Showing posts with label pollution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pollution. Show all posts
Wednesday 20 September 2023
Friday 21 July 2023
A Level Economics 63: Tradable Pollution Permits
Tradable pollution permits, also known as cap-and-trade systems, are a market-based approach to environmental regulation that aims to reduce pollution levels efficiently and cost-effectively. The rationale behind tradable pollution permits is to create incentives for firms to reduce their pollution emissions while allowing them the flexibility to achieve these reductions in the most economically efficient manner.
The main objectives of tradable pollution permits are as follows:
1. Environmental Efficiency: Tradable permits aim to achieve a predetermined level of pollution reduction, which is set by the government or regulatory authority. By capping the total allowable emissions at this level, the system ensures a reduction in pollution over time.
2. Cost-Effectiveness: Tradable permits allow firms with lower pollution abatement costs to reduce emissions further than required and then sell their excess permits to firms facing higher abatement costs. This creates a market for permits and ensures that pollution reductions are achieved at the least cost to society.
3. Flexibility and Innovation: Tradable permits provide flexibility to firms in meeting their emission reduction targets. Firms have the freedom to choose the most efficient pollution abatement technologies or strategies, which can lead to innovation in pollution control.
4. Certainty and Transparency: With a fixed number of permits issued, the total level of pollution is known in advance. This certainty allows for better planning and investment decisions by firms.
Methodology of Tradable Pollution Permits:
The process of implementing tradable pollution permits involves several key steps:
1. Setting the Cap: The government or regulatory authority determines the total level of allowable emissions (the cap) for a specific pollutant for a given period, such as a year. This cap is based on environmental goals and scientific assessments.
2. Issuing Permits: The government allocates or auctions tradable permits to firms, with each permit allowing the holder to emit a specific amount of the pollutant. The total number of permits corresponds to the predetermined emissions cap.
3. Compliance and Reporting: Firms are required to monitor and report their actual emissions regularly. They must hold enough permits to cover their emissions; otherwise, they face penalties or fines.
4. Trading and Market Mechanism: Firms can buy or sell permits on a secondary market, allowing them to adjust their emissions to match their production levels. Firms with excess permits can sell them to those facing higher emissions, creating a market-based mechanism for achieving the overall emissions reduction target.
5. Periodic Reviews and Adjustments: The cap and the number of permits may be adjusted periodically to align with changing environmental goals and industrial developments.
Examples of Tradable Pollution Permits:
European Union Emission Trading System (EU ETS): The EU ETS is one of the world's largest and most prominent tradable permit systems. It covers various industries, including power generation, aviation, and manufacturing, and aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the European Union.
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) - United States: RGGI is a cap-and-trade program in the northeastern United States that focuses on reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
California's Cap-and-Trade Program: California has implemented a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across multiple sectors, including energy, transportation, and industry.
In conclusion, tradable pollution permits offer a market-driven approach to environmental regulation, allowing for cost-effective pollution reduction while providing flexibility and incentives for innovation. By capping total emissions and allowing firms to trade permits, these systems strive to achieve environmental efficiency and contribute to global efforts in combatting pollution and climate change.
Friday 31 July 2020
Economics for Non Economists 3 – Explaining GDP and Economic Growth
By Girish
Menon
Introduction
You will have
recently read:
What does this mean?
Just like the
Forbes magazine compiles an annual list of the richest individuals on planet
earth, most countries participate in an annual ‘show of wealth’. The most
commonly used measure in this competition is called GDP. At the end of 2019 the
top six countries were:
Table 1
Country
|
GDP
($ trillions)
|
Economic growth over previous year (%)
|
Per Capita GDP ($)
|
Share of World GDP (%)
|
19.5
|
2.2
|
59, 939
|
24
|
|
12.2
|
6.9
|
8,612
|
15
|
|
4.9
|
1.7
|
38,214
|
6
|
|
3.7
|
2.2
|
44,680
|
4.5
|
|
2.7
|
6.7
|
1,980
|
3.28
|
|
2.6
|
1.8
|
39.532
|
3,26
|
What do these terms mean?
Simply
defined, GDP or Gross Domestic
Product is the money value of all goods and services (goods) produced within an
economy in a period of time. In Table 1 the GDP is estimated over the year of
2019. The data quoted in the introduction compares GDP changes over the first two quarters of 2020.
Economic growth is a measure of the
additional goods produced by an economy over the last period of time (say a year or a quarter).
Per Capita GDP means the value of goods
each resident would get if all goods produced in an economy is shared equally.
This is calculated by dividing the GDP with the residents of the country. Do you think per capita GDP is an accurate description of how goods are actually distributed in an economy?
Share of World GDP means the share of
global goods produced by an economy. This is calculated by dividing each
country’s GDP with the whole world’s total GDP.
Why is GDP and the rate of Economic growth
so important?
Materialism is the underlying
principle of using GDP and economic growth as the most important indicator
of economic performance. Materialism, according to the Cambridge English
Dictionary, is the belief that having money and possessions is the most
important thing in life. It follows that as one’s material goods increases
one’s standard of living (happiness) tends to increase.
GDP is a tool that
measures the volume of material goods produced by an economy. A high rate of
economic growth demonstrates the rate at which the material goods in an economy
is increasing and as a result the happiness of the residents as well. So, when
the rate of economic growth becomes negative, as in the data mentioned in the
introduction, it follows that your happiness will decrease.
Are GDP
and GNP the same?
They are similar but
not the same. GDP measures the volume of goods produced by people living within
the boundaries of an economy. The output of Nissan’s Sunderland plant will be
included in UK UK will be added to calculate UK
GNP stands for Gross
National Product. It is a measure of the volume of goods produced by British
nationals living in the UK
Is GDP an accurate measure of the volume of
goods produced within an economy?
The answer is
No. The calculation is arduous and with questionable assumptions which I will
not go into here. I will however mention some weaknesses here:
1. Even though there are some standardised procedures for
its computation governments are known to deliberately intervene in its
methodology and computation.
2. Not all goods are included. For example if you clean
your own house and look after your family – these services are not included.
However, if you employ a cleaner, a cook, a nanny and a driver then their
services are included.
3. In some countries where there is a large informal economy. The goods produced by such activities are not be included in GDP computations.
Does an increase in GDP necessarily improve
residents’ happiness?
In economics, happiness
is better known as welfare.
If there is an
earthquake in your country and many roads, buildings, bridges, stadia are
destroyed. Then rebuilding them will increase the national GDP but has it
improved the citizens’ welfare?
As a resultant
of economic growth the quality of air you breathe has gone down and the water
supply is polluted. Has this improved your standard of living?
Due to
increased standard of living everybody has a car and you are now required to spend one hour extra
in commuting time. Has this resulted in improved happiness?
What is the prognosis for GDP and economic
growth?
It appears
that due to Covid-19 the GDP of most nations will be lower than in 2019. These
economies will have negative economic growth which means that in 2020 they will
produce fewer goods than in 2019.
When the GDP
falls, the terms most used are recession and depression. The difference between
the two according to Harry Truman is ‘It's a recession when your neighbour loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours’ .
