Slum improvement not only uplifts the living quality of urban poor but also supports adaptation measures of climate change, while planned migration of the climate-induced displaced is a present-day concern. Building of environment-friendly infrastructure with sanitation facilities will help a great deal in eliminating the effects of environmental
degradation, writes Tahera Akter

MIGRATION to urban areas is a regular phenomenon. But climate-induced displacement forcing people to migrate to cities in recent years is a matter of concern. Increased frequency and severity of natural disasters through climate change over the past recent years are not only displacing people physically but also exposing them to increased poverty by threatening their livelihoods temporarily and permanently. A growing number of people have rushed to the city’s slums creating urban crisis. Women and children are the most vulnerable groups in society under such circumstances of climate change, movement, haphazard growth and unhealthy environment.
   Climate change threatens people’s access to food as they become socio-economically susceptible. Displaced people living in urban slums are in search of better and secure life. But urban slums located mostly in low-lying environmentally hazardous areas with inadequate facilities of food, shelter, sanitation and healthcare make their life even worse. A growing number of people in urban slums over the recent past have created extra pressure on the existing systems of land and water and challenges for the government development activities including slum development and poverty reduction strategy.
   Poverty reduction and access to food, the government’s important development agenda at all time, are under threat due to climate change. Environmental displacement has already become intense in geographically and environmentally vulnerable areas in Bangladesh. Thus, climate-induced migration to big cities or nearby places is getting spontaneous over the last few decades. For instance, frequent exposure to natural disasters makes coastal people often bound to migrate in search of secure lives and livelihoods. Therefore, increased slum settlements in the western and eastern periphery of Dhaka city indicate physical manifestation of growing urban poverty. Slums are supposed to be a potential target for the habitation of displaced people. But the planned migration of displaced people to urban slums is yet to consider the issue of reducing their vulnerabilities.
   According to the Centre for Global Change, potential displacement every year due to some environmental events like erosion (coastal and riverine chars), salinity, storm surge and water-logging is estimated at 60,000, 10,000-15,000, 100,000-120,000 and 30,000 respectively. After analysing population displacement in major natural events like flood and cyclone over 40 years (1970-2009), it has been found that on an average 25 per cent (39 million) and 2 per cent (3 million) population in each major flood and cyclone have been displaced. Besides, coastal area is under threat because of sea level rise. As coastal people constitute about 28 per cent of the total population, about 43 million people from coastal areas will be dislocated if sea level rises by 88cm and proper adaptation measures are not taken to contain people in their own land.
   It is presumed that frequency and intensity of natural disaster will be increased because of extreme climatic events. A major flood used to occur once in every 4 years between 1970 and 1989, while the frequency of major flood has increased now as it now occurs once in every 3 years during the period 1990-2009. As one or more severe disasters in a year has already been experienced in Bangladesh as in the years 2007 (cyclone Sidr and flood) and 2009 (cyclones Aila and Bijli), it will not be a surprise if occurrence of major natural events is witnessed every year.
   Friedman writes that every year about 500,000 people move to the capital city Dhaka, ‘a city exploding with climate migrants’, from the banks of the River Buriganga and coastal and rural areas. According to the International Organisation for Migration, about 70 percent of slum dwellers in Dhaka have experienced some kind of environmental shocks. Slums in Dhaka city have been growing rapidly since 1971. Several surveys on slum growth in Dhaka, conducted by the Centre for Urban Studies, recorded slum population at 275,000 in 1974, at 718,143 (2,156 slums) in 1991, at 1.5 million (3007 slums) in 1996 and at 3.4 million (4,966 slums) in 2005. Trend of growth shows that slum population increased two times more than the previous count and it has been increasing since 1991.
   According to Richard Odingo, climate change will increase poverty and worsen food security (cited in Davis et al 2009). Urban poverty will increase if environmentally displaced people keep moving to city, while slum is their potential target for habitation. The poor are often compelled to live in environmentally hazardous areas like low lying flood-prone areas including swamps and natural lakes. Poor living conditions and unsanitary environment have been substantiated in the elements of food security. In the national food policy, 2006, food security has been defined as availability of and access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs. But availability of food does not ensure an individual’s ability to buy food, while access to food is not enough as regards food security. According to World Food Programme, utilisation of food guarantees one’s capacity to absorb and utilise nutrients in foods consumed. Utilisation of food is determined through caring practices, eating habits, hygiene and access to health and sanitary facilities. In this case, the consumption pattern of urban poor especially slum dwellers represents rice, potato and vegetables consumed on daily basis which are cheap to them. But access to protein-rich animal products (e.g. milk and milk products, meat or poultry, eggs, good quality fish) is very low as these items are expensive to them.
