Connecting dots between earthquake fatalities and corrupt building practices

According to ScienceDaily,

A new assessment of global earthquake fatalities over the past three decades indicates that 83 percent of all deaths caused by the collapse of buildings during earthquakes occurred in countries considered to be unusually corrupt.

The assessment authored by Professor Nicholas Ambraseys of the Imperial College of London and Professor Roger Bilham of the University Colorado at Boulder provides example, a 7 magnitude earthquake in New Zealand in 2010 has had zero fatalities while Haiti quake in the same year of same magnitude has had fatalities of apocalyptic proportion; 2,30000 died and 2 million were displaced. On the other hand, Christchurch with population of 372,000 survived without fatalities. These comparative facts convince us without much effort that chance of ‘fatalities’ is much higher due to earthquake at corrupt territories.

8.8 magnitude of Chile quake in 2010, which is 500 times stronger than that of Haiti, caused around 795 deaths and damage partly because of Tsunami. 9 magnitude of Japan quake in 2011 caused around eighteen thousand dead and mostly fatalities were resulted due to Tsunami. In 2004, Sumatra-Andaman quake of 9.1 magnitude killed 227,898 people, which was caused apparently by disastrous Tsunami. Apart from Tsunami, fatalities out of earthquake are much lesser in the context of Chile and Japan despite 9 magnitude shaking. According to corruption perceptions Index 2011, Japan scores 8 with rank 14, Chile scores 7.2 securing rank 22, New Zealand tops the list with a score 9.5, Haiti is in the bottom section of the list scoring 1.8 and ranking 175. In the measurement scale 0 means highly corrupt and 10 means the country is very clean. Here, we can see clear connection between country’s corruption status and collapsing buildings caused by earthquake. More precisely death list of Haiti in 2010 quake was longer because of wide-spread corruption in building practices.

Population density is also an issue besides vulnerability of building, but why always this population density is higher in corrupt nations comparing almost close to ‘zero population growth’ in developed nations, is another pressing question that needs further investigation.

Many of us might have a perception that earth is a nice planet having human species and not a rough one and frequent earthquakes are today leading to challenging situation for human survival, and the quakes are not supposed to happen often; but USGS estimates that several million earthquakes are triggered across the world each year. This agency publishes data of around 14,500 earthquakes worldwide; and the criteria is, the magnitude needs to be higher than 4.5 for worldwide publication. People usually get news about 12 to 18 out of several million quakes due to overwhelming media coverage, which contain magnitude 7 or more per year. Thus, continuously occurring lower magnitude tremors usually go unnoticed and much higher magnitude quakes at remote areas with less or no population do not get media attention as well as coverage.

If we look at South Asia, according to corruption perceptions index, India scores 3.1 and ranks 95, Pakistan scores 2.5 and ranks 134, Nepal scores 2.2 and ranks 154, Sri Lanka scores 3.3 and ranks 86, Afghanistan scores 1.5 and ranks 180, Maldives score 2.5 and rank 134, and Bangladesh scores 2.7 and ranks 120. Only Bhutan appears moderately clean country in the region scoring 5.7 and ranking 38. Hence, connecting the dots, it could be said that impact of higher magnitude earthquakes similar to what had hit in Japan, New Zealand, Chile and Haiti, could bring catastrophic consequences in this region having remarkably denser population due to collapse of hundreds and thousands , if not millions, of corruptly built structures. Why density of population is lesser in relatively cleaner country Bhutan, I haven’t got the answer yet.

Green economy another buzzwords or green greed or what

Image credit: ecologiae

Lots of tall talks are going on around ‘green economy’; earth summit 2012 is about to launch the term in global platform. In this sacred ceremonial the event is attracting range of stakeholders from government, civil societies, and both for profit as well as non-profit entities. They call it global transition to a better world that will maximize well-being and better coping or adapting to environmental changes. This brand new economy may promote alternative model of sustainable development to societies across the world on the basis of three pillars such as social, environmental and economic. Actors joining this ceremony will be awash by green thoughts and back home to hold pillars of this new model. They will be building capacity, coalition, and forums based on the new economic foundation.  The advocates of green economy have learned from the past mistakes that the brown economy had danced to a different tune and could not fulfill the goal for environmental protection and human development.

