Consumption

Compulsive worship at the altar of consumption has brought humanity to the edge of an environmental abyss—depleting resources, spreading dangerous pollutants, undermining ecosystems, and threatening to unhinge the planet’s climate balance.

Endless economic growth driven by unbridled consumption has been elevated to the status of a modern philosophy. Contemporary economies are capable of producing huge quantities of goods at very low cost. This leads both producers and consumers to regard more and more products as little more than commodities that can be discarded relatively quickly rather than items that embody valuable energy and materials and that should be well maintained and designed for long life spans.

From the standpoint of global justice and equality, the solution cannot be a system of consumer apartheid that upholds western binge habits but denies the poor a decent standard of living. Instead, the rich need to curb their outsized material appetites.

To support the move toward a less consumptive economy, consumers and producers need to pay close attention to the full lifecycle of products. This means they need to concern themselves not just with the characteristics of the product itself, such as how much energy its use may require, but also with the materials and production methods used to manufacture the product and the kinds and types of wastes generated in the process. In addition, both consumers and producers need to consider how effectively goods actually deliver wanted services and comforts, how long products last, and what happens to them once they reach the end of their useful life.

A range of tools is at the disposal of governments, companies, and individual consumers to make progress toward the overall goal of a less consumptive economy. To make a difference, however, these efforts need to be scaled up considerably, and political and structural barriers to change must be struck down.

Most material flows in industrial economies—including waste materials from industry, carbon dioxide and other emissions, and soil loss from farmlands—serve no useful purpose whatsoever and never actually pass through the hands of any consumer. Dealing with these hidden flows will require downsimaterial, zing some of the most destructive activities, such as mining, smelting, and logging. Improving energy and materials efficiency, boosting recycling and reuse, and lengthening the lifetime of products can accomplish this, so that there is far less needs to extract virgin raw materials. But there is also ample space for reducing the environmental impact of the goods and services delivered to consumers—including through dematerialization, clean production, and zero-waste closed-loop systems.

It is much more likely that resource consumption will be minimized and the generation of wastes and emissions avoided if manufacturers factor environmental considerations in from the very beginning when they design products, develop production technologies, and select materials.

Around the world, a growing number of governments are adopting extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws that require companies to take back products at the end of their useful life. These typically ban the landfilling and incineration of most products, establish minimum reuse and recycling requirements, specify whether producers are to be individually or collectively responsible for returned products, and stipulate whether producers may charge a fee when they take back products.

The goal of EPR is to induce manufacturers to assess the full lifecycle impacts of their products. Ideally, they will then eliminate unnecessary parts, forgo unneeded packaging, and design products that can easily be disassembled, recycled, remanufactured, or reused. The EPR approach has spread beyond packaging to encompass a growing range of products and industries, including consumer electronics and electric appliances, office machinery, cars, tires, furniture, paper goods, batteries, and construction materials.

Durability, repairability, and upgradability are essential to lessen the environmental impact of consumption. For easy refurbishing and upgrading, a “modular” approach permits access to individual parts and components, which allows them to be replaced easily. By working to extend and deepen useful product life, companies can squeeze vastly better performance out of the resources embodied in products rather than selling the largest possible quantity. Although fewer goods will be produced, there will be greater opportunity and incentive for companies to maintain, repair, upgrade, recycle, reuse, and remanufacture products, and thus greater business and job potential throughout the life of a product.

Governments and communities can strike a better balance between private and public forms of consumption by expanding organized sharing of facilities and amenities. Government action is also indispensable in overcoming the immense structural impediments to lower consumption levels and to more public forms of consumption. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in transportation: low-density, sprawling settlement patterns translate into large distances separating homes, workplaces, schools, and stores—rendering public transit, biking, and walking difficult or impossible. Improved land use planning, environment-oriented norms and standards, and the creation of a reinvigorated public infrastructure that allows for greater social provision of certain goods and services will help ensure that consumers are not overly compelled to make consumption-intensive “choices.”

Another key area where government action is needed is consumer credit. The savings rate in most countries is falling, while household debt is on the rise. Credit card spending is also expanding rapidly among emerging middle-class consumers. Governments could help consumers by offering advantageous credit terms for certain efficient, high-quality, durable, and environment-friendly purchases. Governments can also design policies that offer tax rebates for the best-performing products, while taxing those that fall short of standards.

An important tool that governments can wield is procurement. By buying environmentally preferable products, government authorities can exert a powerful influence on how products are designed, how efficiently they function, how long they last, and whether they are handled responsibly at the end of their useful lives. Well-designed purchasing rules can drive technological innovation and help establish green markets.