   Low socioeconomic status of slum dwellers mainly characterised by low income with inadequate education (for both parents and children) is a common phenomena, while their living is increasingly becoming susceptible to recent natural and man-made urban hazards like water logging in Dhaka City. Also, poor physical environment with non-existent solid waste disposal system is making their lives even worse. Therefore, high prevalence of disease (waterborne) among their children living in slums points to an unhealthy environment. In such circumstances, to ensure food security of the urban poor is a challenge if their socioeconomic condition remains bleak. Sufferings of such people need to be addressed during policy preparations.
   Slum improvement not only uplifts the living quality of urban poor but also supports adaptation measures of climate change, while planned migration of the climate-induced displaced is a present-day concern. Building of environment-friendly infrastructure with sanitation facilities will help a great deal in eliminating the effects of environmental degradation. Decentralisation of some slum settlements to nearby cities can be considered if they can be set up at elevated places above the level of water bodies including natural lakes and ponds. Coordination between relevant development organisations with the support of international assistance can make possible such structural change and management of city growth to facilitate planned migration of the environmentally displaced people within the country.
   Tahera Akter is a research associate at Unnayan Onneshan, a Dhaka-based research organisation. tahera13b@yahoo.com

If environmental taxation lacks international coordination, it will not impact global pollution levels, as companies will simply relocate and move the pollution problem with them. If measures are implemented unevenly, in one country and not another, it leads to a loss of international competitiveness, writes Mohua Rashid

THE Association of Chartered Certified Accountants has recently produced two documents about global taxation. The first, Green Tax in a Recession, says using environmental and green taxation to boost falling tax revenues needs careful planning by governments and policymakers around the world; the second, Tax in a Global Environment, looks at how tax policies have impacted on the global recession.
   Both reports assert that tax is a worldwide issue, as our own National Board of Revenue’s website says: ‘Negotiating tax treaties with foreign governments and participating in inter-ministerial deliberations on economic issues having a bearing on fiscal policies and tax administration are also NBR’s responsibilities.’
   There is no doubt that tax affects us all – individuals and businesses. And this is why ACCA produced these reports – both of which mention the need for transparency and fairness in global tax systems.
   In Bangladesh, the Administration Capacity and Taxpayer Services programme was created to enhance transparency and to help authorities encourage tax compliance.
   Collecting taxes – or tax yields – have seen a decline recently in many countries. This decline is due to the economic downturn. But it can also be because companies choose to relocate their headquarters if the tax regime is insufficiently attractive in the country where they are based.
   And for individuals, the extension of tax returns for taxpayers was extended by a month to October 31, which meant November 1 due to the last day of October being a government holiday. There is a hope that a whole month will hopefully allow those individual taxpayers to submit their returns on time – to be compliant. And last year, the deadline was extended twice. The revenue board believes it would get more tax returns as the submission date was extended.
   While governments struggle with tax yields, the next issue for them to deal with is green taxes. ACCA believes one of the most important areas where governments should step in is to change behaviour which can damage the environment. And this is an important issue for Bangladesh. Accountants and finance professionals should play an active part in efforts to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions, and the concept of ‘tax shifting – by increasing carbon taxes on the use of fossil fuels but reducing them for payroll, income of corporate taxes – should be promoted.
   But this policy shift comes with a warning. The ACCA report Green Taxation in a recession said it should be recognised that a significant alteration in policies towards a reliance on green taxes will probably prove unsustainable in the long term. This is because where such taxes are imposed on emissions and general pollution, a successful system will ultimately destroy its own tax base. This is not a theory, but a realistic prospect for the future. Therefore, the way forward may be through a well-balanced and broad tax base as well as relying more on regulation to drive down pollution.
   Green taxation in a recession offers a series of clear recommendations. The first is to ensure that green taxes are global, with international co-ordination of policies and ideas. The design and implementation of green taxation policies needs to be done carefully, and then measured and the results analysed. Consultation is also important – governments need to consult widely with the electorate and business before introducing taxes it is understood what is happening and why. Raising awareness of the need for this type of taxation is also important, and the benefits need to be explained. And lastly, green taxes need to be explicit and transparent, so they are understandable.
   If environmental taxation lacks international coordination, it will not impact global pollution levels, as companies will simply relocate and move the pollution problem with them. If measures are implemented unevenly, in one country and not another, it leads to a loss of international competitiveness. Global scrutiny of business’s environmental performance will only increase as calls for low-carbon economy grow.
   Tax in a global environment asserts that tax policies around the world have inadvertently fuelled the global financial crisis by encouraging companies to use debt rather than equity.