Lucid dream out of green chaos is to see people on this planet living happy lives. They have lately recognized that GDP growth is a perverse idea because it could not reduce inequality or poverty. This new economic model is assumed to have all in one package available from one stop services, which could be accessible by visa card or MasterCard or even by PayPal account. New green deal offers low-carbon energy appliances, ‘carbon army’, packages of financial innovations, re-regulation of financial system and breaking up discredited ones. It offers safety nets to vulnerable but condition applies whether carbon taxes and revenues from carbon trading are in place. There is an overwhelming message along with the package offer that business as it is today will end up in catastrophic consequences, thus, we need to focus on ‘humane’ model that would make sure justice over natural resources and protect bio-diversity. They promise more and more skills, jobs, technologies, poverty free green societies, and sustainable development built on three pillars.

On the other side of this ‘new deal’, another group of activists is alarming people most particularly marginalized and farmers communities not to step into this new deal of green economy, as Christophe warns there may be, ”…an offensive to create new sources of profit and growth through the “Green Economy” agenda.” Alarm notes also include that Rio 1992 privileged industrialist nations and corporations with intellectual property rights over seeds and genetic resources. It assumed that this time Rio is going to put price tag on services and products that come from biodiversity and ecosystem. This group of activists is calling it “green capitalism”, which has a clear intention to introduce monetary value over services that we get free from nature coining the term ‘biodiversity conservation’, ‘climate regulation’ etc. Structural adjustment similar to 80s may haunt green economy to transform developing countries’ rich biodiversity into commodity. The euphoria of green economy appears to consider all problems on its way like climate crisis, inequality, poverty, failed state, jobless people, mad cows, pirates, bird flues, corrupt governance  as consequences of  ’market failure’ and a new formula for ‘solution to all problems’ could be provided through green market.

Widely known  arguments seemingly fail to convince international community anymore such as equitable distribution of wealth could reduce inequality and injustice, capability enhancement is the key to human development, egalitarian society could sustain peace and harmony, and sate parties must guarantee human rights to her citizens and rights are not commodities within a territory. Thus, tagging the idea of sustainable development into green economy by manipulating human crisis in the face of climate change, securing green deal with bit of manoeuvring, leveling barcode on natural offerings, abusing intellects to produce tons of papers in favor of such green business, and attracting overenthusiastic delegates from developing countries in this ceremony and use them to hold the pillars of green trade would end in mess. There is no trade-off between trade and justice.

Weapons of Mass Values (WMV)

Credit: theasiandefence

There is a ‘outrageous scandal’ that half of the world’s poor live in South Asia. It’s not exciting to live in such a region where poverty has devoured the land despite having wealth of natural resources. Inequitable development, high concentration of wealth and power to minority elites, unequal  distribution of resources and opportunities, brain draining, rationalizing corruption at all layers of society, unhealthy competition and lust for power have infected the very essence of humane progress in the region resulting millions of poor fighting over limited resources on the street. On the other side, in the garden of Eden, few elites by exploiting political capital rejoicing life and having amusement abusing their slaves.

According to World Bank,

The prevalence of underweight children in India is among the highest in the world, and is nearly double that of Sub-Saharan Africa. 71% infant mortality rate per 1000 live births in Pakistan and 40% people living below poverty line in Bangladesh.

Government and non government actors talked loud on eradicating poverty, though economic indicator has gone little high in the last couple of years, achievement is not worth for appreciation. Though sometimes, it had been observed that imperial and colonial masters had appreciated economic success in the region but that does not really mean significant improvement of mass life and livelihoods. Impressive financial growth in the recent years does not really shed light on lack of quality lives for ordinary citizens.

Most importantly, unequal access to public services, natural resources, and opportunities have created unjust land of income disparities and safe heaven for corrupt people. The new dimension of ‘political economy’ based on criminal acts and corruption has generated a group of beneficiaries who are within the circle of power as well as benefits. And the rest millions outside the garden of Eden living miserably despair for food, shelter and employment just to make sure their existence. A little possibility might be through nepotism and favoritism, but to become blessed by nepotism, one needs to get through ‘culture of sycophancy’. Therefore, there is a need to awaken mass people on values for building a social system that should be based on grace, respect, hard work, ethics, dignity and conscience and eventually shining light upon the dark region. And rewarding citizens who deserve it than feeding worthless, dumb and corrupt at decisive roles.

According to  Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI),

India was the world’s largest recipient of arms, accounting for 10 per cent of global arms imports. The four next largest recipients of arms in 2007–2011 were South Korea (6 per cent of arms transfers), Pakistan (5 per cent), China (5 per cent) and Singapore (4 per cent).

