Food for all: Food Security in Pakistan

Pakistan is passing through one of the most difficult phases in its history. Plagued by unending political turmoil, growing inflation, stark socio-economic disparities, misgovernance, and natural disasters, the majority of the people spend a fair amount of time wondering where their next meal is coming from.

Food shortages are becoming a pervasive danger and food insecurity a constant worry. More than half of Pakistan’s population is food insecure, anaemic and malnourished. For those who are categorised as surviving on less than a dollar a day, a meal is just a naan or chapatti with a cup of tea, or maybe an onion or chillies. Even the middle class is unable to afford meat every day, and homemakers are hard-pressed to plan nutritious diets on severely constrained budgets.

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) have the highest percentage of food insecure population at 67.7 per cent, followed by Balochistan at 61.2 per cent (in Dera Bugti it is as high as 81.2 per cent) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at 56.2 per cent; Sindh and Punjab are somewhat better off (SDPI 2009). Pakistan is a signatory to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the UN, the first of which is to halve the degree of hunger in the country. Regrettably, Pakistan has failed in achieving the targets of MDG 1: hunger in Pakistan has increased, not decreased.

The UN defines food security as “All people at all times having physical and economic access to the basic food they need,” but today, for a billion people worldwide, this food is less than guaranteed. Food security is a complex issue, resulting from a mix of climate change, rural poverty, inadequate stress on agricultural growth, urban development, population growth, oil price shifts, general inflationary trends, political influences, power balances, internal and external displacement of people and several other factors.

Frequent weather changes trigger shifting patterns in crop growth, leading to lowered production, rising prices and inadequate means to feed the world’s hungry millions.

Environmental reports warn that the economic and human costs of natural disasters are likely to become more severe with climate change. Dr Vaqar Ahmad, working at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), expresses his concern, “Even five years from now, if all variables were to remain the same — that is, the speed of climate change, population growth rate, the political situation and so on — food insecurity in Pakistan will increase from the present 58 per cent to 63-65 per cent.” This is a frightening possibility. He adds, “The key assumption here is the low economic growth which, in turn, implies lesser prospects for pro-poor job creation”.

The annual Global Risks Report of the World Economic Forum states that the economic weakness of many countries is sapping the ability of the governments to tackle the growing threat of climate change. Shades of Armageddon? Not quite, but without due care, we may be heading there.

Along with insufficiency of crop harvests is the concomitant increase in population, particularly in developing countries, prompting rising poverty, growing hunger and malnutrition, and wasting and stunting in child growth. As resistance to disease diminishes, frequent childhood infections become more evident in the country.

Pakistan itself has alarmingly high levels of malnutrition, or ‘hidden hunger’; nearly 24 per cent of the population is undernourished. The Food and Agriculture Organisation findings say that 37.5 million people do not receive adequate nourishment. Widespread deficiencies are rampant ranging from protein and iron to iodine deficiencies. Poverty is the main causative factor, leading to low consumption of food and use of foods with low nutritional value. Higher food prices hurt the poorest the most, especially the landless poor and female-headed households.

Paradoxically, there’s enough food in the world to feed everyone. Even though national food security is paramount, not every country is able to attach the same significance to it that it deserves. Developing countries especially are plagued by the multiple problems of poor governance, insufficient investment in agriculture and in research, often with the overweening presence of the corporate sector. Middlemen make more than their fair share of profit, complicating issues of minimal or absent land reforms, and a gendered division of labour.

Despite global food sufficiency, its inequitable distribution within countries and within households, affects individuals at every level, with too much for some and too little for others.

Hunger and malnutrition prevent the poor from escaping poverty, reducing their ability to learn, work and care for themselves and their families.

The world population has reached an unprecedented high, at seven billion people, of whom 20 per cent are suffering from poverty and hunger. In fact, with poor harvests, growing populations and rising demands, the era of cheap food well may be over. Asia is facing its own food crisis as the cost of cereals, particularly rice, has doubled.

Women stand at the nexus between production and reproduction, between economic activities and discriminatory unequal and inequitable power relationships and practices.

Especially in today’s world, it is important, indeed essential, to work with a gendered perspective that takes into account these existing inequalities, and lays the basis for more sustainable development, based on legal and social justice.