As
you have seen in the news, firms are busy firing staff which means there will
be increased unemployment. Since more people are unemployed they will not have
money to buy goods in the future and so there will be even less demand for goods in
the future and those who have jobs today may lose their jobs next year in a downward spiral of negative economic growth begetting even more negative growth.
Will there be lower
emphasis on GDP and economic growth in the future? For such a change to happen
there needs a material change in organising the world economy. (If you wish to read further click here)
I hope it happens
in my lifetime.
* - annualised rate---Also watch
How the Economic Machine Works by Ray Dallio
Monday 13 July 2020
Friday 15 May 2020
Under cover of coronavirus, the world's bad guys are wreaking havoc
The pandemic has allowed strongmen and tyrants to get away with murder and mayhem while we look the other way writes Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian
‘Viktor Orbán has long sought to rule Hungary as an autocrat, but the pandemic gave him his chance, allowing him to brand anyone standing in his way as unwilling to help the leader fight a mortal threat.’ Photograph: Tamás Kovács/AFP via Getty Images
Under the cover of coronavirus, all kinds of wickedness are happening. Where you and I see a global health crisis, the world’s leading authoritarians, fearmongers and populist strongmen have spotted an opportunity – and they are seizing it.
Of course, neither left nor right has a monopoly on the truism that one should never let a good crisis go to waste. Plenty of progressives share that conviction, firm that the pandemic offers a rare chance to reset the way we organise our unequal societies, our clogged cities, our warped relationship to the natural world. But there are others – and they tend to be in power – who see this opening very differently. For them, the virus suddenly makes possible action that in normal times would exact a heavy cost. Now they can strike while the world looks the other way.
For some, Covid-19 itself is the weapon of choice. Witness the emerging evidence that Bashar al-Assad in Damascus and Xi Jinping in Beijing are allowing the disease to wreak havoc among those groups whom the rulers have deemed to be unpersons, their lives unworthy of basic protection. Assad is deliberately leaving Syrians in opposition-held areas more vulnerable to the pandemic, according to Will Todman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. As he puts it: “Covid-19 has provided Assad a new opportunity to instrumentalize suffering.”
Meanwhile, China continues to hold 1 million Uighur Muslims in internment camps, where they contend now not only with inhuman conditions but also a coronavirus outbreak. Those camps are cramped, lack adequate sanitation and have poor medical facilities: the virus couldn’t ask for a better breeding ground. What’s more, Uighur Muslims are reportedly being forced to work as labourers, filling in for non-Muslims who are allowed to stay home and protect themselves. That, according to one observer, “is reflective of how the Republic of China views [Uighur Muslims] as nothing but disposable commodities”.
Elsewhere, the pandemic has allowed would-be dictators an excuse to seize yet more power. Enter Viktor Orbán of Hungary, whose response to coronavirus was immediate: he persuaded his pliant parliament to grant him the right to rule by decree. Orbán said he needed emergency powers to fight the dreaded disease, but there is no time limit on them; they will remain his even once the threat has passed. They include the power to jail those who “spread false information”. Naturally, that’s already led to a crackdown on individuals guilty of nothing more than posting criticism of the government on Facebook. Orbán has long sought to rule Hungary as an autocrat, but the pandemic gave him his chance, allowing him to brand anyone standing in his way as unwilling to help the leader fight a mortal threat.
Xi has not missed that same trick, using coronavirus to intensify his imposition of China’s Orwellian “social credit” system, whereby citizens are tracked, monitored and rated for their compliance. Now that system can include health and, thanks to the virus, much of the public ambivalence that previously existed towards it is likely to melt away. After all, runs the logic, good citizens are surely obliged to give up even more of their autonomy if it helps save lives.
For many of the world’s strongmen, though, coronavirus doesn’t even need to be an excuse. Its chief value is the global distraction it has created, allowing unprincipled rulers to make mischief when natural critics at home and abroad are preoccupied with the urgent business of life and death.
Donald Trump gets plenty of criticism for his botched handling of the virus, but while everyone is staring at the mayhem he’s creating with one hand, the other is free to commit acts of vandalism that go all but undetected. This week the Guardian reported how the pandemic has not slowed the Trump administration’s steady and deliberate erosion of environmental protections. During the lockdown, Trump has eased fuel-efficiency standards for new cars, frozen rules for soot air pollution, continued to lease public property to oil and gas companies, and advanced a proposal on mercury pollution from power plants that could make that easier too. Oh, and he’s also relaxed reporting rules for polluters.
Trump’s Brazilian mini-me, Jair Bolsonaro, has outstripped his mentor. Not content with mere changes to the rulebook, he’s pushed aside the expert environmental agencies and sent in the military to “protect” the Amazon rainforest. I say “protect” because, as NBC News reported this week, satellite imagery shows “deforestation of the Amazon has soared under cover of the coronavirus”. Destruction in April was up by 64% from the same month a year ago. The images reveal an area of land equivalent to 448 football fields, stripped bare of trees – this in the place that serves as the lungs of the earth. If the world were not consumed with fighting coronavirus, there would have been an outcry. Instead, and in our distraction, those trees have fallen without making a sound.
Another Trump admirer, India’s Narendra Modi, has seen the same opportunity identified by his fellow ultra-nationalists. Indian police have been using the lockdown to crack down on Muslim citizens and their leaders “indiscriminately”, according to activists. Those arrested or detained struggle to get access to a lawyer, given the restrictions on movement. Modi calculates that majority opinion will back him, as rightist Hindu politicians brand the virus a “Muslim disease” and pro-Modi TV stations declare the nation to be facing a “corona jihad”.
In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu – who can claim to have been Trumpist before Trump – has been handed a political lifeline by the virus, luring part of the main opposition party into a government of national unity that will keep him in power and, he hopes, out of the dock on corruption charges. His new coalition is committed to a programme that would see Israel annex major parts of the West Bank, permanently absorbing into itself territory that should belong to a future Palestinian state, with the process starting in early July. Now, the smart money suggests we should be cautious: that it suits Netanyahu to promise/threaten annexation more than it does for him to actually do it. Even so, in normal times the mere prospect of such an indefensible move would represent an epochal shift, high on the global diplomatic agenda. In these abnormal times, it barely makes the news.
Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House, argues that many of the global bad guys are, in fact, “demonstrating their weakness rather than strength” – that they are all too aware that if they fail to keep their citizens alive, their authority will be shot. He notes Vladimir Putin’s forced postponement of the referendum that would have kept him in power in Russia at least until 2036. When that vote eventually comes, says Niblett, Putin will go into it diminished by his failure to smother the virus.
Still, for now, the pandemic has been a boon to the world’s authoritarians, tyrants and bigots. It has given them what they crave most: fear and the cover of darkness.
Under the cover of coronavirus, all kinds of wickedness are happening. Where you and I see a global health crisis, the world’s leading authoritarians, fearmongers and populist strongmen have spotted an opportunity – and they are seizing it.
Of course, neither left nor right has a monopoly on the truism that one should never let a good crisis go to waste. Plenty of progressives share that conviction, firm that the pandemic offers a rare chance to reset the way we organise our unequal societies, our clogged cities, our warped relationship to the natural world. But there are others – and they tend to be in power – who see this opening very differently. For them, the virus suddenly makes possible action that in normal times would exact a heavy cost. Now they can strike while the world looks the other way.