   Chas Roy-Chowdhury, ACCA’s global spokesperson on taxation issues asks in the report that G20 leaders have proposed improved coordination between national authorities as a key aspect of restoring confidence in global financial regulation. But is there a need for similar action in the field of taxation?
   This paper examines the most topical international tax issues, from tax havens to tax competition. Inconsistencies in tax systems need to be ironed out. Global co-ordination is vital to make sure that tax is fair and transparent.
   ACCA believes the recommendations made in these reports would go a long way to addressing some of the challenging current issues in the field of international tax. Tax policy is and must remain in the hands of sovereign national governments, which should be able to run regimes suited to their stages of economic development, such as the flat-tax systems in post-communist countries in Eastern Europe.
   But what is clear about tax is that we all have to pay them – individuals and business. And for this reason, we need tax policies that are transparent, clear, credible and certain.
   Mohua Rashid is country manager ACCA Bangladesh

Washington’s quick backtracking from the Obama-Hu statement underscores that any enterprise to mount ill-fated Sino-American ventures in the Indo-Gangetic plains can seriously harm the American business agenda, which is the US’s top priority,
writes MK Bhadrakumar

DISCOURSE between India and Pakistan can be deceptive – like when cats hiss. You can never quite tell dalliance from discord. The fact remains that at different levels, despite their occasional shrill rhetoric, contacts have been going on between Delhi and Islamabad, including some unprecedented highly sensitive lines of communication, which neither side publicises. India has also kick-started parallel efforts aimed at reaching out to Kashmiri opinion, with Pakistan in the loop.
   At the responsible level of leadership in both India and Pakistan, there is a realisation that extremism and terrorism do not and should not provide scope for zero-sum games, given the acuteness of security threats. There is no attempt on India’s part to take advantage of the pressing need for the Pakistani military to redeploy from the eastern border to the Afghan border.
   Washington is privy to the alpha and the omega of what is going on, and yet it got a pithy paragraph inserted into the summit statement by US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao:
   The two sides welcomed all efforts conducive to peace, stability and development in South Asia. They support the efforts of Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight terrorism, maintain domestic stability and achieve sustainable economic and social development, and support the improvement and growth of relations between India and Pakistan. The two sides are ready to strengthen communication, dialogue and cooperation on issues related to South Asia and work together to promote peace, stability and development in that region.
   The untimely articulation raised eyebrows in New Delhi, as both Washington and Beijing know only too well that it isn’t in India’s DNA to accept minders or mentors – Western or Asian. Delhi lost no time brusquely rejecting mediation.
   However, the Sino-American affair over South Asia presented Delhi with another puzzle. The fact remains that US and Chinese interests are so patently at odds in the region that the two countries cannot easily mate. Washington is actively undermining the stability of the Mahinda Rajapaksa government in Colombo, with which both Beijing and Delhi enjoy close ties. The US has just begun a robust thrust in Myanmar to contest China’s influence.
   Conceivably, China has a good grasp of the situation in Pakistan and can estimate how deeply unpopular the US has become in that country. Ironically, the day the Obama-Hu statement was released in Beijing, a Gallup poll revealed that Pakistanis see the US as a bigger threat (59%) than India (18%) or the Taliban (11%). Why should Beijing stake its ‘all-weather friendship’ with Pakistan to salvage America’s reputation?
   Meanwhile, a concerted media campaign has begun in the US to discredit Chinese policies toward Afghanistan – that China is involved in ‘brazen examples of corruption’ to grab Afghanistan’s wealth of mineral resources. Quoting US officials, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday that state-run China Metallurgical Group Corp paid a bribe of $30 million to the Afghan authorities concerned for receiving a $2.9 billion project to extract copper from the Aynak deposit in Logar province.
   The MCC is reportedly all set to bribe its way into another massive mining deal – an iron-ore deposit west of Kabul known as Haji Gak – and Sinochem, a Chinese state oil company, is similarly bidding for access to oil and gas deposits in northern Afghanistan. It is an unsavoury tale.
   Yet the London Times picked up the sleaze story on Thursday and embellished it even further. The tale already finds echo in a recent testimony by Milton Bearden, a former Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Islamabad, to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ‘The other regional players [read China] are busily setting the stage for exploitation of Afghanistan’s natural resources, while the US remains bogged down with the war. This should change,’ Bearden said.
   Two weeks ago, when the Associated Press broke the story, it quoted leading American think-tanker and author, Robert Kaplan, ‘The world isn’t fair. A worse outcome to staying and helping the Chinese would be withdrawing and losing a great battle in the war against radical Islam.’
