Religions and Future Sustainability

Spiritual traditions—from large, centralized religions to local tribal spiritual authorities—in the future will devote energy to what some see as the defining challenge of our age: the need to build just and environmentally healthy societies. The major faiths will issue declarations, advocating for new national policies, and designing educational activities in support of a sustainable world—sometimes in partnership with secular environmental organizations, sometimes on their own. Responding to the global crisis, smaller traditions will revive ancient rituals and practices in the service of sustainability. A powerful new political alignment will thus emerge that greatly strengthens the effort to build a sustainable world.

A source of power for religions is the sheer number of followers they claim. It seems that some 80–90 percent of people on the planet belong to one of the world’s 10,000 or so religions, with 150 or so of these faith traditions having at least a million followers each. Adherents of the three largest—Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism—account for about two thirds of the global population today. Another 20 percent of the world subscribes to the remaining religions, and about 15 percent of people are nonreligious.

Influence stemming from having a large number of followers is further enhanced by the geographic concentration of many religions, which increases their ability to make mass appeals and to coordinate action. In 120 countries, for example, Christians form the majority of the population. Muslims are the majority in 45 countries, and Buddhists are in 9. When most people in a society have similar worldviews, leaders can make mass appeals using a single, values-laden language.

Religion is an orientation to the cosmos and to our role in it. It offers people a sense of ultimate meaning and the possibility for personal transformation and celebration of life. To this end it uses a range of resources, including worldviews, symbols, rituals, ethical norms, traditions, and (sometimes) institutional structures. Religion also offers a means of experiencing a sustaining creative force, whether as a creator deity, an awe-inspiring presence in nature, or simply the source of all life. Many of these characteristics give religion substantial influence over the environment.

At the same time, the environmental community has often alienated potential allies with what is perceived as scientific aloofness, even self-righteousness. Its “left-brain” approach to its work is partly to blame for its inability to connect with greater numbers of people, to inspire profound commitment on a large scale. Given the central place of culture in national development—and the central place of religion in most cultures—a sustainable world cannot effectively be built without full engagement of the human spirit.

Religious institutions and leaders can bring at least five strong assets to the effort to build a sustainable world: the capacity to shape cosmologies (worldviews), moral authority, a large base of adherents, significant material resources, and community-building capacity.

And most produce strong community ties by generating social resources such as trust and cooperation, which can be a powerful boost to community development. Many political movements would welcome any of these five assets. To be endowed with most or all of them, as many religions are, is to hold considerable political power.

In the three western monotheistic traditions—Islam, Christianity and Judaism—morality has traditionally been human-focused. Thus the natural world can be seen as a set of resources for human use.

Yet scholars in each of these traditions find substantial grounds for building a strong environmental ethics. The Islamic concept teaches that the natural world is not owned by humans but is given to them in trust—a trust that implies certain responsibilities to preserve the balance of creation. The Christian focus on sacrament and incarnation are seen as lenses through which the entire natural world can be viewed as sacred. The Judaic concept of a covenant or legal agreement between God and humanity, for example, can be extended to all of creation. And the
Hinduism and Buddhism contain teachings concerning the natural world those are arguably in conflict. The illusory nature of the material world and the desirability of escaping suffering by turning to a timeless world of spirit, in the case of Hinduism, or by seeking release in nirvana, in the case of some meditative schools of Buddhism. This otherworldly orientation minimizes the importance of environmental degradation. On the other hand, both religions place great emphasis on correct conduct and on fulfillment of duty, which often includes obligations to environmental preservation.

Thus Hindus regard rivers as sacred, and in the concept of lila, the creative play of the gods, Hindu theology engages the world as a creative manifestation of the divine. Meanwhile, Buddhist environmentalists often stress the importance of trees in the life of the Buddha, and “socially engaged” Buddhism active in environmental protection, especially of forests.

The East Asian traditions of Confucianism and Taoism seamlessly link the divine, human, and natural worlds. The divine is not seen as transcendent; instead, Earth’s fecundity is seen as continuously unfolding through nature’s movements across the seasons and through human workings in the cycles of agriculture.

This organic worldview is centered round the concept of ch’i, the dynamic, material force that infuses the natural and human worlds, unifying matter and spirit. Confucianists and Taoists seek to live in harmony with nature and with other human beings, while paying attention to the movements of the Tao, the Way. Despite the affinity of these traditions with an environmental ethic, however, deforestation, pollution, and other forms of environmental degradation have become widespread in contemporary East Asia due to many factors, including rapid industrialization and the decline of traditional values in the last 50 years.

