📰 Centre enhances powers of BSF; Punjab slams move
Now, the Border Security Force can ‘arrest, search and seize’ within 50 km.
•The Union Home Ministry has enhanced the powers of the Border Security Force (BSF) to “arrest, search and seize” within 50 km from the international boundary in Assam, West Bengal and Punjab. Such operational powers of the BSF, a Central armed police force under the Union, will also be applicable to the newly created Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, according to a notification published in the Gazette of India on October 11.
•Earlier, the BSF’s limit was fixed up to 80 km from the international boundary in Gujarat and 15 km in Rajasthan, Punjab, West Bengal and Assam.
•The October 11 notification replaces a 2014 order under the BSF Act, 1968, which also covered the States of Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya.
•Though the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir that was bifurcated into two Union Territories in August 2019 was not mentioned in the 2014 order, references to it exists in a previous such amendment in 1973. The October 11 order specifically mentions the two Union Territories.
•The violations for which the BSF carries out search and seizure include smuggling of narcotics, other prohibited items, illegal entry of foreigners and offences punishable under any other Central Act among others.
•A BSF official said the amendment “establishes uniformity in defining the area within which the BSF can operate” as per its charter of duties, adding that this would enable improved operational effectiveness in curbing trans-border crimes.
•After a suspect has been detained or a consignment seized within the specified area, the BSF can only conduct “preliminary questioning” and has to hand over the suspect to the local police within 24 hours. The BSF does not have the powers to prosecute crime suspects.
‘Attack on federalism’
•Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi said the move was an attack on federalism. “I strongly condemn the GoI’s [Government of India’s] unilateral decision to give additional powers to BSF within 50 KM belt running along the international borders, which is a direct attack on the federalism. I urge the Union Home Minister @AmitShah to immediately rollback this irrational decision,” he tweeted.
•In 2012, Narendra Modi as Gujarat’s Chief Minister had written to the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh opposing the Centre’s proposed move of amending the BSF Act, 1968, to give wide powers to the Central armed police force to arrest and search anybody in any part of the country.
•Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa termed the decision “illogical.”
•“Policing in the hinterland is not the role of a border guarding force, rather it would weaken the capacity of the Border Security Force in discharging its primary duty of guarding the international border,” he said.
•Mr. Randhawa added that Mr. Channi never asked the Centre for enhancing the jurisdiction of the BSF along the international border.
•The Shiromani Akali Dal also termed the Union’s move “the imposition of the President’s rule through the back door in nearly half of Punjab. This virtually turns the State into a de facto Union Territory. This devious attempt to place the State directly under the Central rule must and will be opposed,” said senior Akali leader and former Minister Daljit Singh Cheema.
•There is no response from the West Bengal government yet.
“It will help India realise its dream of becoming business capital of the world,” the Prime Minister said.
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday kicked off PM Gati Shakti, a national master plan for synchronising connectivity infrastructure projects across modes of transport, and said it will help India realise its dream to become a “business capital” of the world.
•Taking on “some political parties” for criticising infrastructure projects that he said were necessary for the country, Mr. Modi said that “the subject of infrastructure has not been a priority for most of India’s political parties.
•“This is not even visible in their manifesto… despite the fact that it is globally accepted that the creation of quality infrastructure for sustainable development is a proven way, which gives rise to many economic activities and creates employment on a large scale,” he pointed out.
•Referring to common instances of roads being built only to be dug up afresh for work necessitated by other utilities like water, the Prime Minister said there was a wide gap between macro planning and micro implementation due to the lack of coordination and advance information sharing as departments think and work in silos. This, he said, was leading to hampered construction and wastage of budget resources.
Logistics hubs
•Citing the example of Dadri, where an integrated industrial township was coming up, the Prime Minister said India needed similar “plug and play” infrastructure so that investors could just come and begin working seamlessly.
•Like in Greater Noida’s Dadri, such an integrated township could be connected to the eastern and western dedicated freight corridor. For that, multi-modal logistics hubs would be built alongside, which would have a state-of-the-art railway terminus, inter and intra-State bus terminus, mass rapid transport system and other conveniences.
•“By building these across different parts of the country, India could achieve the dream of becoming the world’s business capital,” he underlined.
