Earth cries for aid

By SHREEYA SHAKYA

- People living on this earth stands at six and a half billions, and it is on the rise. Earth has left less resources to offer them. The dearth of clean air, hygienic water, peace and, more importantly, of land to stand on is palpable. The dream of all the parents to put together a near-heaven for the generations to come seems to be reducing to rubble.

Humans have proven their supremacy through timeless tests and have emerged out as a victor every time. Ever since discovering fire to today’s world of cutting edge technology, we have ruled the planet and utilized every available resource to the maximum. Surely our lifestyle has improved. We have pills for every other midget malady and the technologies leaving us at awe. But for all these exuberant rewards for our utmost intelligence, we have an undeniable price to pay. The drain of mineral ores, the vanishing flora and fauna and the rising global temperature are paying for our own gluttony.

The long line of all the would-be mothers in maternity hospitals leaves me contemplating how the future would treat these new inhabitants. Indeed, the primary deed of humans as an evolutionary being is to continue the species. But aren’t the superfluous siblings making our evolutionary deed a utopian dream? As the environmental statistics reveal, the Earth is nearing its culmination, whose cause is deep rooted in population rise. Isn’t it our responsibility to alleviate its likelihood through some of our astute choices? If even a ‘fraction’ of all the would-be mothers considered adoption instead, it would definitely make a difference. Not only the orphans would be blessed with a mother and a better life for sure but also the earth would get a chance to replenish its resources.

However, asking a woman to give up her natural rights of maternity would be unjust. It would be totally delirious on our part to snatch the very essence of womanhood away. Still wouldn’t it be wiser if we thought about what we ‘already have’ rather than what is ‘yet to come’ in the precarious future? We hear couples undertaking heavy medications and operations with the hope of improving their fertility. What if they invested the same money for an orphan, who will someday in all likelihood bestow them with all the love and respect they can ever ask for!

However, some might argue, what about the gene pool and passing on the family traits? But the gene pool is already in jeopardy with the overflowing six and a half billion people. The culmination of earth posing like the sword of Damocles. We have to make this Earth available for generations to come maybe 100 or 200 years from now.

Moreover, when violence is plaguing every part of the world, the greatest sufferers are indubitably children of all those martyred or murdered. With no fault on their part, they are the ones fallible if they are deprived of a care-taker. The responsibility lies on the married couples or any individual to shape a better world for these innocent victims if they choose to adopt. Those few who do choose to adopt, probably won’t go down the history as Yashodhas but they would make a genuine contribution to sustaining life on Earth as they would help maintain population in no matter in what trifle way.

Asian development & cooperation

By Dr Mohan Lohani

- The Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference held at Boao in the Hainan Province of China on November 2-3 this year was addressed by government leaders of Asia, former Prime Ministers and Ministers, senior officers of international and regional organisations, representatives of the business community, academics, scholars, diplomats and other eminent experts. The conference reaffirmed its commitment to development and integration of the Asian region through cooperation. Host country China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao addressing the Forum urged leaders of the region and other participants to intensify efforts to promote economic growth and regional security. He referred to the changing situation in the new century that has provided Asia with many new opportunities for development. He categorically said: “Peace and development remain the main themes of our era”.

All participants lauded the initiative taken by the Chinese leadership two years ago in launching the Boao Forum for Asia now described by many as the Asian Think Tank equivalent to the World Economic Forum (WEF) that meets regularly at Davos, Switzerland to deliberate on world economic issues. A large number of delegates who had also participated in the first BFA Annual Conference in April last year noted with appreciation remarkable improvement in arrangements made this year by the host country for the conference. This writer and many others were informed that Boao International Convention Centre and adjoining magnificent hotel Sofitel were built in six months, a record time by any standard. We could not but admire the Chinese capacity for doing a job of such proportions so efficiently and skilfully. No wonder that China proved its technological strength when it launched last month the manned space mission, a feat for which China has been widely acclaimed. Former Prime Minister of Nepal Kirti Nidhi Bista, in an interaction with the media at the Boao conference praised China assertive leadership and expressed the confidence that China, keen as it is to see Asia emerge as a more developed, prosperous, peaceful and stable region in this century, would spare no pains in mobilising regional and international support and cooperation for the realisation of goals and objectives set forth in the Boao Declaration of 2001.