Out of top five arms importers, two countries are from South Asia including first place. South Asian may not feel that much proud visualizing the grim pictures of child mortality, despair of unemployment among low-income group, suicidal farmers, once happy village families crumbling around in the urban slums, women and children with begging bowl in the traffic signals, food adulteration and mass poisoning  through food substance, sign of sick and crippled generation ahead and millions other at the ‘nothing to lose’ mode in the face of drought, cyclone and disasters.

It could haunt any person with little conscience that such a big chunk of money is supposed to spend for changing fate of these helpless citizens than accumulating weapons of mass destruction. Starting from cold era’s superpower theme to warming era’s WMD, it is so ominous that someone does not want us to live in peace, harmony and bliss creating a symphony. On the contrary, someone empowers and encourages vengeance to carry on arms race, conflict and wars, famine and hunger, child labor, unethical business through poisoning foods and agricultural products, anguish, anger, suicidal blasts and mass abuse by ruthless corrupt. We need to revolutionize ‘weapons of mass values’ and prove that human civilization can be ruled from ‘humane’; at least prove it before the world comes to an end.

Dar es Salaam Declaration: no need to play hide and seek with public

Making national budget public is the only road ahead available for those territories who have played hide and seek with their citizens for decades. Greater inclusive budgetary process and relationship of accountability between government, civil societies and citizens is the only way forward to clear the mess that had been accumulated till date. The idea of considering citizens as passive receiver of relief goods and few kilograms of wheat or rice may become obsolete sooner or later. Considering citizens poor or stupid, who could be convinced by false promises and who could bow with begging bowl loyalty,  may not work at this transcendental age. It’s not really the time to bow for his/her excellency with no apparent improvement for the societies, its time for justice and accountability.

According to Dar es Salaam Declaration, “We are citizens and civil society organizations from around the globe, united by the shared conviction that inclusive and open public budgets are critical to achieving a world in which all human beings enjoy their full human rights – civil, political, social, economic, cultural and environmental.” It had been found that civil society engagement in the budgetary process could truly improve the outcome as well as lives of people. Public budget is all about public asset, thus, its fundamental right and responsibility of people to take part in this process. Budget should tell us about social equity and empowerment not just giving away few kilograms of wheat or rice to the begging bowl.

It is often observed in the miserable nations that most marginalized are excluded participating from budgetary process, and sometime able civil societies do not have access or influence over the process. Hence, public budget must be transparent, inclusive, effective, equitable and accurate; most importantly there should be monitoring mechanism so as accountability by  audit institutions, media and citizens. According to International Budget Partnership (IBP), a global research and advocacy program,

If you want to fight poverty, you need to care about government budgets. As the specific plans for how public funds will be raised and spent, budgets are the government’s most powerful tool to meet the needs and priorities of a country and its people.

Open Budget Partnership released Open Budget Survey 2010, and according to this report 74 of the 94 countries assessed fail to meet basic standards of transparency and accountability with national budgets, which means these countries have had doors open for abuse, corruption and reckless use of public money. Poor transparency and accountability in government spending really matters and it indicates what extent a country is submerged in greed so as corruption.

However, according to the survey, in South Asia, out of 100 India scored 67 so as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh 48, Nepal 45, Pakistan 38 and Afghanistan 21. Therefore, Bangladesh provides some information to public in its budget documents during the year, India provides significant information to the public, and Afghanistan provide minimal information to the public. Countries providing extensive budget information are South Africa, New Zealand, United Kingdom, France, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. The worst performers providing little or no information on public money include China, Saudi Arabia, Equatorial Guinea, Senegal, and Iraq.

The paradigm of hides and seek play with budget process and keeping public in dark on spending their money seemingly appears obsolete because media, civil society and citizens across the globe are revolutionizing ‘participatory, accountable and transparent budgetary process’. Governments need to understand such change and should publish online all the budget information and should meet other requirements of international standards besides ensuring meaningful public participation in the budget process.

A movement gets momentum on its own, it has a reason!