•“Our goals are extraordinary and will require extraordinary efforts. In realising these goals, PM Gati Shakti will be the most helpful factor. Just as JAM [Jan Dhan, Aadhar, Mobile] trinity revolutionised the access of government facilities to the people, PM Gati Shakti will do the same for the field of Infrastructure,” Mr. Modi said.
Stalled projects
•Recalling his initial findings after taking over as the PM in 2014, Mr. Modi said he reviewed hundreds of stalled infrastructure projects and decided to put all projects on a single platform and tried to remove hurdles. Now, with a “whole of government approach”, the collective power of the government is being channelled into fulfilling the schemes by avoiding delays caused by coordination gaps.
•“Because of this, many unfinished projects are being completed for decades now,” he said, citing improved infrastructure outcomes in the last seven years across sectors, ranging from railway line electrification to gas pipelines, metro rail services and mega food parks.
•“There were just five waterways in 2014. Today, there are 13 functional waterways. Turnaround time of the vessels at the ports has come down to 27 hours from 41 hours in 2014. Today, India has 4.25 lakh circuit kilometre power transmission lines compared to 3 lakh circuit kilometres in 2014,” the Prime Minister said at the launch of the Gati Shakti programme.
•Union Ministers pertaining to key infrastructure ministries attended the launch function, including Highways and Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, Power Minister R.K. Singh, Telecom and Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, Petroleum Minister Hardeep Puri and Industry and Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal.
•Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath attended the launch virtually, with the Chief Ministers of Gujarat and Tripura and the Lieutenant Governors of Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir and Andaman and Nicobar.
📰 Northern Sri Lankan fishermen seek India’s action over disputes
Indian fishermen are crossing the maritime boundary, the Federation of Jaffna District Fishermen’s Cooperative Society Unions said in a letter submitted at the Indian Consulate
•Sri Lanka’s northern fishermen want authorities in India and Sri Lanka to urgently step up action to resolve the long-persisting conflict in the Palk Strait, fearing tensions with Indian fishermen could escalate.
•In a letter submitted at the Indian Consulate in Jaffna last week, the Federation of Jaffna District Fishermen’s Cooperative Society Unions pointed to the perils of bottom-trawling and pair-trawling fishing methods — commonly used by Tamil Nadu fishermen — resulting in a drastically smaller catch and frequent damage to their modest fishing gear.
•“We are very worried that despite discussing this problem for more than 10 years now, there has been no forward movement or a solution until now. Indian fishermen crossing the maritime boundary and fishing in our waters has resulted in huge losses amounting several crores to our fishermen,” said the letter dated October 10, 2021.
•The fisher associations have also sought compensation from Indian authorities to cope with the financial losses. Having braved the civil war, the displacement and dispossession that came with it, the northern fishermen have been struggling to rebuild their livelihoods post-war.
•However, the ongoing conflict with Indian fishermen — mostly from Tamil Nadu’s Ramanathapuram and Nagapattinam districts — has severely impacted the revival of their livelihoods.
Attacks at sea
•The fishermen’s concerns, voiced in the recent letter, also come amid reports of Tamil Nadu fishermen being attacked at sea, allegedly by their Sri Lankan counterparts. Fishermen’s groups along Tamil Nadu’s coastal belt held protests last month, condemning the attacks.
•Tamil Nadu has repeatedly accused the Sri Lankan Navy of attacking or killing its fishermen in the Palk Strait, including in January this year, when Samson Darwin, 28), A. Mesiya, 30, V. Nagaraj, 52, and S. Senthil Kumar, 32, from Ramanathapuram returned dead.
•Sri Lankan authorities have denied the allegations. While New Delhi conveyed “strong protest” over the incident then, there is no word yet on the promised probe into their deaths, from either government. The investigation into the shooting of K. Britjo in March 2017 too has seen no update in the four years since.
•However, the recent allegations made by Tamil Nadu fishermen against fellow fishermen in Sri Lanka have sparked serious concern.
•“This is a very dangerous development. Despite our disagreement with our brothers in Tamil Nadu, we have always been in solidarity. We have relied only on dialogue and never resorted to violence. We fear that certain political forces are instigating some groups to carry out these attacks,” a fishermen’s association representative in Jaffna told The Hindu, requesting anonymity.