While several speakers reviewed the prospects of Asian economy against the backdrop of continuing imbalances in the global economy, they expressed dismay at the lack of progress in some key trade related issues at the recently concluded WTO Ministerial Conference in Cancun, Mexico. To us in Nepal the country’s accession to WTO at the Cancun conference was a matter of pride and satisfaction. Nevertheless, Nepal adds its voice to those who are in favour of a speedy resumption of the Doha trade round. Several participants took the position at the Boao Annual Conference that the recent breakdown of trade talks at Cancun should not be used by advanced countries as an excuse for increased protectionism at the cost of developing countries whose only demand is the implementation of fair and just trade practices. Mike Moore, former Prime Minister of New Zealand and former Director General of WTO, also cautioned the conference against extreme economic nationalism and protectionism. He defended WTO as a morally neutral organisation and emphasised the need for strengthening the rule-based multilateral trading regime. In this context, he called upon China to provide leadership to bring the Doha round to a successful conclusion. Other speakers recalled how China had rescued South-east Asia in 1997 from the throes of currency crisis.

BFA is certainly focussed on Asia, but is no less sensitive to issues of global concern. Living as we do in an interdependent world, it is extremely important to ensure the participation of all regions to rectify imbalances in the global economy and facilitate global economic recovery. It was pointed out that all Asian countries must share a common vision and move in concert to close the development gap among developing countries, in particular the gap that exists between the more economically advanced and poorer countries in this region. Asia is a large continent with enormous human and natural resources and is divided into several regions such as East and West Asia, South-east Asia, South Asia and Central Asia. It is diverse in its history, culture, ethnicity and tradition. But all subscribe to the basic values of freedom, openness, social justice and individual dignity. Japan’s Justice Minister Nozawa Diazo rightly observed that since all Asians live on a common soil, the win-win relationship among all countries must be promoted in mutual interest. He outright rejected the apprehension in certain quarters that China is a threat to other Asian economies. On the contrary, relationship between China and Japan is a driving force for cooperation in Asia. What is essential is to share each other’s experience, make the most of complementarity and work together to achieve a common goal.

US-China economic relations became a subject of lively discussion at the conference. Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky, a member of President Clinton’s cabinet in the late nineties and the former US Trade Representative, referred in her interesting paper to the extraordinary emergence of China that has led many Americans to take a more searching look at themselves, their own country’s prospects and their relationship with China. The paper points out that US manufacturing is under pressure as China’s manufacturing exports are not only booming but extremely visible. Umbrella groups like the National Association of Manufacturers are beginning to complain that China’s currency is undervalued, and they have urged China to float the Yuan on global capital markets. Prof. Robert Mundell, a well-known American economist and a Nobel Laureate, dismissed the speculation that China was manipulating its exchange rate. He advised China to keep the RBM fixed and was of the view that China would lose its anchor for monetary policy if it came under pressure to float its currency.

The Boao Forum as it evolves over the years is expected to forge an Asian consensus on issues of vital concern to the region. To borrow the expression of an Asian leader who addressed the conference, a holistic Asian development paradigm is the need of the hour. Such a paradigm would enable the region to fashion an Asian response to global issues and to play a catalytic role in global integration. Several speakers confidently stated that Asia is the epi-centre of growth in this century. They further expressed the hope that Asia would move one day towards an Asian economic community as Europe did not long ago. In a move to reintegrate their economies, Asian countries have realised the importance of regional and cross-regional free trade agreements (FTAs) as globalisation has become a reality. The conference delegates in their statements described as comforting the benign and cooperative attitude of China towards its neighbours and other smaller countries in the region. In brief, the voice of BFA is bound to be louder, clearer and more purposeful in the years to come.

A global community

By BILL CLINTON

- Many people today refer to the time in which we live as the age of globalisation, and for most Americans, it has brought enormous benefits.