Photo credit: Deccan Chronicle

I would love to echo Mario Osava’s words, “The environmental movement won the ideological battle with the growth of awareness on climate change. Environmentalists are no longer seen as “loonies” or granola-eating hippies: the people seen as on the fringe”. Erratic weather, flash floods, overflowing rivers, dyke bursts, extreme heat and drought, cold waves, sea level rise and so on are not anymore text-book contents or hypothesis of environmentalists. These are felt by ordinary people at every corner on the planet.  ’Extreme weather event’ is seemingly a polite word and sooner we may have to hear words like ‘catastrophe’, ‘deluge’ and disaster at apocalyptic proportion.

Kyoto Protocol fails, international convention on climate change got stuck on the table due to lack of consensus among all parties, a legally binding document on such convention failed all the way from Copenhagen to Durban, which reminds us that consensus is hard to make in the present world divided much on economic interest. More and more emerging polluters are joining age-old polluters in terms of carbon emission to raise their economy and to become enlisted as top ranked developed nations. Emitters – colonial, imperial and booming altogether racing against time to make money. The race goes on despite recession, widespread unemployment, occupy Wall Street, smoky china and oil spill all over the coast line. Financial greed is so apparent and unstoppable , thus, it may seem insurmountable to reach consensus on climate treaty; but the climate justice movement has unprecedented momentum due to its very appeal to convince mass people across the glove because the real-time disasters are felt by ordinary people because life and livelihoods of billions of ordinary people is on the edge because ordinary people are the mass citizens elsewhere in the world who are left vulnerable so as abandoned in the face of catastrophe.

Curbing global emission is not achievable at the moment or at near future as promised. Adaptation fund  probably would be disappointing for affected nations one way or the other. Fund channeling through multilateral agencies and banks could end up imposing policy conditions, the same old game, or could transform vulnerable people to a more desperate defaulter of loan. Least developed countries had been found deliberately ignorant about local needs and wants, which is a common phenomenon and because of that local communities stay underdeveloped. Faster disbursement of adaptation fund from central government to local community is the hardest hurdle unless there is a political will and until they are enlightened.

As it always happens in the human history, vulnerable communities, the children of men, on the ground along with their women and children are supposed to live in knee-deep water with despair for food and shelter. Climate justice movement accelerating outside the ‘plenary session’ and far away from the convention center, irrespective of the outcome of treaties, ratification status, translation into national legislation and so on,  telling us stories of the affected people irrespective of caste, color, religion, race etc. and pursue us to build consensus among the billions of ordinary people to become resilient in the face of climate adversaries. A band of humanitarian activists transferring adaptation knowledge and techniques into communities beside enhancing local and indigenous practices.  The show must go on and the ‘humane’ movement gets momentum from and within humanity because it has reason to uphold human dignity because the movement does not want to let you down as ordinary people in the face of climate adversaries.

Feed hungry not car: Biofuel isn’t really helping

Photo: TheEcologist

There had been a serious setback in technologies to find alternatives of petrol and diesel to feed hundreds and thousands of vehicles. Failure of technological breakthrough in one hand and filthiness of petroleum on the other hand had led well-off nations to innovate biofuel. It was ironically presumed by the great minds in the world that biofuel would be environment friendly and eventually replace dirty fuel. Germany and US along with Brazil as well as G20 nations are especially encouraging biofuel through policies and subsidization. EU has set the target to use 9% transport fuel from biofuel by next 10 years or so. This euphoria centering promotion of biofuel has, indeed, gone wild undermining smallholder farmers and threatening food security. Communities in African continent are pushed on the edge by grabbing their lands for producing biofuel crops.

Famine in Africa is now breaking news, over one billion people do not have enough to eat, deluge has devoured Southeast Asia, bailout of banks so as nations, and all these gloom and doom happenings could further increase hunger. Well, even fifth grade students understand how biofuel reduces agricultural lands for food production, wipes out communities and destroys farmers’ life and livelihood.  Whats the point of investing biofuel is naive to question like that because it’s an innovation of great mind and policy priority to go for it even at the cost of couple of billion more hungry and famine in more continents.

Biofuel energy for transport in rich nations has initiated government backed land grabbing anarchy in Mozambique, Senegal, Kenya Tanzania and so on. And nothing could stop these ambitious nations from fueling biofuel agenda. G20 leaders’ summit in Cannes has trashed the findings of specialized agencies opposed by major biofuel producers. The key finding was, facilitating crops for biofuel caused soaring food price as well as volatility and situation will get worse. A clear recommendation was provided that these nations should not subsidize biofuel  and remove all provisions from national policies for such production and consumption.