•“Before this escalates, both governments must take swift and decisive action,” he said.
•Meanwhile, addressing a media conference, Jaffna legislator M.A. Sumanthiran accused Fisheries Minister Douglas Devananda of provoking violence among fishermen of the two countries. “Since he is the subject minister, that too from Jaffna, he is in a good position to implement the laws we have in place to take action on illegal fishing and bottom trawling. I urge all our fishermen to respond to this problem in democratic ways, and not resort to violence at any cost,” he said, calling for a peaceful protest next weekend.
📰 Aiding Afghans: On G20 meeting on Afghanistan
India could contribute to international agencies working with displaced Afghans
•At a meeting of countries with the world’s highest GDPs — the G20 — Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke about the looming humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, especially as winter nears. He also called for the international community to provide Afghanistan with “immediate and unhindered access to humanitarian assistance”. The meeting came as the UNHCR published a new appeal for funds, with a report that half the population (more than 20 million people) are in need of “lifesaving humanitarian assistance”, and the UN has received only 35% of the funds needed for its relief operations. As a result of the Taliban takeover, most direct aid to the Afghan government has dried up; its reserves have been frozen by the U.S., making it impossible for salaries to be paid. The Taliban government’s refusal to allow women to work and its stopping girls from schooling have made the situation more dire. While recognition of the Taliban and any governmental engagement is a long way off, the world is faced with the stark choice on how to ensure Afghanistan does not suffer further. At the summit, the EU committed $1.15 billion for Afghanistan and neighbouring countries where refugees have fled, while other countries including the U.S. and China pledged $1.1 billion at a donor conference in Geneva last month. India has not announced any monetary or food assistance.
•The PM’s words are a welcome sign that the Government remains seized of the welfare of ordinary Afghans even as New Delhi has closed its embassy but maintains only a limited exchange with Taliban officials in Doha. Given the manner of the Taliban’s takeover in August, with support from Pakistan, maintaining links with terror groups including those that target India leaves the Government hard put to increase its engagement, or to send aid directly to the new regime. But India could contribute to international agencies that are working with displaced Afghans, particularly for about one million children at the risk of starvation. It could also help Iran and the Central Asian states that are housing refugees with monetary assistance. The Government could also consider liberalising its visa regime for Afghans, which at the moment has cancelled all prior visas to Afghan nationals, and is releasing very few e-visas for Afghans desperate to travel here. As a goodwill gesture, India could once again send food aid, including wheat, grain, fortified biscuits and other packaged food, directly to Kabul. Clearly, the imperative to act is now, at what the UN Secretary General has called a “make or break” moment for the Afghan people, and to heed the warning that if the international community, which includes a regional leader like India, does not help stave off the unfolding humanitarian crisis, not only Afghans but also the rest of the world will pay a “heavy price”.
📰 Sowing better to eat better
Agri-food systems need a transformative change for better production, nutrition, environment and life
•The health of a country’s agri-food systems determines the health of its people. The findings from the first round of the Fifth National Family Health Survey suggest that nutrition-related indicators have worsened in most States. The survey covers 17 States and five Union Territories, which comprise 54% of India’s population. In addition, findings from the Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (2016-18) have highlighted the role of micro-nutrient malnutrition.
A multi-pronged approach
•For Indians to eat better, India must sow better. A structural shift in dietary pattern and nutrition requires a shift in production. Pathways for nutritional security consist of improving dietary diversity, kitchen gardens, reducing post-harvest losses, making safety net programmes more nutrition-sensitive, women’s empowerment, enforcement of standards and regulations, improving Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, nutrition education, and effective use of digital technology.
•Addressing the complex problem of malnutrition is a colossal task for which we need to look at agri-food systems as a whole and adopt a multi-pronged approach. While COVID-19 has exacerbated the nutrition issue, climate change has challenged agricultural production itself. However, the country’s agri-food systems are facing new and unprecedented challenges, especially related to economic and ecological sustainability, nutrition and the adoption of new agricultural technologies. The edifice of India’s biosecurity remains vulnerable to disasters and extreme events,.