For some, Covid-19 itself is the weapon of choice. Witness the emerging evidence that Bashar al-Assad in Damascus and Xi Jinping in Beijing are allowing the disease to wreak havoc among those groups whom the rulers have deemed to be unpersons, their lives unworthy of basic protection. Assad is deliberately leaving Syrians in opposition-held areas more vulnerable to the pandemic, according to Will Todman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. As he puts it: “Covid-19 has provided Assad a new opportunity to instrumentalize suffering.”
Meanwhile, China continues to hold 1 million Uighur Muslims in internment camps, where they contend now not only with inhuman conditions but also a coronavirus outbreak. Those camps are cramped, lack adequate sanitation and have poor medical facilities: the virus couldn’t ask for a better breeding ground. What’s more, Uighur Muslims are reportedly being forced to work as labourers, filling in for non-Muslims who are allowed to stay home and protect themselves. That, according to one observer, “is reflective of how the Republic of China views [Uighur Muslims] as nothing but disposable commodities”.
Elsewhere, the pandemic has allowed would-be dictators an excuse to seize yet more power. Enter Viktor Orbán of Hungary, whose response to coronavirus was immediate: he persuaded his pliant parliament to grant him the right to rule by decree. Orbán said he needed emergency powers to fight the dreaded disease, but there is no time limit on them; they will remain his even once the threat has passed. They include the power to jail those who “spread false information”. Naturally, that’s already led to a crackdown on individuals guilty of nothing more than posting criticism of the government on Facebook. Orbán has long sought to rule Hungary as an autocrat, but the pandemic gave him his chance, allowing him to brand anyone standing in his way as unwilling to help the leader fight a mortal threat.
Xi has not missed that same trick, using coronavirus to intensify his imposition of China’s Orwellian “social credit” system, whereby citizens are tracked, monitored and rated for their compliance. Now that system can include health and, thanks to the virus, much of the public ambivalence that previously existed towards it is likely to melt away. After all, runs the logic, good citizens are surely obliged to give up even more of their autonomy if it helps save lives.
For many of the world’s strongmen, though, coronavirus doesn’t even need to be an excuse. Its chief value is the global distraction it has created, allowing unprincipled rulers to make mischief when natural critics at home and abroad are preoccupied with the urgent business of life and death.
Donald Trump gets plenty of criticism for his botched handling of the virus, but while everyone is staring at the mayhem he’s creating with one hand, the other is free to commit acts of vandalism that go all but undetected. This week the Guardian reported how the pandemic has not slowed the Trump administration’s steady and deliberate erosion of environmental protections. During the lockdown, Trump has eased fuel-efficiency standards for new cars, frozen rules for soot air pollution, continued to lease public property to oil and gas companies, and advanced a proposal on mercury pollution from power plants that could make that easier too. Oh, and he’s also relaxed reporting rules for polluters.
Trump’s Brazilian mini-me, Jair Bolsonaro, has outstripped his mentor. Not content with mere changes to the rulebook, he’s pushed aside the expert environmental agencies and sent in the military to “protect” the Amazon rainforest. I say “protect” because, as NBC News reported this week, satellite imagery shows “deforestation of the Amazon has soared under cover of the coronavirus”. Destruction in April was up by 64% from the same month a year ago. The images reveal an area of land equivalent to 448 football fields, stripped bare of trees – this in the place that serves as the lungs of the earth. If the world were not consumed with fighting coronavirus, there would have been an outcry. Instead, and in our distraction, those trees have fallen without making a sound.
Another Trump admirer, India’s Narendra Modi, has seen the same opportunity identified by his fellow ultra-nationalists. Indian police have been using the lockdown to crack down on Muslim citizens and their leaders “indiscriminately”, according to activists. Those arrested or detained struggle to get access to a lawyer, given the restrictions on movement. Modi calculates that majority opinion will back him, as rightist Hindu politicians brand the virus a “Muslim disease” and pro-Modi TV stations declare the nation to be facing a “corona jihad”.
In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu – who can claim to have been Trumpist before Trump – has been handed a political lifeline by the virus, luring part of the main opposition party into a government of national unity that will keep him in power and, he hopes, out of the dock on corruption charges. His new coalition is committed to a programme that would see Israel annex major parts of the West Bank, permanently absorbing into itself territory that should belong to a future Palestinian state, with the process starting in early July. Now, the smart money suggests we should be cautious: that it suits Netanyahu to promise/threaten annexation more than it does for him to actually do it. Even so, in normal times the mere prospect of such an indefensible move would represent an epochal shift, high on the global diplomatic agenda. In these abnormal times, it barely makes the news.
Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House, argues that many of the global bad guys are, in fact, “demonstrating their weakness rather than strength” – that they are all too aware that if they fail to keep their citizens alive, their authority will be shot. He notes Vladimir Putin’s forced postponement of the referendum that would have kept him in power in Russia at least until 2036. When that vote eventually comes, says Niblett, Putin will go into it diminished by his failure to smother the virus.
Still, for now, the pandemic has been a boon to the world’s authoritarians, tyrants and bigots. It has given them what they crave most: fear and the cover of darkness.
Tuesday 19 November 2019
From ‘severe’ to ‘very poor’
Jawed Naqvi in The Dawn
The Delhi Met Bureau may have actually made a deeply philosophical observation with its imagery applicable to several facets of life these days. Spurred by an unexpected breeze, the quality of air in Delhi ‘improved’ from ‘severe’ to ‘very poor’. Some improvement, you would say, but do tarry a little
The Delhi Met Bureau may have actually made a deeply philosophical observation with its imagery applicable to several facets of life these days. Spurred by an unexpected breeze, the quality of air in Delhi ‘improved’ from ‘severe’ to ‘very poor’. Some improvement, you would say, but do tarry a little
This intriguing metaphor of improvement between severe and very poor certainly applies to extant political choices in a large number of locations.
Take Pakistan, where the PPP is compelled to swear by Z.A. Bhutto as a great liberal even though he heaped misery on a minority community in a moment of communally inspired political opportunism. And Nawaz Sharif is the preferred symbol of the nation’s hopes for a democratic recovery having conjured images of a Taliban-style amirul momineen replacing the country’s elected prime minister.
As for Imran Khan, he continues to flirt with some kind of liberation theology given his abiding faith in the Muslim clergy. As for the generals, they trump everyone by merging the options into a seemingly irreversible order of things.
Transpose the irony of self-limiting choices on American politics. Is it not true that Obama was to Libya what Bush was to Iraq and Clinton was to Yugoslavia? To the American voters, however, these former icons define all that they can choose from. The slightest difference in demeanour and style becomes the critical inflection. Elizabeth Warren, or whoever gets to lead the Democratic challenge against Donald Trump next year, thus needs to fight not just Trump but the ghost of his predecessors to progress from choosing between severe and very poor.
In this regard, the choices for Indians have been even more notably stifling. It seems as though the ‘Good’ has been removed as an option from a Clint Eastwood movie, leaving only the ‘Bad’ and the ‘Ugly’ to battle it out. Among other regressions, Nehru’s Congress is talking to the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra where they could come together along with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) of former chief minister Sharad Pawar.