Ironically, according to experts this fuel could end up emitting more carbon than fossil fuel. So, it’s not basically green fuel or low emission fuel. However, biofuel companies are invading innocent villages of least developed continents with a slogan on ‘sustainable clean energy’. 20,000 people faced forced eviction from their land in the coastal area of Kenya for plantation of this holy crop. It’s a questionable EU renewable energy policy that claims biofuel as ‘clean energy’ in the first place and then rewards companies to go ahead with such flawed understanding, allows taxpayers money to carry on eviction of thousands of poor farmers elsewhere in a miserable nation. Jatropha plantation replacing graveyard into crop field and destroying primary school on its way if necessary.

At such moments of famine and deluge much attention of G20 leaders should have been on how to step forward achieving food sovereignty or security or at least stop the causes of soaring food price. Unfortunately, similar to the 80′s old-fashioned structural adjustment  and market policies this anarchy of biofuel production is devouring poor valleys like a deluge.

Spending on nukes vs. famine in East Africa

World leaders will be spending $1 trillion on nuclear weapons in the next 10 years and money will not just seem out of the blue. They will cut essential services such as education, health care, social services and jobs. Mostly nuclear capable nations will spend more to enrich themselves including India and Pakistan. One may question that there is unemployment crisis in USA and Russia, poverty in India, social instability in Pakistan, and bailout in Europe; then what’s the point of pointless expenditure on nukes. Well, no straightforward answer to that question is known. The dynamics of power relation is complicated and politics apparently appears as the dirtiest means to sketch these relations.

Photo credit: AP (at spiegel.de)

On the other side of world, famine has been officially declared in Ethiopia, Kenya and South Sudan and more than 10 million people are affected. Wide spread crop failures have forced people to move elsewhere. Malnourished children are dying at dramatic rate as David Bull said, “They are now dying at a rate of more than 250 per day – that’s one child every six minutes.” There are tons of problems like failed governance, rebellions, long-lasting conflicts, reconciliation and reconstruction of state, but its time for survival of drought affected communities. And the priority is to supply food and nutrition to combat death of each child at every six minutes.

Nuke owners may imagine these famine and poverty affected people in the African zone as helpless vulnerable groups looking for reliefs covered in flies. The potential of this great continent with natural as well as cultural richness might have been buried in the colonial past. The fact is, whatever potential the continent have had, a fatal famine takes lives there now. Wealthy nations may have more interest in nukes than to stop this tragedy. US alone spent $1.2 trillion for war in last decade. Average human may ask that this money could reduce poverty in the continent or elsewhere but asking like that could be termed as ‘wishful thinking’.

Britain has spent £90m, German government could give aid up to €14m, and Canadian government has contributed about $22 million in humanitarian assistance to the region this year. UN officials said the World Food Programme had received 60 per cent of the $500 million (£300 million) it appealed for to help save the lives of an estimated 10 million people. Rich nations have provided aid and relief assistance to poor nations to show their efforts and fashion of giving donations rises and falls in course of time. They offer directly to government and sometimes through international humanitarian agencies. There had been much talk about aid effectiveness, government’s transparency, and  agencies’ success-failure at achieving millennium development goals or poverty alleviation. Apart from regular programmatic intervention, in the time of emergency such as famine and earth quake, attention goes tracking aid accountability.

Nuke owners should be similarly accountable to global citizens explaining or justifying about huge spends on nuke and its impact on employment, education, social services and poverty alleviation. The reason behind wide gap between nuke-fund and famine-fund is probably nuclear power enrichment is selfishly motivated by nation state’s ambition and famine fund is self-less humanitarian need. It’s easy to afford a trillion-dollar for nuke but difficult to reach up to a billion dollar for feeding hunger affected.

Just to look at this simple fact to compare cost of one weapon and what benefits could be reached to humanity. Cost of one nuke weapon could give health care to 36,000 people, textbooks for 43,000 students, or convert 64,285 households to renewable energy. On the contrary, one nuclear weapon may cause more than trillion-dollar loss and example of such loss stands out there at Hiroshima-Nagasaki. The loss in monetary term is more than total of  summing up earth quakes at Chilli-Japan and famine in East Africa. Thus, apart from spiritual aspect of humanitarian assistance, the monetary value in terms of return for helping disaster and famine affected people is higher than the cost for piling up nukes and associated danger. Spending to stop famine in East Africa needs to get priority over spending on nuke. Let us be little naive to think like this way than to become too political.