•The agri-food systems are the most important part of the Indian economy. India produces sufficient food, feed and fibre to sustain about 18% of the world’s population (as of 2020). Agriculture contributes about 16.5% to India’s GDP and employs 42.3% of the workforce (2019-20).
•There is an urgent need for reorientation of the long-term direction of agri-food systems to not only enhance farm incomes but also ensure better access to safe and nutritious foods. Additionally, the agri-food systems need to be reoriented to minimise cost on the environment and the climate. This need is recognised by the theme of World Food Day 2021: ‘Our actions are our future. Better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life’. The four betters represent the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals and other high-level aspirational goals.
•World Food Day marks the foundation day of the FAO. FAO has enjoyed valuable partnership with India since it began operations in 1948. More recently, FAO has been engaged with the Indian government for mainstreaming agrobiodiversity, greening agriculture, promoting nutrition-sensitive agriculture and strengthening national food security.
•FAO’s support for the transformation of agri-food systems is rooted in agro-ecology. The more diverse an agricultural system, the greater its ability to adapt to shocks. Different combinations of integrated crop-livestock-forestry-fishery systems can help farmers produce a variety of products in the same area, at the same time or in rotation.
•In January this year, FAO in collaboration with NITI Aayog and the Ministry of Agriculture convened a National Dialogue to evolve a framework for the transition to a more sustainable agri-food systems by 2030 and identify pathways for enhancing farmers’ income and achieving nutritional security. A sustainable agri-food system is one in which a variety of sufficient, nutritious and safe foods are made available at an affordable price to everyone, and nobody goes hungry or suffers from any form of malnutrition. Less food is wasted, and the food supply chain is more resilient to shocks. Food systems can help combat environmental degradation or climate change. Sustainable agri-food systems can deliver food security and nutrition for all, without compromising the economic, social and environmental bases.
📰 The global war on terror grinds along
Notwithstanding some temporary setbacks, the broad contours of terrorism remain much the same
•Two decades after September 11, 2001, when al-Qaeda carried out its most audacious attacks ever on American soil, leading to the Global war on terror and triggering the invasion of Afghanistan by the United States, it might be worthwhile to do a fact check on the outcome. More so given the latest turn of events, which has seen the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, leading to the question as to whether the Global war on terror was a failure. Also, are there lessons to be learnt from it?
A perspective
•In retrospect, it is possible to surmise that the 9/11 attacks were the sum total of a series of systemic and structural shortcomings of the U.S. security establishment. Seldom mentioned, it was also, perhaps, the failure of human imagination. No one in the U.S. establishment imagined that an attack on this scale could take place. It is unclear whether even today security agencies in the U.S. and elsewhere are better positioned in this respect.
•Historians surmise that Osama bin Laden’s actions were inspired as much by geopolitical as they were by religious objectives, and that he was obsessed by the ‘sufferings of Muslims’ in many far-flung regions. He believed — mistakenly — that delivering a decisive blow against the U.S. by an action such as 9/11 would force the U.S. to alter its policies in many areas of conflict.
•Osama bin Laden failed to succeed in his attempt, and over time it was al-Qaeda that faced the wrath of not only the U.S., but the rest of the world as well. Osama bin Laden’s aims to destroy the ‘myth of American invincibility’ failed, but since then, the world has witnessed prolonged periods of uncertainty as also the spawning of many more terror groups worldwide. The Global war on terror did, however, neutralise fears that terrorism was poised to create large-scale mayhem across the globe.
•Several reasons could be attributed to bin Laden’s failure. It would seem, in hindsight, that bin Laden and other leaders associated with al-Qaeda such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, other jihadi leaders such as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the Islamic State (IS) or Mukhtar Abu Zubair of Al-Shabab, all lacked the centrality of vision or power so essential to sustain the momentum of an initiative of this kind. Moreover, while in the initial stages, Afghanistan — and to an extent, Pakistan — provided safe havens (which together with the presence of several disparate terror groups in a common milieu provided powerful unifying forces for disparate groups), the situation changed once the safe havens were no longer available. In addition, the lack of visibility of the leaders of the movement over time and diminished authority also contributed to dissipation of the terror momentum and the capacity for militancy and violence.