Following recent state elections, which the BJP-Shiv Sena had fought together, the BJP’s numbers in the new assembly dwindled. In Haryana too, in Delhi’s neighbourhood, Modi’s party lost seats, but it co-opted the services of a discredited legislator to cobble a wafer-thin majority. The BJP had earlier sought the man’s arrest for alleged rape but it is now beholden to him for critical support. The Congress has no role in the ugliness of the moment and needs to just watch the BJP choke on its own muck.
It is significant that in Maharashtra and Haryana Modi’s appeal didn’t work. And this happened despite the Congress grappling with its own severe crisis as it limps on under an interim president in Sonia Gandhi. It has the numbers with the NCP to wean Shiv Sena away from the BJP by offering it greater share in the power structure. But should it morally do so?
The Shiv Sena has run on fascist principles with a pernicious anti-Muslim and anti-Dalit ideology. The outfit shored up by militant middle-caste Marathas was actually set up by the Congress, as a cat’s-paw against the influence of Brahmin-led communist unions that greatly troubled Mumbai’s business captains. The strike-breaking Sena conjured different enemies in stages and is currently positioned as anti-Muslim and anti-Dalit. Its volunteers confessed to taking part in the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992.
What’s significant about this Congress-NCP-Shiv Sena project, though it is still on the anvil, is that it follows the supreme court’s judgement on the Ayodhya dispute, which rather controversially assigned the piece of land where the Hindu mob razed the 16th-century mosque against the supreme court’s orders to the very mob with a mandate to build a temple to Lord Ram there.
Many Hindus worship Ram as the god-prince of Ayodhya, but only the BJP and its linked groups seem to know the precise spot where he came into the world. There was a time when the Congress government under Manmohan Singh told the apex court tartly that though Ram was worshipped across the country — and Muslim poets including Iqbal had written paeans to him — there was no scientific evidence he actually existed. Be that as it may, the Congress is now fully on board with the temple project, which is not surprising at all.
Ever since the communists parted ways with the Congress party in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s emergency rule, the Congress has veered closer to the Hindu right. This was a leading factor in Mrs Gandhi’s hurried calculations that led her to misjudge the mood in Punjab where she weighed in against the alienated Sikh community with military might.
The consequence was disastrous for India even though in the short run Rajiv Gandhi did win an unprecedented landslide, seen as a sympathy vote over his mother’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards. Thousands of Sikhs were slaughtered in Delhi by mobs that were encouraged by the Congress party’s backroom cosiness with the Hindu right.
As for Maharashtra, there is nothing new or even surprising about the Congress and the NCP coming close to the Shiv Sena even if they pretend to be wary of its pronounced fascist tag. One needs only to flick off the dust from the Justice Shri Krishna Commission report on the 1992-93 anti-Muslim violence in Mumbai in the wake of the Ayodhya outrage. The commission cited direct evidence to illustrate complicity between the Shiv Sena, sections of the police and the Congress government of the day who were together named by the report, the reason why they jointly buried it. Not unlike the Delhi Met, William Shakespeare’s witches may have been pointing to a similarly deep universal reality as they sang in unison: “Fair is foul and foul is fair. Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
Take Pakistan, where the PPP is compelled to swear by Z.A. Bhutto as a great liberal even though he heaped misery on a minority community in a moment of communally inspired political opportunism. And Nawaz Sharif is the preferred symbol of the nation’s hopes for a democratic recovery having conjured images of a Taliban-style amirul momineen replacing the country’s elected prime minister.
As for Imran Khan, he continues to flirt with some kind of liberation theology given his abiding faith in the Muslim clergy. As for the generals, they trump everyone by merging the options into a seemingly irreversible order of things.
Transpose the irony of self-limiting choices on American politics. Is it not true that Obama was to Libya what Bush was to Iraq and Clinton was to Yugoslavia? To the American voters, however, these former icons define all that they can choose from. The slightest difference in demeanour and style becomes the critical inflection. Elizabeth Warren, or whoever gets to lead the Democratic challenge against Donald Trump next year, thus needs to fight not just Trump but the ghost of his predecessors to progress from choosing between severe and very poor.
In this regard, the choices for Indians have been even more notably stifling. It seems as though the ‘Good’ has been removed as an option from a Clint Eastwood movie, leaving only the ‘Bad’ and the ‘Ugly’ to battle it out. Among other regressions, Nehru’s Congress is talking to the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra where they could come together along with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) of former chief minister Sharad Pawar.
Following recent state elections, which the BJP-Shiv Sena had fought together, the BJP’s numbers in the new assembly dwindled. In Haryana too, in Delhi’s neighbourhood, Modi’s party lost seats, but it co-opted the services of a discredited legislator to cobble a wafer-thin majority. The BJP had earlier sought the man’s arrest for alleged rape but it is now beholden to him for critical support. The Congress has no role in the ugliness of the moment and needs to just watch the BJP choke on its own muck.
It is significant that in Maharashtra and Haryana Modi’s appeal didn’t work. And this happened despite the Congress grappling with its own severe crisis as it limps on under an interim president in Sonia Gandhi. It has the numbers with the NCP to wean Shiv Sena away from the BJP by offering it greater share in the power structure. But should it morally do so?
The Shiv Sena has run on fascist principles with a pernicious anti-Muslim and anti-Dalit ideology. The outfit shored up by militant middle-caste Marathas was actually set up by the Congress, as a cat’s-paw against the influence of Brahmin-led communist unions that greatly troubled Mumbai’s business captains. The strike-breaking Sena conjured different enemies in stages and is currently positioned as anti-Muslim and anti-Dalit. Its volunteers confessed to taking part in the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992.
What’s significant about this Congress-NCP-Shiv Sena project, though it is still on the anvil, is that it follows the supreme court’s judgement on the Ayodhya dispute, which rather controversially assigned the piece of land where the Hindu mob razed the 16th-century mosque against the supreme court’s orders to the very mob with a mandate to build a temple to Lord Ram there.
Many Hindus worship Ram as the god-prince of Ayodhya, but only the BJP and its linked groups seem to know the precise spot where he came into the world. There was a time when the Congress government under Manmohan Singh told the apex court tartly that though Ram was worshipped across the country — and Muslim poets including Iqbal had written paeans to him — there was no scientific evidence he actually existed. Be that as it may, the Congress is now fully on board with the temple project, which is not surprising at all.
Ever since the communists parted ways with the Congress party in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s emergency rule, the Congress has veered closer to the Hindu right. This was a leading factor in Mrs Gandhi’s hurried calculations that led her to misjudge the mood in Punjab where she weighed in against the alienated Sikh community with military might.
The consequence was disastrous for India even though in the short run Rajiv Gandhi did win an unprecedented landslide, seen as a sympathy vote over his mother’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards. Thousands of Sikhs were slaughtered in Delhi by mobs that were encouraged by the Congress party’s backroom cosiness with the Hindu right.