Our civilization’s challenge is to reintegrate our societal heart and head, to reestablish spirituality as a partner in dialogue with science. While acknowledging its shortcomings, the religious community can rightly claim enormous capacity for self-reform. (www.asifjmir.com)

Towards a Recycling Society

Future economic growth depends on the efficient marshalling of energy, raw materials, and scarce financial capital. If Pakistan makes the transition to a recycling society most quickly and smoothly it will have the healthiest environment and strongest economy.

An inventory of discards would reveal metal wastes more valuable than the richest ones, paper wastes representing thousands of hectares of forests, and plastics wastes incorporating highly refined petrochemicals. That these products rich in raw materials and concentrated energy are frequently considered worthless is indicative of a distorted economic system. We are literally throwing away our future.

Recycling offers the opportunity to trim waste disposal needs, and thereby reduces disposal costs, while simultaneously combating global environmental problems. Recycling metals, paper, glass, plastics, and organic wastes would lessen the demand for energy and materials.

Managing solid waste is a global problem: Refuse is produced throughout the world. But it is also a local problem in that there is no such thing as global waste stream. The cumulative waste management decisions made by local and national governments affect global energy balances, the rate at which the atmosphere warms, and the amount of pollution emitted into the environment. They also affect international trade flows and the accumulation of debt. Individuals are not powerless in the face of these problems that sometimes seem too abstract or remote for constructive action. The degree to which people and nations act together to conserve raw materials and energy resources can slow the rate at which the global ecosystem is altered.

In the growing cities of Pakistan the volume of discarded materials is surpassing the available managerial and physical capacities to dispose of them. Municipalities must watch their piling garbage piles and mounting problems. Adequate waste management infrastructure does not exist. No effort is being made to reduce waste volumes and recover recyclable materials.

Recycling programs that require not only a new way of thinking about waste but greater involvement by a host of small, dispersed participants face even greater institutional barriers. Despite these obstacles, our cities should integrate recycling into our waste management plans. These cities will thus save money by avoiding disposal costs and by selling secondary materials.

Getting consumers to participate and establishing markets for recovered materials are the keys to successful recycling programs. Several approaches have effectively increased recovery rates and sales opportunities. Consumers can segregate their recyclables for pickup, permit others to retrieve the valuable components, or pay for a central processing plant to separate them. They may also return selected items to the place of purchase or take them to a collection or redemption center.

The demand for recovered products can be enhanced by meeting the resource needs of regional industries, exploring new uses for secondary materials, and offering economic incentives to waste processors and companies that use recycled materials as product inputs. Procurement policies that either favor or explicitly do not discriminate against goods made with post-consumer wastes also boost demand. Market stimulation simultaneously requires guaranteed supplies of high quality secondary materials. Competition from virgin resources and industry standards for the finished product set the operating parameters. If recycled materials are not as reliable, they will not be used.

Programs geared to the recycling of specific products often include a monetary incentive, usually in the form of a deposit. When consumers purchase carbonated beverages or milk jugs, for example, they may be charged separately for the container. If it is returned clean and intact, the consumer receives a refund. Once popular, voluntary deposit programs will go and most schemes shall be spurred by legislation.

Retailers can also purchase reverse vending machines to accept returned containers and disburse deposit refunds. After inserting their containers (as rapidly as one per second), customers are issued either cash or a redeemable voucher, sometimes accompanied by promotional coupons. Most of the machines are designed to accept aluminum, but reverse vending machines that accept glass are already on the (Western) market.

Recycling programs are most effective when integrated within a city’s overall solid waste management plan. If added as an afterthought, and implemented outside of the waste collection system, recycling schemes typically have lower recovery rates.

To encourage the use of recycled products, government can require its purchasing agents to buy competitively priced goods that contain a certain percentage of post-consumer stock. Reports, laws, and different forms printed on recycled paper, government vehicles lubricated with refined oil, and public roads paved in part by recovered rubber all represent huge markets.

Use of recycled paper by government agencies is important not only because of the volume of government purchases (creating a large market demand), but also because government procurement arrangements will be used by province, local and private organizations as a model to establish programs of their own to buy recycled paper. Additionally, as the market grows for recycled paper, the unit cost will go down, reducing costs for all organizations.

If government is going to encourage recycling, it must also take some responsibility for enlarging secondary materials market. Government regulations and fiscal incentives may compel manufacturers to produce recyclable products and packaging.

Law should require all levels of government and government contractors to purchase “items composed of the highest percentage of recovered materials practicable, consistent with maintaining a satisfactory level of competition.”

Government can also generate markets by encouraging manufacturers to use more discards in their production processes and altering nonessential quality standards. Tax incentives to encourage the purchase of recycling equipment are an approach that will gain favor.