Land reforms have often been advocated to improve women’s access to land and control over ownership of land. The trouble is that such reforms can be counterproductive without attention to gender issues. In the Pakistani context, even when women nominally hold titles to land, in actual fact it is still men who hold power and control associated resources and productive factors, such as labour and tools. If women’s lives are to improve, it is crucial and essential to institute land reforms with women’s access to land and resources. More

 

Global food security a central topic at Davos 2013

Global leaders who gathered at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos Wednesday called for “step up to scale up” efforts for strengthening the world’s food security by improving sustainable food production. Working through the World Economic Forum’s New Vision for Agriculture initiative, more than 250 organizations are collaborating to improve sustainable food production and opportunities for farmers in 11 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, according to a news release posted at forum’s website (www.weforum.org). Together these activities will directly impact over 12 million smallholder farmers in the next three to five years, according to the news release.

“We have created new partnerships and new opportunities for smallholder farmers through our work with the New Vision for Agriculture initiative,” said Cao Duc Phat, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Vietnam. The initiative helped to form and support a public-private task force engaging 30 organizations to focus investment and innovation on five crops prioritized by Vietnam’s national agriculture plan. The group is implementing projects to train, finance and engage smallholder farmers to increase sustainable production and farmer incomes.A new report launched this week in Davos, titled Achieving the New Vision for Agriculture: New Models for Action, assesses progress to date and recommends action steps to advance progress in the 11 countries. Strengthening environmental sustainability, expanding access to finance, broadening stakeholder engagement and investing in local capacity-building are among its key recommendations.“The New Vision for Agriculture has provided a way for stakeholders to align efforts to achieve sustainable agricultural growth,” said Michael Mack, Chief Executive Officer of Syngenta. “As a result, our company has developed significant new investments and partnerships in coordination with country leaders.”The World Economic Forum and its constituents are hosting 12 sessions related to food security, nutrition and agriculture during Davos. “We are committed to engaging all stakeholders to create a stronger global food system,” said Sarita Nayyar, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum. “Engaging the private sector is an important part of that effort, to bring investment, innovation and efficiency into partnership efforts.”Eight African countries are working with New Vision for Agriculture partners through Grow Africa, a partnership jointly convened by the African Union, NEPAD and the World Economic Forum. In Davos, African and global leaders will discuss implementation of more than US$ 3 billion in private-sector investment commitments in 2012. More

 

 

Drought Fuels Water War Between Texas and New Mexico

As climate change alters rainfall patterns and river flows, tensions are bound to rise between states and countries that share rivers that cross their borders.

In the Rio Grande Basin of the American Southwest, that future inevitability has arrived.

Last week Texas, suffering through a devastating drought, filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Supreme Court alleging that New Mexico is failing to live up to its water delivery commitments under the 1938 Rio Grande Compact.

The Rio Grande rises in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado and flows 1,900 miles before entering the Gulf of Mexico.

Texas charges that New Mexico’s pumping of groundwater in the region below Elephant Butte Dam to the New Mexico-Texas border is reducing Rio Grande flows into Texas, thereby depriving the state’s farms and cities of water they are legally entitled to under the Compact.

Texas v. New Mexico is likely to be but one of a string of disputes that erupt as drought causes water supplies to dwindle and water-sharing pacts devised in wetter and less-populated times can no longer hold the peace.

Texas doesn’t specify how much water it believes New Mexico is illegally withholding, but indicates it is sufficient to irrigate thousands of acres of farmland. The city of El Paso also relies on Rio Grande water for half of its supply.

New Mexico officials have consistently maintained that the state is sending to Texas all the Rio Grande water to which it is legally entitled. The state attorney general said in a recent statement that Texas is “trying to rustle New Mexico’s water and using a lawsuit to extort an agreement that would only benefit Texas while destroying water resources for hundreds of thousands of New Mexicans.”

Fighting words, to be sure.

If the Supreme Court justices decide to take up the case, they would do well to first sign up for hydrology 101.

One of the great water myths is that rivers and underground aquifers are separate and distinct sources of water. In reality, rivers and groundwater are often intimately connected. Groundwater provides the “base” flow that keeps many rivers running during dry times. For their part, rivers and irrigation canals leak water into the subsurface, recharging the aquifers below.

In dry years, when surface supplies run low, farmers often turn to underground water to replace or supplement their irrigation supply. That’s what New Mexico farmers downstream of Elephant Butte have done during years of drought and low river flows.