As for Maharashtra, there is nothing new or even surprising about the Congress and the NCP coming close to the Shiv Sena even if they pretend to be wary of its pronounced fascist tag. One needs only to flick off the dust from the Justice Shri Krishna Commission report on the 1992-93 anti-Muslim violence in Mumbai in the wake of the Ayodhya outrage. The commission cited direct evidence to illustrate complicity between the Shiv Sena, sections of the police and the Congress government of the day who were together named by the report, the reason why they jointly buried it. Not unlike the Delhi Met, William Shakespeare’s witches may have been pointing to a similarly deep universal reality as they sang in unison: “Fair is foul and foul is fair. Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
Wednesday 30 January 2019
Worse than plastic waste: the burning tyres choking India
The British government is already flouting its own rules, allowing scrap tyres to be sent abroad for burning – what will happen post-Brexit asks George Monbiot in The Guardian?
The recent enthusiasm for plastic porn – footage of the disgusting waste pouring into the sea – is a rare reminder that we are still living in a material world. But it has had no meaningful effect on government policy. When China banned imports of plastic waste a year ago, you might have hoped that the UK government would invest heavily in waste reduction and domestic recycling. Instead, it has sought new outlets for our filth. Among the lucky recipients are Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, none of which have adequate disposal systems – as I write, our plastic is doubtless flooding into their seas. There’s a term for this practice: waste colonialism.
Our plastic exports are bad enough. But something even worse is happening that we don’t see at all. Every month, thousands of tonnes of used tyres leave our ports on a passage to India. There they are baked in pyrolysis plants, to make a dirty industrial fuel. While some of these plants meet Indian regulations, hundreds – perhaps thousands – are pouring toxins into the air, as officials look the other way. When tyre pyrolysis is done badly, it can produce a hideous mix: heavy metals, benzene, dioxins, furans and other persistent organic chemicals, some of which are highly carcinogenic. Videos of tyre pyrolysis in India show black smoke leaking from the baking chamber, and workers in T-shirts, without masks or other protective equipment, cleaning tarry residues out of the pipes and flasks. I can only imagine what their life expectancy might be.
India suffers one of the world’s worst pollution crises, which causes massive rates of disease and early death. There is no data on the contribution made by tyre pyrolysis plants, but it is doubtless significant. Nor do we know whether British tyres are being burned in plants that are illegal, as our government has failed to investigate this. It seems prepared to break its own rules on behalf of the companies exporting our waste. And this is before Brexit.
Unlike plastic waste, there is a ready market for used tyres within the UK. They are – or were – compressed into tight blocks to make road foundations, embankments and drainage beds. It’s not the closed-loop recycling that should be applied to everything we consume, let alone the radical reduction in the use of materials required to prevent environmental breakdown. But it’s much better than what’s happening to our discarded tyres now. The companies that made these blocks have either collapsed or are in danger of going that way, as they can no longer buy scrap tyres: Indian pyrolysis plants pay more.
I was contacted by a leading tyre block broker, David L Reid. He was halfway through a major order from a local authority when his supplies dried up. The contract was lost, and the local authority had to switch to stone, costing it a further £200,000. He has other interests, so is able to weather this disruption, but his company, like others, has had to cease trading. With some of his former competitors, he has been frantically trying to discover what the government is playing at, so far with little success.
Government guidelines seem clear enough: exporters must be able to demonstrate that the final destination of the waste they send to other countries “operates to human health and environmental protection standards that are broadly equivalent to the standards within the EU”. But when one tyre block company tested the UK Environment Agency’s willingness to enforce this rule, by asking whether it could send tyres to pyrolysis plants in Africa that “will not meet UK and EU pollution controls”, the agency told him “your suggested business plan is acceptable as long as the relevant procedures and documents are completed correctly”.
The UK government’s due diligence consists of asking tyre exporters which companies they intend to sell to, then asking the Indian government whether those companies are legit. It has made no efforts to discover whether the firms receiving these tyres are their final destination, or whether the Indian government is properly regulating them. It has no figures for UK tyre exports to India. Arguing that they are classed as “green waste”, it washes its hands of them as soon as they leave our shores.
To become a tyre trader, all you need to do is fill in a “U2 environmental exemption” form. Then you can buy used tyres from garages, ostensibly for bundling into construction blocks. But there appears to be nothing in British law (or at least in its implementation) to prevent you from using this licence to put them in a shipping container and send them to India.
I put questions to the government about these issues but, despite repeated requests, it failed to send me a response on time. Reid has approached the environment secretary, Michael Gove, his Labour shadow, Sue Hayman, Liam Fox and other MPs and officials, all without answers. Does anyone care? Are the lives of people in India worth nothing to politicians in this country?
It appears that among the first people to export used tyres to India, in 2009, was Richard Cook. He is the former Conservative parliamentary candidate for East Renfrewshire who channelled £435,000 (the origins of which remain mysterious) through Northern Ireland and into the leave campaign in England and Scotland. Investigations by openDemocracy and BBC Northern Ireland alleged that his shipment was classified as illegal by both the Indian government and UK regulators. Indian law at the time forbade used tyre imports. Cook denied the allegations. After I tried to speak to him, his solicitor rang to say “we have intimated a claim for damages against the BBC for defamation” and would not be making any further comment.
In principle, the government could be held to account on this issue by European law. But if this is the way it is prepared to operate before Brexit – flouting its own rules on behalf of British exporters – imagine what it might do after we have left the EU. Every child is taught a basic environmental principle: you clear up your own mess. Our government seems happy to dump it on other people.
‘Every month, thousands of tonnes of used tyres leave our ports on a passage to India.’ Illustration: Sébastien Thibault/The Guardian
What we see is not the economy. What we see is the tiny fragment of economic life we are supposed to see: the products and services we buy. The rest – the mines, plantations, factories and dumps required to deliver and remove them – are kept as far from our minds as possible. Given the scale of global extraction and waste disposal, it is a remarkable feat of perception management.
What we see is not the economy. What we see is the tiny fragment of economic life we are supposed to see: the products and services we buy. The rest – the mines, plantations, factories and dumps required to deliver and remove them – are kept as far from our minds as possible. Given the scale of global extraction and waste disposal, it is a remarkable feat of perception management.
The recent enthusiasm for plastic porn – footage of the disgusting waste pouring into the sea – is a rare reminder that we are still living in a material world. But it has had no meaningful effect on government policy. When China banned imports of plastic waste a year ago, you might have hoped that the UK government would invest heavily in waste reduction and domestic recycling. Instead, it has sought new outlets for our filth. Among the lucky recipients are Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, none of which have adequate disposal systems – as I write, our plastic is doubtless flooding into their seas. There’s a term for this practice: waste colonialism.
Our plastic exports are bad enough. But something even worse is happening that we don’t see at all. Every month, thousands of tonnes of used tyres leave our ports on a passage to India. There they are baked in pyrolysis plants, to make a dirty industrial fuel. While some of these plants meet Indian regulations, hundreds – perhaps thousands – are pouring toxins into the air, as officials look the other way. When tyre pyrolysis is done badly, it can produce a hideous mix: heavy metals, benzene, dioxins, furans and other persistent organic chemicals, some of which are highly carcinogenic. Videos of tyre pyrolysis in India show black smoke leaking from the baking chamber, and workers in T-shirts, without masks or other protective equipment, cleaning tarry residues out of the pipes and flasks. I can only imagine what their life expectancy might be.