Less waste means less demand for expensive garbage-hauling equipment and waste transfer stations, as well as the loss of habitat for disease-spreading insects and rodents. Greater use of recyclable materials cuts the needs for imported resources, cuts the need for imported resources, reduces energy consumption, and curtails water and air pollution. Societies that recycle can more efficiently and less expensively allocate scarce energy and materials among growing populations. (www.asifjmir.com)

Public-Private Partnership

In this era of modernization in many aspects of public administration, Pakistan continues to follow century-old concepts and structures. It seriously needs structural adjustment thereby launching legislative and administrative reforms, which stress a reconsideration of the role of the public administration in the conditions of democratization and market-economy. A greater emphasis needs to be placed on effectiveness of the public administration. The practice and legislation of Pakistan should affect patterns of the role of public sector and influence fundamental features of the system of governance. A common goal should be to introduce a more contractual, participative, discretionary style of relationship: between different levels and agencies in administrative apparatus; between the decision-making authorities and operating units; and between administrative agencies and producing units, public or private.

A major reform objective in public sector management should be to increase, within the framework of democratic accountability, cost effectiveness in the public provision of goods and services. Both citizens and public administration accept the need for improved quality in the public sector.

Pakistan needs to hold high the aim of structuring an effective mechanism for achieving policy objectives, determined at central, provincial and local levels for increasing efficiency, effectiveness and accountability in providing public services.

The legality and the efficiency of providing such public services are of great concern. Local authorities have power to do anything, which is calculated to facilitate, or is conductive or incidental to, the discharge of any of their function.

Outsourcing is a way of contracting out one or more functions to specialist companies. This allows the public entity to concentrate on its core activities. There are three primary reasons for the public administration to outsource. The first is to achieve cost-effective provision of services. The second is to provide a choice for the citizens of producing and supplying public services of different qualities and kinds. The third is simply because there is no alternative due to a lack of staff with the requisite skills; need of relaxing the administrative burden, which somebody other could deal with even better and concentrating the attention on the core administrative matters; short deadlines for implementation. This last reason for outsourcing is to meet the needs, which exceed the capability of the public administration staff, because of a shortage of either staff or skills, or which give added flexibility to the administrative organization.

Thus, the outsourcing can be seen as a process through which relationships are managed and adjusted according to arrangements specified and conditions planned by the administrative authority in the contract documentation. The focus here is not on the legal issues of the contract rather than on the quality of contracting as a mechanism for achieving policy objectives determined at all levels of government for increasing efficiency, effectiveness and accountability. From this perspective the outsourcing by public administration can be considered as a joint commitment to partnership between public and private sector operating as a co-operative device for providing public goods and services.

The trend towards greater satisfaction of public needs and consumer empowerment underlies the role of outsourcing by public administration. The outsourcing is encouraged to secure higher quality of public works and services, whereby contracting managers are located closer to the consumer and so are better able to respond to their needs in actual delivery. The role of consumers and end-clients with respect to outsourcing can thus be increased. The strategies of improving responsiveness through outsourcing on the one hand, and hierarchical distribution of the administrative functions on the other, can be combined in a successful model of public service delivery. The administrative authorities - at federal, provincial and local levels – might participate in the specification of services and in the determination of contractual standards and terms of agreement.

As part of administrative reform outsourcing by public administration should be a high priority. The corresponding legislation should be based on three main principles—transparency, non-discrimination involving open selection criteria and open standards, specifications and standards regulated by law; and open competition.

The framework agreements are very important of securing the implementation of the administrative authority intentions and expectations of the outsourced services or works.

The governments, federal, provincial or local, can use outsourcing as a tool for providing public services when discharging their functions. They use outsourcing to get public results, which should be achieved when the governments exercise their administrative powers.

The outsourcing in some way can replace the direct administrative action. Such outsourcing has the compulsory nature same as this of the administrative action which it replaces. The government can use administrative or seek legislative powers to bring about the result it desires, if it is nonetheless outsourcing. A realistic view is that the process of deciding to outsource as well as the very process of outsourcing is a valid exercise of administrative power. The offered and agreed terms of the contract are also exercising of the administrative power. Once the contract signed, however, the particular relationships issued by outsourcing are moved under the regulations of the private law.

The government functioning can be improved by redefining its role: Policy-making instead of operative decision-making. It should stimulate tools for establishment of working, efficient, rational and fair practice, design of efficient allocation of financial and material resources; transparency and control. The government must also realize that developing a training strategy for skills and incentives is badly needed.

The overall proportion of outsourcing in the field of public administration is generally expected to growing. Demand will increase for a variety of reasons.

Successful outsourcing, however, presupposes the existence of an efficient market. In

Pakistan the market for some categories of public goods and services is deficient of professionalism, integrity, and fair play. Such situation is creating conditions for corruption.From another side, outsourcing itself contributes to developing the market. (www.asifjmir.com)