Persistent challenge
•Two decades of the Global war on terror did not, however, eradicate terrorism. Notwithstanding leadership losses, including that of leaders like bin Laden and al Baghdadi, and despite organisational fracturing and territorial degradation, terror groups such as al-Qaeda and the IS today pose a persistent challenge. Hard intelligence on the myriad terror modules has been hard to come by and the absence of a single core for either al- Qaeda or the IS, is making it even more difficult to assess the true nature of the threat that looms. It would be tempting for intelligence agencies to think that the current low-tech attacks, involving small arms, the occasional use of Improvised Explosive Devices, and random ‘lone wolf’ attacks reflect the weakening of terror modules, including that of al-Qaeda and the IS. Nothing could be more misleading. Not only the major terror groups but even smaller terror modules currently retain the potential for both sophisticated and mass casualty attacks.
•History is, therefore, more relevant and important when assessing future threats such as terrorism. The broad sweep acquired by radical Islam in recent decades has, by no means, been eliminated. Terrorism, stemming from a mixture of religious fervour and fundamentalist aims, remains vibrant. The newer breed of terrorists may be less familiar with the teachings of the Egyptian, Sayyid Qutb or the Palestinian, Abdullah Azzam, but they are well-versed in the practical methodologies practised by: the Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqanis (the latter is a Minister in the Interim Afghan Government), Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Maulana Masood Azhar of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), etc. Hence, it is possible to surmise that notwithstanding some temporary setbacks caused by the Global war on terror, the broad contours of terrorism, specially Islamist terrorism, remain much the same.
A grim warning
•The return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, after humiliating the combined forces of the U.S., the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Afghan Armed Forces is a grim warning of what lies in store for the neighbourhood. Apart from giving radical Islam a fresh lease of life and a new thrust, it has come at a time when the democratic world is demonstrating a diminishing appetite to fight terror away from their own ‘locales’, thus leaving the field wide open to the forces of Terror Inc., of which the Taliban is an indispensable entity. Several terror groups which possess varying capabilities such as al-Qaeda, the IS, the Daesh across Asia, the LeT, JeM and the TRF (The Resistance Front, which is backed by the LeT) in India, the Al-Shabab in Africa, etc., are certain to feel energised and gain a fresh lease of life.
In India
•One can already see emerging signs of what can be expected in Afghanistan given that its capital, Kabul, has been wracked by a series of bomb blasts, reflecting a more intensified intra-denominational strife which has the potential to become a ‘prairie fire’. Nearer home, Kashmir is beginning to see a new wave of terror attacks reviving grim memories of the 1990s. Targeted killings of minorities have begun to send shockwaves across not only Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), but many other pockets of the country. Given the prevailing scenario, the dice is heavily loaded against India, with J&K being in the cross-hairs of several terror factions, further complicated by Pakistan’s efforts to aid and abet them through the use of its ‘regulars’. That Sirajuddin Haqqani, a Pakistani acolyte, holds a key position in the new interim Government of Afghanistan, makes it easier for forces inimical to India in the region, essentially Pakistan, to wage an ‘undeclared war’ against India.
•While the past is often a good guide to the future in comprehending what shape terror could manifest itself going forward, it is even more important to recognise the paradigmatic changes beginning to take shape in the practice of violence in different parts of the world. The emerging shape of terror and terror attacks during coming periods is likely to be very different from what many of today’s experts possibly anticipate. While ‘Zero-day’ attacks like New York (9/11) and Mumbai (26/11) are still very much on the drawing board of terror groups, it is also known that a new breed of terrorists is experimenting with newer forms of terror, specially the possibility of ‘enabled or remote controlled terror’. This is a frightening prospect.
The forms of ‘new era’ terror
•Intelligence and terror specialists must begin to anticipate how to deal with ‘new era terrorists’, recruited over the Internet, who would thereafter be guided through different steps, over a sustained period, by anonymous handlers located elsewhere. This is not science fiction. There is already evidence of the existence of remote controllers who choose the targets, the actual operatives, the nature of the attack itself, and even the weaponry to be used, operating behind a wall of anonymity. Internet-enabled terrorism — a completely new genre of terrorism — would be very different from what we have seen so far.
