2018

Tackling water security: Who owns the right to groundwater?

Tariq said that to understand water security there is a need to understand water scarcity. He explained, “The global yardstick for water scarcity is that if you have 1,700 cubic metres per person, per year then you are in a very comfortable water regime.”

He added that the moment this amount reduces, you start getting into water stress situations, water shortages and water scarcity.

“Plant the water, as the best place to store water is underground”

“The surplus water available for Pakistan doesn’t last for more than 30 days.” He elaborated that for the rest of the 335 days, Pakistan is in a semi-drought or drought-like condition.

The PWP CEO said that for an arid country like Pakistan there is a need to have 40% surface water storage. However, he deplored that the country has only 7% storage to counter the problem. He added that this is also reducing due to sedimentation, which leaves a big question mark on the country’s water security. More

Trump’s Request for India’s Help in Afghanistan Rattles Pakistan

Trump’s Request for India’s Help in Afghanistan Rattles Pakistan - The New York Times

However, Maria Sultan, a defense analyst based in Islamabad and director general of the South Asian Strategic Stability Institute, said the Trump policy was “not as bad as we were expecting. The responsibility has been essentially shifted to Afghanistan.”

She warned that intelligence-based operations against groups inside Pakistan might increase. “This will further reduce the space for cooperation between Pakistan and U.S. and will be counterproductive for a long-term relationship,” Ms. Sultan said. More

US Releases Long-Awaited Documents on 1953 Coup in Iran

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and President Dwight D. Eisenhower, (undated photo).

Washington, D.C., June 15, 2017 – The State Department today released a long-awaited “retrospective” volume of declassified U.S. government documents on the 1953 coup in Iran, including records describing planning and implementation of the covert operation. The publication is the culmination of decades of internal debates and public controversy after a previous official collection omitted all references to the role of American and British intelligence in the ouster of Iran’s then-prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq. The volume is part of the Department’s venerable Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series.

For decades, neither the U.S. nor the British governments would acknowledge their part in Mosaddeq’s overthrow, even though a detailed account appeared as early as 1954 in The Saturday Evening Post, and since then CIA and MI6 veterans of the coup have published memoirs detailing their activities. Kermit Roosevelt’s Countercoup is the best known and most detailed such account, although highly controversial because of its selective rendering of events. In 2000, The New York Times posted a 200-page classified internal CIA history of the operation.
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The Relentless March of Drought – That ‘Horseman of the Apocalypse’

ROME, Jun 7 2017 (IPS) - By 2025 –that’s in less than 8 years from today– 1.8 billion people will experience absolute water scarcity, and two thirds of the world will be living under water-stressed conditions. Now it is feared that advancing drought and deserts, growing water scarcity and decreasing food security may provoke a huge ‘tsunami” of climate refugees and migrants.
No wonder then that a major United Nations Convention calls drought ‘one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.’ See what the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) says in this regard.

By 2050, the demand for water is expected to increase by 50 per cent. As populations increase, especially in dry-land areas, more and more people are becoming dependent on fresh water supplies in land that are becoming degraded, the Bonn-based Convention secretariat warns.

“The world’s drought-prone and water scarce regions are often the main sources of refugees.” Monique Barbut.
Water scarcity is one of the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century, it underlines, adding that drought and water scarcity are considered to be the most far-reaching of all natural disasters, causing short and long-term economic and ecological losses as well as significant secondary and tertiary impacts.

To mitigate these impacts, drought preparedness that responds to human needs, while preserving environmental quality and ecosystems, requires involvement of all stakeholders including water users and water providers to achieve solutions for drought, explains UNCCD.

“Drought, a complex and slowly encroaching natural hazard with significant and pervasive socio-economic and environmental impacts, is known to cause more deaths and displace more people than any other natural disaster.” More

South Asia's Turn: Policies to Boost Competitiveness and Create the Next Export Powerhouse

South Asia is undergoing a rapid economic transformation and has the potential to become the next major middle-income region of the world. More than a million young people are reaching working age every month, and the population of the region’s mega agglomerations and sprawling cities is expanding at roughly the same pace. By 2030 more than a quarter of the world’s working adults will live in South Asia. But the region has not been particularly successful in integrating within itself and with the global economy. The demographic transition and urbanization on the one hand, and poor competitiveness on the other, are South Asia’s greatest opportunity and greatest challenge. View PDF