Can Pakistan get a ‘Green Marshall Plan’?
The writer holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne and is the author of Development, Poverty and Power in Pakistan, available from Routledge
During his recent visit to the US, I heard Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto refer twice to the need for a ‘green Marshall plan’ for Pakistan. The flood situation was, of course, a dominant topic of conversation for the Pakistani delegation when it arrived for the 77th session of the UN General Assembly, and for the Foreign Minister when he arrived in Washington DC after the UN session in New York. The idea of an environmentally focused Marshall Plan type fund is certainly interesting, given that it is rooted in a historical context, and the need for such an initiative has also been acknowledged by the richest countries of the world.
Yet, Pakistan cannot reasonably expect an aid package like that given to western Europe after WWII. Pakistan thus needs to sharpen its request for support, so that there is a more realistic chance of the country getting specific help to contend with the current disaster, and with pending climate threats. The fact that Pakistan is not a big emitter, yet it is paying the price for climate change, is an irony that has been persistently impressed upon the world community. Still, it is hard to deny that Pakistan has badly mismanaged disaster mitigation measures which caused the recent floods to take a much higher toll than would have been the case if the country was better prepared.
The donor community has limited resources at its disposal to address the varied needs of citizens in poor countries. Moreover, Pakistan is not a country which evokes a lot of sympathy within the broader international community. So, expecting rich and powerful countries to create a large fund to help Pakistan is not a feasible expectation.
This past year, leaders of the world’s most powerful economies, belonging to G7, did pledge to take concrete actions to secure a cleaner, greener and fairer future for people and planet. This plan has set an ambitious $100 billion target in annual climate funding to support green recovery and a clean transformation of the world. This pledge has become known as the ‘green Marshall Plan’ which is what Mr Bhutto was also referring to. However, it is important to note that this pledge is not for one country in the global south but for all of them. Rather than passively taking whatever funds are given to the country via this plan, or via bilateral support, it is important that Pakistan’s policymakers articulate explicit and feasible requests.
Rich countries are rightly concerned that clean investments are lopsided. According to the German Marshall Fund, emerging-market and developing economies (leaving aside China) are now responsible for two-thirds of the global population but their share of clean energy investment is no more than 20%. To address this global divide in the energy transition, rich countries need to not only implement a rapid green transition domestically, but also facilitate this transition abroad. Also, while China has been paying increasing heed to the environment at home, it has been accused of exporting obsolete non-green technologies to the developing world via the BRI. The annual investment needed for green energy transition is estimated to be around 4.5% of global GDP, and it remains unclear how much of this funding will materialise.
Pakistan can and should push for the activation of the Green Marshall Fund, and it has every right to access some of the funds available via it to ‘build back greener’. Pakistan also needs to think more carefully about what it needs within the purview of this so-called Green Marshal Plan, or via other multilateral and bilateral channels. For instance, Pakistan could specifically ask the US for help with climate proofing the Indus Water Treaty, given that it was the US insistence which led the World Bank to broker this treaty back in the 1960s. Putting in place recharge and drainage capabilities within the irrigation system in the country is another reasonable demand given USAID’s legacy of funding the Green Revolution in Pakistan which boosted yields but did so via support for environmentally unfriendly intensive farming strategies. Pakistan also needs to look to China for more specific support, beyond modest aid or further loan rescheduling. China should be asked to help climate-proof the infrastructure and energy portfolio being implemented in the country via CPEC which would, in turn, enable China to learn lessons for helping green BRI projects in other countries as well.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 1st, 2022.
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