Megathreats — a call for action
The writer is a senior corporate executive with experience across multiple regions and countries. He can be reached at atifraza01@gmail.com
With our attention focused on myriad internal and external events, there seems little time in Pakistan for considering the existential threats that, like a runaway train, are careening towards us.
Nouriel Roubini, a well-known economics writer, in his recent book, Megathreats, warns of “a titanic collision of economic, financial, technological, environmental, geopolitical, and social forces. Any one of these is formidable on its own. If they converge, the consequences will be devastating.”
This should be chilling reading for Pakistanis as we are already impacted by 9 on his list of 10 Megathreats. We have been plagued for decades with unrepayable debt, currency meltdowns, a boom-bust economic volatility, interspersed with recurrent episodes of stagflation — all becoming most pronounced in the last two years. Our demographic time bomb has already exploded with a teeming, young and unskilled population. Appearing rapidly over the horizon is deglobalisation, a new Cold War, climate change and the existential impact of AI.
Having failed to invest in capabilities to take advantage of globalisation, our rentier, aid-fueled economy allowed a narrow elite to let opportunities slip away. Those same capabilities would have served us well in mitigating coming challenges. As deglobalisation becomes a stronger trend and AI likely decimates low-end manufacturing, retail and service sectors; Pakistan on the lower rungs of the global economic value chain will see its competitive cost advantage further eroding, while climate change will exacerbate agricultural disruptions, food and water scarcity.
Lacking a buffer of financial resources or a technically skilled workforce, even our much-trumpeted strategic location will leave us hostage to events; unable to shape competition between great powers or in developing bespoke solutions to climate change — both having a profound impact on our future.
This can all be attributed to a failure of governance that stems from one common cause: an institutional fragility arising from internal distortions and an elite capture.
A nation of 240 million people with a fragmented, inefficient system of government now sits at the focal point of multiple threats affecting their very existence.
So, is all hope lost?
Not if realism and humility can replace self-delusion and arrogance.
Roubini is clear, “to delay is to surrender… Megathreats are careening towards us. Their impact will shake our lives and upend the global order.”
Having failed to build inclusive economic and political institutions, the ones we have lack essential attributes of credibility, capability, and capacity. Coercive systems don’t provide credibility, while over time our institutions have deteriorated in the other two attributes as well.
Pakistan’s complex multiethnic society is seething with anger and frustration and these grievances have now reached a tipping point. A population with an increasingly disenfranchised youth can no longer be energised with 1980s style, edict-driven solutions. Those failed then and will fail again now, but with more dangerous consequences.
Solutions require difficult and selfless decisions so that all stakeholders, especially the people, have the confidence that their interests are aligned with a state machinery wholly and transparently focused on their economic and social wellbeing.
Let us revert to the philosophy of the Quaid and let the Constitution provide a roadmap for the future. This nation cannot afford more experiments or adhocism. Only when distortions in the politico-economic system are removed and the people have confidence in the structures and leadership that emerge, will such a government have the credibility to implement critical policies needed for imposing fiscal discipline, economic restructuring, administrative and judicial reforms.
Only through these initial steps can we start a journey of building resources, capabilities, civil society and institutions needed to plan, execute and fund complex, multi decade, interconnected strategies to mitigate these Megathreats.
For the people of Pakistan, anything less will have dire consequences for which history’s judgement will be unforgiving.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 3rd, 2024.
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