In the Mesilla Basin, for example, groundwater is the primary source of irrigation water for about 5,000 acres, but is a supplemental source of supply for more than 70,000 acres. So in dry times, groundwater withdrawals ratchet up.

According to an article on the impacts of groundwater pumping in the Rio Grande Basin published in this month’s Ecosphere, a journal of the Ecological Society of America, during the 2004 drought, when federal officials curtailed releases from Elephant Butte Dam, pumping from the Messila Aquifer rose to twice the long-term average.

The drought of recent years has elicited a similar response from farmers, and groundwater pumping in the Rio Grande Valley has increased markedly. But how much this pumping has affected flows into Texas is in question.

The current bi-state conflict began in 2007 when Texas farmers complained that New Mexico was extracting too much groundwater. To avoid an escalating legal fight, the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which operates Elephant Butte, worked out an agreement with two irrigation districts in Texas and New Mexico to give Texas more river water to make up for New Mexico’s groundwater use. More

 

How Much Is Enough - Michael Krepon

How much is enough? Every state possessing nuclear weapons has difficulty answering this question. It’s natural to think that more weapons will result in more security because nuclear weapons are so fearsome and because it’s hard to know what hand the competition is holding.

If the competition responds in kind, feelings of insecurity usually grow. Refusal to compete can also result in greater insecurity. Improved relations and nuclear risk-reduction agreements, tacit or otherwise, can provide a way out of this dilemma.

The guardians of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal have achieved many successes, despite the efforts of the United States and export control regimes to prevent them. With an economy one-ninth the size of India, outside observers now believe that Pakistan is ahead of India in some nuclear weapon-related capabilities, including the size of its stockpile. India is not, however, standing still. It, too, is increasing the size of its stockpile and flight-testing more advanced missiles. If New Delhi decides to pick up the pace of this competition, Pakistan will feel less secure as an unwanted arms race picks up steam.

Even if India chooses not to pick up the pace, Pakistan will become more insecure unless its economy and social cohesion improve. Nuclear weapons can help severe crises from becoming wars, and some kinds of added nuclear capabilities can strengthen deterrence. But nuclear weapons cannot fix domestic ills, and if deterrence fails, the significant costs of acquiring nuclear weapons will become a mere down-payment to the extreme costs associated with their use.

The United States and the Soviet Union remain object lessons of how success can breed competition and insecurity. Both superpowers were guilty of wretched nuclear excess because their competition was always measured in relative, rather than absolute terms. An adversary’s gains were always bad news, no matter how many weapons the home team possessed. The successful acquisition of “second strike” capabilities – the ability to withstand a surprise attack and respond with devastating effect -- never did relieve Cold War anxieties because the competition never waned, even at very high numbers. This twisted superpower dynamic only subsided when the Soviet Union failed because its economy couldn’t sustain the competition.

Three states with mid-sized nuclear arsenals – Great Britain, France and Israel – managed to avoid this dynamic because they didn’t have a nuclear-armed adversary in their approximate weight class, and because all three could rely on Washington as a back-up.

One key decision point for all states with nuclear weapons is whether to seek the means to deliver them at short, as well as longer ranges. Mobile missiles with longer ranges are easier for the home team to control in a crisis and harder for an adversary to target. Short-range capabilities are the hardest to control because, in order to have maximum deterrent effect, they need to be positioned close to where battle lines might be drawn. These lines can change and can be breached quickly, especially with the use of air power.

The United States and the Soviet Union were never able to figure out how to secure short-range nuclear capabilities and to maintain command and control over them in the fog of war. Nonetheless, the superpowers handed thousands of battlefield nuclear weapons to soldiers who would become victims of fallout from friendly as well as enemy fire. The Soviet Union planned to carry out a ground offensive across Europe with tactical nuclear weapons, while the United States planned to stop tank offensives with them. With the benefit of hindsight, these plans now appear to have been pure folly.

Huge Cold War arsenals of tactical nuclear weapons have shrunk considerably, but many still reside in Russian and U.S. stockpiles. Success that leads to excess eventually results in reductions -- long after it becomes clear that the risks associated with tactical nuclear weapons far exceed their military utility.

Pakistan and India won’t compete as foolishly as the United States and the Soviet Union, but they are still entering uncharted territory. This territory is even harder to map because Chinese strategic capabilities figure into New Delhi’s nuclear requirements, and because all three countries maintain secrecy over their holdings. A triangular competition makes it even harder to determine how much is enough.