   Therefore, where is it that US-China ‘communication, dialogue and cooperation’ can work in South Asia? In Nepal? Indeed, Washington has already begun backtracking from the Obama-Hu statement.
   On Wednesday, addressing the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC, William J Burns, under secretary for political affairs, said, ‘Of course, we all share an interest in stability and peace between India and Pakistan. We all know the stakes. America has always supported the two countries’ peace process and the resolution of outstanding disputes through dialogue. The pace, scope, and content of the peace process is for Indian and Pakistan leaders to decide.’
   Burns later told Indian newsmen, ‘The US is interested in pursuing the best and healthiest possible partnership with China. But that doesn’t come at the expense of other increasingly important partnerships, particularly our relationship with India.’ He advised them ‘not to read too much’ into the US-China statement.
   Beijing will not be surprised that its South Asia connection with the Americans turned out to be ephemeral. The US similarly fired from the Chinese shoulder 11 years ago when its influence over Pakistan and India was again at low ebb. That was in May-June 1998, when the two South Asian countries went openly nuclear and Bill Clinton thundered in the Oval Office, ‘We’re going to come down on those guys like a ton of bricks.’
   Clinton dispatched his diplomats to rally the Chinese to his side and Beijing promptly obliged. A few weeks passed and Clinton changed his mind and began reconciliation talks with Delhi – without keeping Beijing (or anyone else) in the loop. History seems to repeat itself.
   No sooner had Obama taken off from China the American side began its explaining. These temper tantrums show up the fault-lines in the US’s regional policies. The plain truth is that both Pakistan and India have become somewhat ‘unmanageable’.
   Washington is acutely conscious that ‘anti-Americanism’ is riding high in Pakistan and it cuts across all sections of society. There is growing volatility in Pakistani politics and any new government can only be less ‘US-friendly’.
   The Afghan Taliban continue to flourish as Pakistan’s ‘strategic assets’ and they bleed American troops while Pakistani military operations remain restricted to militants who disrupt Pakistan’s internal security.
   As for Delhi, it hosted Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Monday, just a week before a visit by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the US. India may get back into the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project and Manmohan may visit Tehran in February. Most important, Iran invited India to join the Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan regional format, and Delhi showed interest.
   Delhi takes a dim view of the Anglo-American thinking regarding ‘moderate Taliban’ in Afghanistan. It repeatedly ignored – including a week ago – the proposal by the US AfPak special representative, Richard Holbrooke, to visit Delhi for consultations, pleading ‘scheduling difficulty’.
   Again, Manmohan will be visiting Moscow in early December – his second trip to Russia in six months. The traffic from Delhi to Moscow has become heavy – one presidential visit, two prime ministerial visits and visits by the foreign minister and the defence minister.
   Indian strategists are finally catching up with the transformative realities in the world order and realising that Delhi’s one-dimensional foreign policy riveted on the idea of working ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ with Washington as ‘natural allies’ on the global scene is a hopelessly archaic notion.
   It becomes embarrassing to look back and survey that India has held over 50 military exercises with the US in recent years. Obama prefers a ‘demilitarisation’ of US-India ties, with cooperation mainly focused on American arms manufacturers tapping into the massive Indian arms bazaar.
   For the first time in the post-Cold war era, Delhi elites too are not going overboard with excitement over an impending prime ministerial visit to the US and are able to maintain equanimity and poise.
   At the same time, US-Indian business ties are set to blossom. On Thursday, the Indian government tabled legislation in parliament under the misleading title ‘Civil Nuclear Liability Bill’, the sole purpose of which is to provide access for the US nuclear industry to the Indian market, which promises to offer over $100 billion in business in the coming five to 10 years.
   Washington’s quick backtracking from the Obama-Hu statement underscores that any enterprise to mount ill-fated Sino-American ventures in the Indo-Gangetic plains can seriously harm the American business agenda, which is the US’s top priority.
   This is not the end of the story. Beijing still may have an affair to settle with Delhi – the Dalai Lama’s recent visit to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as its territory.
   Most certainly, it was not in India’s interests to have raised the dust. It remains unclear what good purpose was served by the visit and what may have been lost.
   In what may be the first Chinese response, the top Kashmiri separatist leader in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, has been invited to visit Beijing. He said he accepted the invitation and hoped to give Chinese diplomats and other officials a ‘perspective’ on the situation in J&K. This is the first time ever that Beijing has invited any separatist leader from J&K to visit China.
   Obama may have a thing or two to explain to Manmohan when they meet over the first state banquet of his presidency that he is hosting in singular honour of the Indian dignitary next week. While in Beijing, Obama might have unwittingly butted into an area in which angels fear to tread.
   Asia Times Online, November 21. MK Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service