•Linked to this is the threat posed by cyber-terrorism. Digital sabotage has already entered the armoury of certain terror groups. Cyber sabotage is a distinct possibility in certain situations today. It is well-known that terror groups that have state backing, have the capacity today to employ cyber techniques to carry out hostile attacks on the ICT-enabled infrastructure of another country. While little is talked about these aspects, the reality is that the limits of human imagination have become the virtual parameters of terror threats today.
📰 A portrait of the Nobel masters of ‘metrics’
The quest for causality, the subject of the Economics Nobel for 2021, is doubly important in this era of big data
•Every year on the second Monday of October, The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel a.k.a. the Nobel Prize for Economics is announced. This year, on October 11, three econometricians – David Card, Joshua D. Angrist and Guido W. Imbens — were given this distinct honour. Interestingly, David Card was awarded half the prize while the remaining half was split equally between Angrist and Imbens. Incidentally, every year the actual prize is awarded in a grand ceremony on December 10 which coincides with the death anniversary of Alfred Nobel.
A connecting thread
•The Nobel citation says that the prize was awarded “for empirical labour economics and methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships”. All three have many more things in common beyond their interest in this aspect of econometrics. Not surprisingly, they teach at some of the finest universities in the world — Card teaches at UC Berkeley, Angrist at MIT and Imbens at Stanford. Both Card and Angrist got their PhDs from Princeton, and their doctoral supervisor was the legendary labour economist, Orley Ashenfelter. Imbens obtained his doctoral degree from Brown University, and all three are fellows of the Econometric Society, a rare honour among economists. Their list of honours is extensive, but it is worth mentioning that the unique honour of being Guido Imbens ‘best man” goes to Joshua Angrist.
An important quest
•For me this year’s Nobel Prize for economics is especially precious since it has been given to those making a methodological contribution for establishing causality. Economics has always been interested in causal relationships, already evident from Adam Smith’s book title, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. This is particularly important in matters of human behaviour as casual relationships are critical for making policy. Suppose you observe that whenever my sister buys shoes, it rains in Bhubaneswar. If this was a coincidence or spurious correlation, then we have nothing to worry about. But if this was causal, then a flood prevention policy for Bhubaneswar would be to put an end to my sister’s shoe shopping sprees! This quest for causality is doubly important in this era of big data where analysts simply look for patterns in the data and not for behaviours that might give rise to the data generating process.
•When we observe two events, A and B, being correlated, in general we cannot conclude that A causes B simply because a bunch of confounding factors that we have not taken into account may be present or there may even be reverse causality. A way out is to consider an experimental framework where we think of event A as a treatment and see what events it generates.
•However, even this is problematic. Once we offer a treatment to an individual, it is not possible to study the same individual without the treatment. Therefore, we need to resort to statistical techniques. One type of statistical technique in this vein which was introduced and popularised in economics by the winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo (incidentally Angrist was one of Duflo’s PhD supervisors) and Michael Kremer is called a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT). In this approach we compare the outcomes in the treatment and no treatment (control) groups just like in a medicine trial to establish causality while guarding against things like contamination across the two groups.
A different technique
•This year’s Nobel Prize winners use a different technique called Natural Experiments. To quote Peter Fredriksson, Chair of the Prize Committee, “Sometimes nature or policy changes provide situations that resemble randomized experiments,” and the brilliance of those scholars lies in their ability to recognise these situations and identify the conditions under which causal links can be established using these naturally occurring phenomena.
•Take for instance the work of David Card (with the late Alan Krueger who many believed would have shared the Nobel) on minimum wages. Typically, economists believed that raising the minimum wage will lead to greater unemployment as firms will hire fewer workers. In 1992, New Jersey increased its minimum wage while neighbouring Pennsylvania did not. Card and Krueger surveyed a large number of fast food workers on either side of the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border in this natural experiment and established that the higher wages had no impact on employment! This study has helped change how economists view minimum wages; today it is widely believed that minimum wages may not affect employment since firms may pass on the costs to consumers.
Statistical techniques
•One drawback of natural experiments is that we cannot control who participates in them. This is where the work of Angrist and Imbens has been very important to economics and other related fields. Angrist and Imbens developed a framework and demonstrated how statistical techniques can be used to draw precise conclusions about causal relationships from natural experiments.