India suffers one of the world’s worst pollution crises, which causes massive rates of disease and early death. There is no data on the contribution made by tyre pyrolysis plants, but it is doubtless significant. Nor do we know whether British tyres are being burned in plants that are illegal, as our government has failed to investigate this. It seems prepared to break its own rules on behalf of the companies exporting our waste. And this is before Brexit.
Unlike plastic waste, there is a ready market for used tyres within the UK. They are – or were – compressed into tight blocks to make road foundations, embankments and drainage beds. It’s not the closed-loop recycling that should be applied to everything we consume, let alone the radical reduction in the use of materials required to prevent environmental breakdown. But it’s much better than what’s happening to our discarded tyres now. The companies that made these blocks have either collapsed or are in danger of going that way, as they can no longer buy scrap tyres: Indian pyrolysis plants pay more.
I was contacted by a leading tyre block broker, David L Reid. He was halfway through a major order from a local authority when his supplies dried up. The contract was lost, and the local authority had to switch to stone, costing it a further £200,000. He has other interests, so is able to weather this disruption, but his company, like others, has had to cease trading. With some of his former competitors, he has been frantically trying to discover what the government is playing at, so far with little success.
Government guidelines seem clear enough: exporters must be able to demonstrate that the final destination of the waste they send to other countries “operates to human health and environmental protection standards that are broadly equivalent to the standards within the EU”. But when one tyre block company tested the UK Environment Agency’s willingness to enforce this rule, by asking whether it could send tyres to pyrolysis plants in Africa that “will not meet UK and EU pollution controls”, the agency told him “your suggested business plan is acceptable as long as the relevant procedures and documents are completed correctly”.
The UK government’s due diligence consists of asking tyre exporters which companies they intend to sell to, then asking the Indian government whether those companies are legit. It has made no efforts to discover whether the firms receiving these tyres are their final destination, or whether the Indian government is properly regulating them. It has no figures for UK tyre exports to India. Arguing that they are classed as “green waste”, it washes its hands of them as soon as they leave our shores.
To become a tyre trader, all you need to do is fill in a “U2 environmental exemption” form. Then you can buy used tyres from garages, ostensibly for bundling into construction blocks. But there appears to be nothing in British law (or at least in its implementation) to prevent you from using this licence to put them in a shipping container and send them to India.
I put questions to the government about these issues but, despite repeated requests, it failed to send me a response on time. Reid has approached the environment secretary, Michael Gove, his Labour shadow, Sue Hayman, Liam Fox and other MPs and officials, all without answers. Does anyone care? Are the lives of people in India worth nothing to politicians in this country?
It appears that among the first people to export used tyres to India, in 2009, was Richard Cook. He is the former Conservative parliamentary candidate for East Renfrewshire who channelled £435,000 (the origins of which remain mysterious) through Northern Ireland and into the leave campaign in England and Scotland. Investigations by openDemocracy and BBC Northern Ireland alleged that his shipment was classified as illegal by both the Indian government and UK regulators. Indian law at the time forbade used tyre imports. Cook denied the allegations. After I tried to speak to him, his solicitor rang to say “we have intimated a claim for damages against the BBC for defamation” and would not be making any further comment.
In principle, the government could be held to account on this issue by European law. But if this is the way it is prepared to operate before Brexit – flouting its own rules on behalf of British exporters – imagine what it might do after we have left the EU. Every child is taught a basic environmental principle: you clear up your own mess. Our government seems happy to dump it on other people.
Wednesday 6 December 2017
The uncomfortable truth behind the mask
Suresh Menon in The Hindu
What do they know of air pollution who only air pollution know? Kipling didn’t say that, neither did C.L.R. James, nor let’s face it, did former England captain Ted Dexter. But Dexter was the first to connect air pollution in India and international cricket.
After England lost the first Test of the 1992-93 series in Kolkata, Dexter, then chairman of selectors announced grandly that he had “commissioned a report into the impact of air pollution in Indian cities.”
England lost all the Tests of that series, and the excuses varied from pollution to the players’ facial hair to prawn curry in a Chennai restaurant. But Dexter’s attempt at studying pollution is the best remembered a quarter century later.
In The Guardian, David Hopps wrote then: “Dexter will deservedly face accusations today that he is hiding behind a smogscreen, that the only air about last night was hot air, and that anybody seen choking was most likely choking with laughter.”
What innocent days those were!
No laughing matter
Pollution is no longer a laughing matter. It is real, measurable, and, in the case of Delhi, 12 to 15 times beyond safety limits.
To say that Indians handle pollution better than Sri Lankans is a foolish boast, and quite meaningless. To attach nationalism and patriotism to the manner in which Indian players don’t cough or vomit while their opponents do is ridiculous in the extreme.
The fact of the matter is, Sri Lankan players suffered, they deserve our sympathy and even an apology. Two First Class matches were called off in Delhi last year owing to the pollution; there is good reason for the Board of Control for Cricket in India to drop Delhi from its schedule during winter, especially when the pollution levels go from the merely dangerous to the hazardous.
The BCCI has been quoted as saying that next time they will check the pollution levels before giving Delhi a match. We’ll see.
Players selected for a Delhi Test in future might have to acclimatise themselves by revving a car engine in a locked garage. This is a terrible thing to say, but Delhi has been an embarrassment. Images of fielders in masks must rate as the most mortifying to emerge from an Indian sports field.
Such high levels of air pollution are dangerous; players and spectators who already have respiratory problems are badly hit. R. Ashwin, for example, suffered from asthma as a child. Bowling and fielding in these conditions could not have been ideal for him.
Yet, he carried on heroically. No Indian was likely to wear a mask on the field — they wore one off it, though — since that would have sent out a message no Indian wanted to hear. Patriotism before health is the safer option.
If Sri Lanka wore masks, that was a health statement; if the Indians had worn them, it would have been a political statement. That is not a burden cricket needs to carry.
Sri Lanka had every right to complain. The umpires and the match referee had to deal with a unique situation. The guiding principle in all such cases is simple: the health and safety of the players is paramount. Yet there were political considerations here too. Relationship between the countries, future tours, the financial implications of rubbing India the wrong way.
The BCCI president’s aggressive response was disingenuous — but then the governing body has not been known to use tact when belligerence is an alternative.
Not unintelligent
Players are grown men who are not unintelligent. Sri Lanka could not have been unaware of the strategic advantages of disrupting a game where they were being so thoroughly dominated. But we cannot assume that was their primary motivation. If Kohli missed a triple century, blame the politicians of Delhi or the farmers of Punjab. Further proof that no sport exists in isolation.
It has been argued that India play in extreme conditions in Dunedin or Manchester, so why can’t visiting teams play in polluted Delhi?
But climate is a natural phenomenon, pollution is manmade. Playing in England or New Zealand is not injurious to health.
It is true that international sportsmen must be prepared to play in all conditions — weather, pitch, outfield, audience — but you do not travel equipped to deal with pollution.
Pollution affects the Indian team too, brave front or not. If a players’ association existed (as mandated by the Supreme Court), here’s another area it might have made a difference. By definition, such an association would be focused on the players’ welfare (players, history has shown us, are not the top priority of the BCCI).
Perhaps the players and administrators lack specific knowledge of the long-term damage that air pollution can cause. That gap can be filled by a players’ association which focuses on educating the stakeholders in the game.