In the eight years when I served as president, roughly one-third of U.S. growth came from trade. Our country’s enormous increase in productivity was in no small part fueled by the application of information technology across all sectors of the economy, the continued outreach to people throughout the world and the openness of our borders to immigrants who continued to replenish the energy of our entrepreneurial system. It worked for us. But interdependence is not, by definition, good or bad. It can be either, and it can be both.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Al Qaeda terrorists used the forces of interdependence - open borders, easy travel, easy immigration, easy access to information and technology - to turn jet airplanes full of fuel into weapons of mass destruction, killing 3,100 people including hundreds from 70 foreign countries who were in America looking for positive interdependence. More than 200 of those killed were Muslims, indicating the racial and religious diversity of the positive side of this equation.

My basic premise is this: The interdependent world, for all of its promise, is inevitably unsustainable, because it is unstable. We cannot continue to live in a world where we grow more and more interdependent and have no over-arching system to make the positive elements of interdependence outweigh the negative ones.

So I believe all thinking people, particularly Americans, must ask and answer three questions: What is my vision of the 21st-century world? What do we have to do to achieve it? And what does America have to do?

I think the great mission of the 21st century is to create a genuine global community, to move from mere interdependence to integration, to a community that has shared responsibilities, shared benefits and shared values. How would we go about building that kind of world?

One of the most important shared responsibilities is to fight for security: against terror, weapons of mass destruction, organised crime and narcotics traffickers. This means sharing responsibility for breaking up Al Qaeda and terrorist networks, for restarting the Middle East peace process, for resolving the nuclear issues of North Korea, for encouraging the new dialogue between India and Pakistan, for a successful transition to a democratic self-government in Iraq, for helping countries like Colombia and the Philippines fight terror. It means making a global effort to reduce the stocks of available chemical, biological and nuclear materials.

The second main shared responsibility is to build institutions of global cooperation, so that people get into a habit of resolving their differences in a peaceful way, according to rules and procedures generally perceived to be fair. Unless you have institution building, it will be hard to sustain the mentality necessary to have shared responsibilities.

We also have to share the benefits of the interdependent world. Why? For one thing, if you come from a wealthy country with open borders, unless you seriously believe you can kill, imprison or occupy all of your enemies, you have to make a world with more friends and fewer enemies, with more partners and fewer terrorists.

As we see every day in Iraq, the United States has the only super-military in the world. We can win any military conflict all by ourselves, but we can’t build the peace all by ourselves. So what does that mean? Among other things, it means that we have to bring economic opportunity to the 50 percent of the globe’s population that lives on $2 a day or less. It means more trade with developing nations. It means more aid that works properly. It means another round of debt relief tied to economic development, education, health care. It means financing projects that will build functioning, sustainable economies in poor countries. It means educating those who presently can’t be part of positive interdependence.

I was at the United Nations talking to the secretary general about the work I’m doing to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. We are now going to be able to buy medicine for under $140 per person per year, but we need to finance the development of health-care networks to make the medicine work. This is not rocket science, but as we do it we build a world with more friends and fewer terrorists. I’m all for a strong security position, but we cannot possibly kill, imprison or occupy all of our actual or potential adversaries, and we are drastically underinvesting in building a world with more partners.

What, then, is America’s responsibility? My philosophy is that the United States should cooperate with others whenever we can, across the broadest range of areas, and act alone only if we have to. In the current U.S. government, the conservatives believe they should act alone whenever they can and cooperate only when they have to.

For example, take those of us in the cooperation camp who were fairly hawkish on Iraq. I was for the UN resolution last November that said to Saddam Hussein: “You will let the inspectors back in, or we will depose you.” I diverged when we moved from “cooperation whenever we can and act alone when we’re forced to,” to “now we’ve got the UN, and we will decide when Hans Blix is through with his inspections.” The UN inspector was pleading for four, five or six more weeks to finish, but the people who wanted the conflict didn’t want him to finish and didn’t want to let him finish.