As the conventional military balance tilts in India’s favor, Pakistan has signaled a requirement for short-range nuclear capabilities to strengthen deterrence against the threat of Indian retaliation after dramatic attacks by violent extremists based in Pakistan. New Delhi might also seek short-range nuclear capabilities, if it decides not to rely on longer-range missiles and airpower. Other new aspects of the competition are emerging with cruise missiles and sea-based nuclear capabilities. The question, “How much is enough?” is being answered in ways that Pakistan and India are unlikely to find reassuring. More

 

Deterrence Stability in South Asia

Dear Colleagues,

Stimson’s next program on Deterrence Stability in South Asia promises to be doubly interesting. Our presenters will be Brig. Gen. (ret.) Feroz Khan of the Naval Postgraduate School, who will discuss a "Strategic Restraint Regime 2.0 for South Asia," and Zachary Davis of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who will address “Transparency and Deterrence Stability in South Asia."

Feroz is a lecturer in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey. His important book, Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb, was recently published by Stanford University Press. Zack Davis is senior fellow at the Center for Global Security Research at Livermore. He is also a visiting research professor at the Naval Postgraduate School.

We will convene on Tuesday, January 15th, at Stimson from 3:00 -4:30pm. We are located at 1111 19th St., NW. Our conference facilities are on the 12th floor. Space is limited.

CLICK HERE TO RSVP

Best wishes,

Michael Krepon

Director, South Asia Program

Stimson

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Stimson's programming on South Asia is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and by the National Nuclear Security Administration.

You may contact Julia Thompson (jthompson@stimson.org) for general inquiries.

 

More Serious Earthquakes Predicted in the Himalayas

Dec. 28, 2012 — A research team led by scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has discovered that massive earthquakes in the range of 8 to 8.5 magnitudes on the Richter scale have left clear ground scars in the central Himalayas.

This ground-breaking discovery has huge implications for the area along the front of the Himalayan Mountains, given that the region has a population density similar to that of New York City.

NTU Professor Paul Tapponnier, who is recognised as a leading scientist in the field of neotectonics, said that the existence of such devastating quakes in the past means that quakes of the same magnitude could happen again in the region in future, especially in areas which have yet to have their surface broken by a temblor.

Published recently in Nature Geosciences, the study by NTU's Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS) in Singapore and colleagues in Nepal and France, showed that in 1255 and 1934, two great earthquakes ruptured the surface of the earth in the Himalayas. This runs contrary to what scientists have previously thought.

Massive earthquakes are not unknown in the Himalayas, as quakes in 1897, 1905, 1934 and 1950 all had magnitudes between 7.8 and 8.9, each causing tremendous damage. But they were previously thought not to have broken the earth's surface -- classified as blind quakes -- which are much more difficult to track.

However, Prof Tapponnier said that by combining new high resolution imagery and state of the art dating techniques, they could show that the 1934 earthquake did indeed rupture the surface, breaking the ground over a length of more than 150 kilometres, essentially south of the part of the range that harbours Mt Everest.

This break formed along the main fault in Nepal that currently marks the boundary between the Indian and Asian tectonic plates -- also known as the Main Frontal Thrust (MFT) fault.

Using radiocarbon dating of offset river sediments and collapsed hill-slope deposits, the research team managed to separate several episodes of tectonic movement on this major fault and pin the dates of the two quakes, about 7 centuries apart.

"The significance of this finding is that earthquakes of magnitude 8 to 8.5 may return at most twice per millennium on this stretch of the fault, which allows for a better assessment of the risk they pose to the surrounding communities," said Prof Tapponnier.

Prof Tapponnier warns that the long interval between the two recently discovered earthquake ruptures does not mean people should be complacent, thinking that there is still time before the next major earthquake happens in the region.

"This does not imply that the next mega-earthquake in the Himalayas will occur many centuries from now because we still do not know enough about adjacent segments of the MFT Mega-thrust," Prof Tapponier explains.

"But it does suggest that areas west or east of the 1934 Nepal ground rupture are now at greater risk of a major earthquake, since there are little or no records of when last earth shattering temblor happened in those two areas."

The next step for Prof Tapponnier and his EOS scientists is to uncover the full extent of such fault ruptures, which will then allow them to build a more comprehensive model of earthquake hazard along the Himalayan front. More