Sri Lankans will return to their country, the cricketing caravan will move on.
But what of those who continue to live in Delhi? Not for the first time, cricket has shone a light on man’s inhumanity to man.
After England lost the first Test of the 1992-93 series in Kolkata, Dexter, then chairman of selectors announced grandly that he had “commissioned a report into the impact of air pollution in Indian cities.”
England lost all the Tests of that series, and the excuses varied from pollution to the players’ facial hair to prawn curry in a Chennai restaurant. But Dexter’s attempt at studying pollution is the best remembered a quarter century later.
In The Guardian, David Hopps wrote then: “Dexter will deservedly face accusations today that he is hiding behind a smogscreen, that the only air about last night was hot air, and that anybody seen choking was most likely choking with laughter.”
What innocent days those were!
No laughing matter
Pollution is no longer a laughing matter. It is real, measurable, and, in the case of Delhi, 12 to 15 times beyond safety limits.
To say that Indians handle pollution better than Sri Lankans is a foolish boast, and quite meaningless. To attach nationalism and patriotism to the manner in which Indian players don’t cough or vomit while their opponents do is ridiculous in the extreme.
The fact of the matter is, Sri Lankan players suffered, they deserve our sympathy and even an apology. Two First Class matches were called off in Delhi last year owing to the pollution; there is good reason for the Board of Control for Cricket in India to drop Delhi from its schedule during winter, especially when the pollution levels go from the merely dangerous to the hazardous.
The BCCI has been quoted as saying that next time they will check the pollution levels before giving Delhi a match. We’ll see.
Players selected for a Delhi Test in future might have to acclimatise themselves by revving a car engine in a locked garage. This is a terrible thing to say, but Delhi has been an embarrassment. Images of fielders in masks must rate as the most mortifying to emerge from an Indian sports field.
Such high levels of air pollution are dangerous; players and spectators who already have respiratory problems are badly hit. R. Ashwin, for example, suffered from asthma as a child. Bowling and fielding in these conditions could not have been ideal for him.
Yet, he carried on heroically. No Indian was likely to wear a mask on the field — they wore one off it, though — since that would have sent out a message no Indian wanted to hear. Patriotism before health is the safer option.
If Sri Lanka wore masks, that was a health statement; if the Indians had worn them, it would have been a political statement. That is not a burden cricket needs to carry.
Sri Lanka had every right to complain. The umpires and the match referee had to deal with a unique situation. The guiding principle in all such cases is simple: the health and safety of the players is paramount. Yet there were political considerations here too. Relationship between the countries, future tours, the financial implications of rubbing India the wrong way.
The BCCI president’s aggressive response was disingenuous — but then the governing body has not been known to use tact when belligerence is an alternative.
Not unintelligent
Players are grown men who are not unintelligent. Sri Lanka could not have been unaware of the strategic advantages of disrupting a game where they were being so thoroughly dominated. But we cannot assume that was their primary motivation. If Kohli missed a triple century, blame the politicians of Delhi or the farmers of Punjab. Further proof that no sport exists in isolation.
It has been argued that India play in extreme conditions in Dunedin or Manchester, so why can’t visiting teams play in polluted Delhi?
But climate is a natural phenomenon, pollution is manmade. Playing in England or New Zealand is not injurious to health.
It is true that international sportsmen must be prepared to play in all conditions — weather, pitch, outfield, audience — but you do not travel equipped to deal with pollution.
Pollution affects the Indian team too, brave front or not. If a players’ association existed (as mandated by the Supreme Court), here’s another area it might have made a difference. By definition, such an association would be focused on the players’ welfare (players, history has shown us, are not the top priority of the BCCI).
Perhaps the players and administrators lack specific knowledge of the long-term damage that air pollution can cause. That gap can be filled by a players’ association which focuses on educating the stakeholders in the game.
Sri Lankans will return to their country, the cricketing caravan will move on.
But what of those who continue to live in Delhi? Not for the first time, cricket has shone a light on man’s inhumanity to man.
Tuesday 8 August 2017
Only governments can stem the tide of tourism sweeping the globe
Elizabeth Becker in The Guardian
In Barcelona this summer, I was shown a protest sign written in English that said: “Why call it tourism season if we can’t kill them?” Anger over unhampered tourism is getting ugly, even in Barcelona, where the mayor, Ada Colau, is one of the few politicians dedicated to reining in the industry. Residents told me they have had it with skyrocketing rents, thousands of tourists from cruise ships swamping the city’s historic centre and partygoers keeping families up into the night. And they are increasingly sceptical about the economic benefits for the average citizen.
Every time I find myself smirking at another photograph of drunken tourists crowding a gracious town square, I think of Venice. The annual tourist traffic of more than 20 million visitors to La Serenissima has impoverished, rather than enriched, most Venetians. They have been pushed out, the population cut in half to fewer than 60,000 people. The survivors continue to protest and vote against giant cruise ships and mindless tourism. But the powers that be have done little. Even the United Nations has warned that the genius of Venice, its culture, art and way of life are being drowned by tourism.
The Thai government has banned tourists from Koh Tachai island. Photograph: Alamy
Travel is already up 6% this year, according the UN ’s World Tourism Organisation, with a 10% increase in the Middle East, the centre of the world’s most deadly conflicts, and up 6% in Europe, despite a string of terrorist attacks, particularly in France and England.
This boom has translated into crowds of tourists in every corner of the globe and, in a new rite of summer, stories of tourists behaving badly. Hong Kong protests against loud, impolite tourists urinating in the street sound a lot like the complaints I heard in Thailand about Chinese tourists desecrating Buddhist temples. An internet search of “tourists behaving badly” can keep you entertained for hours.
Many of us hear these stories and congratulate ourselves for being thoughtful travellers. We avoid the nasty crowds. We seek the out-of-the-way destinations where we enjoy the best in local food and culture. Some plant trees to offset their carbon footprints. But this problem can’t be remedied by good consumer behaviour. Appealing to the industry to refrain from packing their planes and adding new cruise destinations isn’t going to work either.
Only governments can handle runaway tourism. Few major industries fall so squarely into their hands – local, regional and national. Governments decide who is eligible for visas: how many cruise ships, airlines and trains can bring in visitors, how many hotels receive building permits, how many beaches are open to development, how many museums and concert halls are open, even how many farmers receive subsidies to raise food for the restaurants and cafes that tourists frequent.
After years spent tracking the explosion of tourism, I came to the obvious conclusion that without serious and difficult government co-ordination, mayhem can follow. The current biggest disrupters are short-term rental companies, such as Airbnb, and cruise ships.
Most governments still measure tourism success simply by the number of visitors. The more, the better. For the moment, officials have been reluctant to regulate tourism to the benefit, first of all, of their own citizens. Instead, tourism is seen as an easy moneymaker and a short cut to economic development. The exceptions are standouts. France, Bhutan, Costa Rica and Canada are among the few countries with governments willing to co-ordinate policies of sustainable tourism and they haven’t suffered: they are among the most popular destinations in the world.
Promoting tourism by the numbers works both ways. The Chinese were only allowed to travel abroad 20 years ago, after generations of forced isolation. The travel bug hit big. Now the Chinese as a nationality are ranked as the greatest number of travellers in the world and the biggest spenders. President Xi Jinping negotiates favours with other countries in return for more tourist visas for his people.