I still believe that we ought to see if the United Nations can take over security in Iraq, ask NATO to handle it, and involve countries that opposed the military conflict but who are part of NATO. If they came in, it would prove that we were all trying to build a multiparty, multiethnic, and multitribal democracy in Iraq. Most of the problems we have today are ill suited to unilateral action.

Finally, let me say just one other thing. I believe that fundamentalism - the sense that you have the certain truth and the entitlement to impose it on others - is not well suited to solving the problems of the modern world in either religion or politics. It is far better to deal with these problems using evidence and argument, with a willingness to experiment. If you’re driven by ideology, you’re going to make mistakes. The world is full of hard questions without easy answers. Not everyone who disagrees with you is your enemy.

The opposition to globalisation in the world is rooted in the feeling of some people that they are left out, left behind and stepped on by other countries.

If you, like me, believe in expanded trade and believe America has greater obligations to open our borders and to invest more in the development of poor countries, we have got to maintain the political support here in America for doing that. And the only way we can do that is to keep making our economy function better, make our society more united. We have to build an integrated community in America, too. Otherwise we won’t have the political support here to do what we need to do around the world.

(The writer was the 42nd US president)

Courtesy : International Herald Tribune

Polls, much- talked about

By VIJAY KUNWAR

- The press conference of Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa held on Tuesday has added new waves among the party politicians, who are already in big turmoil. Amid guessworks of Thapa’s announcement of the dates for elections, the mainstream political parties took the press meet as a threat to the normal political procedures. Despite Thapa’s various announcements at Singhadurbar, there was an indicative signal of an ensured longevity of the Thapa government in the first place.

Girija Prasad Koirala, as a result, has begun another country tour, to energise the Nepali Congress (NC) activists and continue the diatribe against the ‘retrograde’ Thapa and the King in combine. But the call of Koirala against any delivery of military hardware support from the friendly countries, while the Thapa team was in power is not understandable at this moment. On whose side is Koirala these days? We know that he is opposed to any Prime Ministerial, be he Krishna Prasad Bhattarai or Sher Bahadur Deuba. Wasn’t he also dead opposed to the Maoists a few years back? Yes, he was. He had, time and again, experimented state elimination of the Maoists, while he was the leader of the parliament. He never practically tried for a dialogue with the rebels. It wasn’t him who initiated the peace process with the ultras.

But nobody seems to be wanting elections at a time. The parties ‘fear’ Thapa’s tricks might be at work again. NC has declared to take part in the process of elections, if and when such elections were held. The UML’s stance is not clear. They fear a massive poll rigging, which may make the elections futile. NC had boycotted the Panchayati elections held immediately after the 1980 referendum. UML may be planning to do the same this time.

Then, do the Maoists want elections? No, not yet, and perhaps never. They are dead against the present constitution and its fundamentals. They have a declared mission of toppling the existing democratic, political and constitutional institutions. To come to a negotiated settlement of the eight-year -old Maoist insurgency, they wanted a constituent assembly, which the state could not agree on. The peace talks between the rebels and the state have failed twice in the past. The known reasons being the lack of consensus over the constituent assembly. Maoist ideologue Dr. Baburam Bhattarai has come forward with a fresh idea lately. Sensing, perhaps, the major parties’ disapproval of Thapa’s plans, Bhattarai has called for a working unity between the rebels and the democratic parties. Whatever the appeal of the Maoist bigshot, the parties do not appear to be taking the Maoist therapy as a cure for granted. Killings and abduction of NC and UML cadres have not stopped. And, the long-term vision of the armed rebels and the unarmed pro-parliamentary parties remain juxtaposed.

But finally, it will be the pro-constitution parties that will have to agree ultimately to take part in the elections, whenever held. If the King is ready to invite a party other than NC and CPN-UML, the new Prime Minister will also be more than happy to declare elections. It is Thapa whom the parties do not wish to see at Singhadurbar.

Why is the Thapa government frequently talking about elections? It is primarily because of the international pressure. Many donors have repeatedly asked the government to fill the vacant posts of local bodies in order to put development works on track. A few European countries have categorically linked any further financial aid or support with the functioning of the local bodies.