needs is an evident resolve to compel big emitters, be they in the public sector or the private sector, to pay a fair price for carbon emissions. It would obviously be hard to keep a tab on emissions by tens of thousands of companies around the world which rely on fossil fuels within their production processes. Moreover, carbon emissions from agriculture and livestock, from deforestation, waste management, or due to poor land use, are hard to assess and monitor, and hence difficult to tax. However, the number of the biggest emitters is much smaller. According to the Carbon Disclosures Project, around a hundred companies around the world have been responsible for pumping over 70% of global warming emissions since the past quarter of a century. The companies mentioned in this list included state owned Chinese, Indian, Iranian, Mexican, Saudi and Russian oil and gas companies. Amongsti multinationals, America's ExxonMobil and British owned Shell are the biggest emitters. Besides fossil fuel companies, the global supply chains of multinational companies such as Coca Cola or Walmart are also responsible for significant, carbon dioxide emissions, according to researchers at the University College in London and at Tianjin University in China, For eg, emissions from Coca- Cola’s supply chain are estimated to be around what China roughly emits within its food sector, which keeps 1.3 billion people fed. Neglecting the cost of carbon emissions enables big businesses to accumulate exorbitant profits while passing on the costs of environmental damages caused by their production processes to ordinary people, especially to the poor, who are least equipped to deal with climate change. According to the reputable journal, Science, corporate induced carbon damages amount to trillions of dollars globally. So, itis high time for this environmental cost to be recognised and converted into taxable income which in turn can be used to pay for ‘loss and damage’ being caused by climate induced disasters. Effective carbon taxation of the worlds largest emitters would also significantly help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by immediately increasing the cost of producing fossil fuels. This in turn would incentivise carbon emitters to fast-track plans to use alternative green energy sources. The means to finance a just carbon transition, and to compensate those who are bearing the brunt of climate threats they did not cause, are evident. What is lacking is the resolve and political will to do what is needed to halt global warming before this already alarming situation spins out of our control. Published in The Express Tribune, December 1st 2023.