Prominent among the measures governments can take are recalibrating tax and subsidy policies that encourage greater consumption, pursuing pro-environment procurement rules, and establishing appropriate product standards and labeling programs. (www.asifjmir.com)

Next War with India: Over Water --- not Kashmir

Water, not unlike religion and ideology, has the power to move millions of people. Since the very birth of human civilization, people have moved to settle close to water. People move when there is too little of it; people move when there is too much of it. People move on it. People write and sing and dance and dream about it. People fight over it. And everybody, everywhere and every day, needs it. We need water for drinking, for cooking, for washing, for food, for industry, for energy, for transport, for rituals, for fun, for life. And it is not only we humans who need it; all life is dependent upon water for its very survival.

Water as a resource is more paramount than oil; it is essential to all daily human activities. Water is becoming a very valuable commodity, yet freshwater resources are unevenly distributed. This scarcity in water has triggered desperation in countries that already have little access to water, let alone reliable water supplies. This desperation usually cannot be resolved by negotiations. If governments or rebels want water badly enough they resort to force to obtain it.

For centuries war and conflict has been tied to the protection of water resources. With the risk of water shortages becoming more and more of an issue, it has become the fuel of certain conflicts between Pakistan and India. Water Wars are becoming inevitable in region's future as the misuse of water resources continues between two countries that share the same water source. International law has proven itself inadequate in defending the equal use of shared water supplies in some parts of South Asia.

India has emerged as a major culprit in bullying its neighbors over the distribution of water. The unequal bargaining power of India and its small neighbors such as Nepal and Bhutan is seen as a crucial stumbling block in joint harnessing of Himalayan waters.

A water war between India and Pakistan is inevitable in the future. Apart from other native, vernacular, political, and national sound reasoning, Pakistan's prime interest was to secure its water resources.

Though Kashmir is a political conflict, one of its dimensions is linked to water, because all water resources for India and Pakistan generate from Kashmir. The head-works of main Pakistani rivers originate in India.

The Indus River Basin has been an area of conflict between India and Pakistan. Spanning 1,800 miles, the river and its tributaries together make up one of the largest irrigation canals in the world. The basin provides water to millions of people in northwestern India and Pakistan. Dams and canals built in order to provide hydropower and irrigation has dried up stretches of the Indus River. Water projects have further caused the displacement of people and have contributed to the destruction of the ecosystem in the Indus plain.

The enmity between India and Pakistan over water started early when India discontinued water supplies to Pakistan. Hard bargaining and the mediation of the World Bank led to the world acclaimed Indus Water Treaty in 1960. The treaty allocated the three Eastern Rivers — Ravi, Sutlej and Beas — to India, the three Western rivers — Indus, Jhelum and Chenab — to Pakistan. Pakistan was to meet its requirements of its Eastern river canals from the Western rivers by building replacement works. Safeguards were included in the treaty to ensure unrestricted flow of waters in the Western rivers. Also both parties were to regularly exchange flow-data of rivers, canals and streams. A permanent commission known as the Indus Waters Commission was constituted to resolve the disputes between the parties. This treaty is globally respected that it has survived wars and periods of acute tension between the two hostile neighbors. However, the treaty has encountered hiccups wherein some contentious issues have cropped up.

The 430-megawatt Baglihar power project on river Chenab is one such plan since it violates the treaty. India argues that the treaty allows construction for power generation if there is no diversion of water flow.

Wullar Barrage is another controversial issue, which has the potential to ruin the entire system of the triple canal project within Pakistan. Pakistan has protested because Wullar Barrage’s capacity is 300,000 acres feet, which is 30 times more than the capacity permitted by the Indus Treaty. India is already in control of the Chenab River through Salal Dam constructed in 1976 and many Pakistanis disapprove of the yielding of the Salal Dam.

Yet another issue is the Kishen Ganga project, a (390 MW) hydropower-generating unit on River Neelam in Indian Kashmir. It affects Pakistan’s Neelam-Jhelum power-generating project. However, the most significant point in the history of the treaty was when in 2001 India unilaterally tried to withdraw from the treaty. Despite the inadequacy of the international law, the fact that the treaty has another signatory (World Bank) helped Pakistan protect its legal claim to her rights in the treaty.

Political issues let countries use its water as a tool to maneuver and pressurize the other. A different water/border related dispute is that of Sir Creek. India wishes to follow the 1914 treaty between the then Government of Sindh and the Rao Maharao of Kutch in which the boundary was agreed to run through the middle of the creek as the border. According to Pakistan’s view the boundary should start with the Eastern Bank, on the basis of the resolution Map of 1914, drawn up by the British governor of Bombay.

If India and Pakistan take a political decision to restructure their relations, they will have to ensure that water serves as a flow to bring them together, rather than taking them further on the course of conflict. (www.asifjmir.com)