There is hope. Tourists and governments accept that too much tourism can have a deadly effect on the environment and nature. “Eco-tourism” has been popular for years, whether practised in good faith or not. Slowly, governments are adapting, sometimes in the extreme. Last year, Thailand banned all tourists from Koh Tachai as the only way to save that exquisite island.
Cities and societies can be just as vulnerable to runaway tourism as ocean beaches and forest habitats and governments need to do the hard work of taming tourism for them as well.
In Barcelona this summer, I was shown a protest sign written in English that said: “Why call it tourism season if we can’t kill them?” Anger over unhampered tourism is getting ugly, even in Barcelona, where the mayor, Ada Colau, is one of the few politicians dedicated to reining in the industry. Residents told me they have had it with skyrocketing rents, thousands of tourists from cruise ships swamping the city’s historic centre and partygoers keeping families up into the night. And they are increasingly sceptical about the economic benefits for the average citizen.
Every time I find myself smirking at another photograph of drunken tourists crowding a gracious town square, I think of Venice. The annual tourist traffic of more than 20 million visitors to La Serenissima has impoverished, rather than enriched, most Venetians. They have been pushed out, the population cut in half to fewer than 60,000 people. The survivors continue to protest and vote against giant cruise ships and mindless tourism. But the powers that be have done little. Even the United Nations has warned that the genius of Venice, its culture, art and way of life are being drowned by tourism.
The anger isn’t limited to Europe. In Cambodia, citizens were evicted from their fishing villages so that foreign-built resorts could rise on the pristine beaches. With record crowds and mounds of litter, the once romantic Ipanema beach in Rio de Janiero now features drunk tourists infuriating the locals. Cities across North America, from New Orleans to Vancouver, have issued regulations on Airbnb rentals after citizen complaints that their neighbourhoods were being overwhelmed by unruly tourists and rising rents.
It is no longer possible to dismiss criticism of exploding tourism as elite snobbery, of high-end cultural tourism versus T-shirt-clad visitors squeezed on a tour bus. Or a question of who has the right to travel and who doesn’t.
The dimensions of the industry have grown so vast so quickly that it has become a serious issue of globalisation, as pertinent to the communities at risk as shuttered factories have been to the American and British rust belts.
Few industries were better positioned to take advantage of the 21st century than tourism. Open borders for the first time in modern history, leaps in technology from aeroplanes to the internet and the rise of the global middle class (think China) meant travel moved from a pastime to an economic engine. In less than two decades, travel doubled from 536m trips abroad in 1995 to 1bn in 2012. When the Cold War closed off much of the world to tourism, that figure was only 25m.
Travel and tourism has become a behemoth, capable of doing great good and great damage. It is an $8tn industry. It is the largest employer on Earth: one in 11 people works in tourism and travel.
The appeal of travel is a given. Leisure, excitement, education, adventure. Nothing seems to put a damper on travel. Not the 2008 great recession. Not terrorism, including attacks on tourist resorts. Not even war. Tourists still show up in Afghanistan and North Korea. A tourist was released last week after six years held hostage in Mali by al-Qaida.
It is no longer possible to dismiss criticism of exploding tourism as elite snobbery, of high-end cultural tourism versus T-shirt-clad visitors squeezed on a tour bus. Or a question of who has the right to travel and who doesn’t.
The dimensions of the industry have grown so vast so quickly that it has become a serious issue of globalisation, as pertinent to the communities at risk as shuttered factories have been to the American and British rust belts.
Few industries were better positioned to take advantage of the 21st century than tourism. Open borders for the first time in modern history, leaps in technology from aeroplanes to the internet and the rise of the global middle class (think China) meant travel moved from a pastime to an economic engine. In less than two decades, travel doubled from 536m trips abroad in 1995 to 1bn in 2012. When the Cold War closed off much of the world to tourism, that figure was only 25m.
Travel and tourism has become a behemoth, capable of doing great good and great damage. It is an $8tn industry. It is the largest employer on Earth: one in 11 people works in tourism and travel.
The appeal of travel is a given. Leisure, excitement, education, adventure. Nothing seems to put a damper on travel. Not the 2008 great recession. Not terrorism, including attacks on tourist resorts. Not even war. Tourists still show up in Afghanistan and North Korea. A tourist was released last week after six years held hostage in Mali by al-Qaida.
The Thai government has banned tourists from Koh Tachai island. Photograph: Alamy
Travel is already up 6% this year, according the UN ’s World Tourism Organisation, with a 10% increase in the Middle East, the centre of the world’s most deadly conflicts, and up 6% in Europe, despite a string of terrorist attacks, particularly in France and England.
This boom has translated into crowds of tourists in every corner of the globe and, in a new rite of summer, stories of tourists behaving badly. Hong Kong protests against loud, impolite tourists urinating in the street sound a lot like the complaints I heard in Thailand about Chinese tourists desecrating Buddhist temples. An internet search of “tourists behaving badly” can keep you entertained for hours.
Many of us hear these stories and congratulate ourselves for being thoughtful travellers. We avoid the nasty crowds. We seek the out-of-the-way destinations where we enjoy the best in local food and culture. Some plant trees to offset their carbon footprints. But this problem can’t be remedied by good consumer behaviour. Appealing to the industry to refrain from packing their planes and adding new cruise destinations isn’t going to work either.
Only governments can handle runaway tourism. Few major industries fall so squarely into their hands – local, regional and national. Governments decide who is eligible for visas: how many cruise ships, airlines and trains can bring in visitors, how many hotels receive building permits, how many beaches are open to development, how many museums and concert halls are open, even how many farmers receive subsidies to raise food for the restaurants and cafes that tourists frequent.
After years spent tracking the explosion of tourism, I came to the obvious conclusion that without serious and difficult government co-ordination, mayhem can follow. The current biggest disrupters are short-term rental companies, such as Airbnb, and cruise ships.
Most governments still measure tourism success simply by the number of visitors. The more, the better. For the moment, officials have been reluctant to regulate tourism to the benefit, first of all, of their own citizens. Instead, tourism is seen as an easy moneymaker and a short cut to economic development. The exceptions are standouts. France, Bhutan, Costa Rica and Canada are among the few countries with governments willing to co-ordinate policies of sustainable tourism and they haven’t suffered: they are among the most popular destinations in the world.
Promoting tourism by the numbers works both ways. The Chinese were only allowed to travel abroad 20 years ago, after generations of forced isolation. The travel bug hit big. Now the Chinese as a nationality are ranked as the greatest number of travellers in the world and the biggest spenders. President Xi Jinping negotiates favours with other countries in return for more tourist visas for his people.
There is hope. Tourists and governments accept that too much tourism can have a deadly effect on the environment and nature. “Eco-tourism” has been popular for years, whether practised in good faith or not. Slowly, governments are adapting, sometimes in the extreme. Last year, Thailand banned all tourists from Koh Tachai as the only way to save that exquisite island.
Cities and societies can be just as vulnerable to runaway tourism as ocean beaches and forest habitats and governments need to do the hard work of taming tourism for them as well.
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