•Finally, if you are looking to access some of the work of these scholars you can find plenty of papers on Google Scholar. Angrist is one of the authors of two excellent introductory books: Mostly Harmless Econometrics and Mastering Metrics that are probably the most accessible of all their work. Imbens is the author of an all-encompassing book titled Causal Inference for Statistics, Social and Biomedical Sciences. David Card is one of the editors of several volumes of the encyclopedic, Handbook of Labor Economics.
📰 Deconstructing climate finance
Developed countries are nowhere close to meeting their targets
•In the run-up to the 26th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), media reports have claimed that developed countries are inching closer to the target of providing $100 billion annually in climate finance to developing countries by 2025 (the original target was 2020). This view has been bolstered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which claimed that climate finance provided by developed countries had reached $78.9 billion in 2018.
Flawed claims
•These claims are erroneous. First, the OECD figure includes private finance and export credits. Developing countries have insisted that developed country climate finance should be from public sources and should be provided as grants or as concessional loans. However, the OECD report makes it clear that the public finance component amounted to only $62.2 billion in 2018, with bilateral funding of about $32.7 billion and $29.2 billion through multilateral institutions. Significantly, the final figure comes by adding loans and grants. Of the public finance component, loans comprise 74%, while grants make up only 20%. The report does not say how much of the total loan component of $46.3 billion is concessional. From 2016 to 2018, 20% of bilateral loans, 76% of loans provided by multilateral development banks and 46% of loans provided by multilateral climate funds were non-concessional. Between 2013 and 2018, the share of loans has continued to rise, while the share of grants decreased. The overwhelming provisioning of climate finance through loans risks exacerbates the debt crisis of many low-income countries.
•The OECD reports on climate finance have long been criticised for inflating climate finance figures by including funds for development projects such as health and education that only notionally target climate action. The Oxfam report on climate finance discounts for the climate relevance of reported funds to estimate how much climate finance is actually targeting climate action and also discounts for grant equivalence. In contrast to the OECD report, Oxfam estimates that in 2017-18, out of an average of $59.5 billion of public climate finance reported by developed countries, the climate-specific net assistance ranged only between $19 and $22.5 billion per year.
•The hollowness of the OECD claims is also exposed by the accounts provided by the developed countries themselves in their Biennial Reports submitted to the UNFCCC. The 2018 Biennial Assessment of UNFCCC’s Standing Committee on Finance reports that on average, developed countries provided only $26 billion per year as climate-specific finance between 2011-2016 even if these numbers are still open to challenge. This rose to an average of $36.2 billion in 2017-18.
Broken promises
•U.S. President Joe Biden recently said that the U.S. will double its climate finance by $11.4 billion annually by 2024. But any claim that such a pledge will make the U.S. a “leader in international climate finance” is misleading. It is Congress that will decide on the quantum after all. The U.S. also has a history of broken commitments, having promised $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) under President Barack Obama, but delivering only $1 billion before President Donald Trump withdrew U.S. support from the GCF. Mr. Biden initially promised only $1.2 billion to the GCF, which fell well short of what was already owed.
•In any case, the future focus of U.S. climate finance is the mobilisation of private sector investment, as John Kerry, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Change, made it clear during his recent visit to India. Alongside claims that a few trillion dollars of private investment were being mobilised, he was clear that public finance would only contribute to “de-risking” of investment. At the end of the day, the bulk of the money coming in would be through private funds, directed to those projects judged “bankable” and not selected based on developing countries’ priorities and needs. Regrettably, behind the rhetoric of mobilising climate finance lies the grim reality of burdening the G77 and its peoples with a fresh load of “green” debt.
•Climate finance has also remained skewed towards mitigation, despite the repeated calls for maintaining a balance between adaptation and mitigation. The 2016 Adaptation Gap Report of the UN Environment Programme had noted that the annual costs of adaptation in developing countries could range from $140 to $300 billion annually by 2030 and rise to $500 billion by 2050. Currently available adaptation finance is significantly lower than the needs expressed in the Nationally Determined Contributions submitted by developing countries.
•Delivering on climate finance is fundamental to trust in the multilateral process. Regrettably, while developing countries will continue to pressure developed countries to live up to their promises, the history of climate negotiations is not in their favour.
