The Pakistan Sustainable Development Initiative
We've posted two abstracts which outline the initiative.
They represent the Social Action Research (SAR) project Saad, Asad, Clara, Holly and I are working on toward a Pakistan citizenery connected and active in a global sustainable development (SD) network that is promoted through corporate social responibility (CSR).
A Transition To Sustainability for Pakistan: Add Water, Science, Technology, CSR, Social Learning and Global Community
E.J.Wensing (1,2), Saad Ullah Khan (1,3) and Muhammad Asad Zaman (1,4, 5)
1) Ecosphere Net, St. John, US Virgin Islands,
2) Doctoral Student, Saybrook Graduate School, California, USA,
3) Editor, Socially Responsible Pakistan, Islamabad, Pakistan,
4) Former Director, Water Knowledge Network, IUCN Pakistan,
5) Research Consultant, Habib University, Karachi, Pakistan.
Each year an estimated 250,000 children die in Pakistan due to water-borne disease. This paper describes the development of action based learning systems and networks for safe water in Pakistan, as part of a larger network for sustainable development in Pakistan. Bordered by Iran and Afghanistan, Pakistan may be a transition zone between militancy and stability. Thus, Pakistan is an opportunity to bridge science and technology with corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social learning to encourage sustainable development, stability and security in the region and in our world. As argued in this paper, to achieve these objectives, just add water. Pakistan is currently experiencing a water crisis of scarcity and sanitation. While the international community has contributed large sums of money toward safe drinking water and sanitation reform, unlike recent success with tobacco usage reduction and automobile passenger seat belt use in Pakistan, the results for safe water and sanitation have been negligible. In the case of water, accountability and engaged citizenry are missing. We are developing action based learning systems for safe water in Pakistan. Utilizing so-called “boundary organizations” which research and manage the boundaries between scientific knowledge and effective action, we seek to expand the implementation of domestic and international CSR through participatory learning research networks to increase accountability and engage citizenry not only regarding safe water specifically but sustainable development and sustainability in general. The latter is made easier given the fact that safe water is linked not only to reduced child mortality but also to reduced poverty, improved education and women’s rights as well as all other key factors toward sustainable development for Pakistan and the sustainability of our world.
Key words: Pakistan, sustainable development, safe water, security.
A Transition to Sustainable Development for Pakistan: Interfacing Philosophy With Science and Technology in Social Action Research
Saad Ullah Khan (1, 2), Muhammad Asad Zaman (2,3,4),
Clara Mandolini (2, 5), Holly V. Moeller (2, 6) and EJ Wensing (2, 7)
1) Editor, Socially Responsible Pakistan, Islamabad, Pakistan
2) Ecosphere Net, St. John, US Virgin Islands
3) Research Consultant, Habib University, Karachi, Pakistan
4) Former Director, Water Knowledge Network, IUCN Pakistan
5) Doctoral Student, Philosophy, Macerata University, Italy
6) Doctoral Student, Biological Oceanography, MIT/Woods Hole
Oceanography Institution Joint Program
7) Doctoral Student, Psychology EfS, Saybrook Graduate School, California
Taken from an environmental perspective, ontology describes our human relation to all of nature, the ecosphere and our place in it. On the historic heels of postmodernism some within the environmental movement have taken an environmental ontologist’s stance, which encourages self-exploration and personal transformation in our relation to nature. Others have taken an environmental materialist stance, focusing on economic and societal institutional reform (1). Regardless of philosophical stance, the planet, or at least our place on it, is in peril.
Should we charge the environmental ontologists with ineffectual introspection in the face of global crisis? Should we charge the environmental materialists with trying to generate a pragmatic, weak anthropocentrism- one in which, under the guise of corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurs continue to move humans toward ecosystem collapse even as they attempt to improve human development through a quest to promote a fortune at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid?
In this paper we argue that environmental ontology and environmental materialism are not contradictory and must not remain mutually exclusive. Rather, their interface with environmental pragmatism can generate a transition to sustainable development that ensures necessary progress within a sustainable framework (2). Together these perspectives can produce an awareness that a new sustainability ethos is in order and a shift in values is needed: one which we co-develop democratically across all cultures, one in which a high standard of living does not have to correlate with high rate of consumption. To make our argument we utilize the example of our vision for Pakistan and the country’s current capacity for a transition to sustainable development, a future in which science and technology are interfaced with philosophy in a multi-scalar social action research/learning network.
Pakistan is currently experiencing a water crisis of scarcity and sanitation (3,4,5,6,7). Each year an estimated 250,000 children die in Pakistan due to water-borne disease (7). This paper introduces the conceptual groundwork underway toward the research and development of multi-scalar action based learning systems that seek to provide safe water throughout the country. Safe and sufficient water is linked to reduced child mortality, reduced poverty, improved education, women’s rights, as well as all other key factors toward sustainable development for Pakistan and our world (9,10). Thus, the effective implementation of safe water science and technology will require the convergence of other technologies as well as the interface of broad domestic learning systems not only with regard to water, but as part of a larger network for sustainable development (SD) within Pakistan and in connection with the larger global SD community. Humanitarianism aside, the driver for the development of the SD networks will be the incentives of the economic benefits of becoming an active participant of a socially responsible domestic and international corporate citizenry.
Bordered by Iran and Afghanistan, Pakistan may be a transition zone between militancy and stability. With a historically unstable government, an estimated stockpile of 50 - 120 nuclear weapons, and gradual incursion and settlement of militant groups across its borders, most notably the Taliban, we argue that Pakistan is a pivotal stakeholder in our necessary international effort to achieve lasting global sustainability (11).
Optimistically, Pakistan currently remains an opportunity to bridge science and technology with corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social learning to further sustainable development, stability and security in the region and in our world. As argued in this paper, these broader objectives can be achieved while developing a safe water network throughout the country by engaging the citizenry in local action research/learning to solve domestic problems that includes the transfer of more broad based sustainability science knowledge and technology than the resolution of the water crisis requires.
Environmental pragmatism can play a key role in this “Trojan Horse” approach by reconciling theoretical methodological dilemmas that will continue to flow into ethical problems, not only in the relation of man-nature, but also - and at the same time - man-man andsociety-individual.
The current global crisis is becoming an increasingly profound ethical imperative for us to cogently face and solve, to the best of our current ability, the real-life problems of humanity’s relationship with the environment. We argue that the case of the transition toward sustainable development for Pakistan includes not only regional and global benefits, but will also provide learning systems and research results that, while likely not providing a panacea, will be transposable to other cultural contexts in other countries because it will provide experience with some of the most complex issues of sustainable development currently facing humanity.
References
1) Katz, E. Light, A. & Rothenberg, D. (Eds) (2000) Beneath the Surface.Cambridge:Mit Press
2) Light, A. & Katz, E. (Eds) (1996) Environmental Pragmatism. Routlidge: New York
3) Khagram, S. & Ali, S. (2006) Annu.Rev. Environ.Resour. 31: 395-411.
4) Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (2003) Briefing
Paper: Issues of Water Resources in Pakistan (PILDAT, Lahore).
5) Sarwar, T. (2005) Pakistan: Water Remains Key Issue (IRIN News, Islamabad).
6) Earth Trends (2003) Water Resources and Freshwater Ecosystems: Pakistan
7) Rosemann, N. (2005) Drinking Water Crisis in Pakistan and the Issue of Bottled
Water (Swiss Coalition of Development Organizations, Berne).
8) Parris, T.M. & Kates, R.W. (2003) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 100: 8068-8073.
9) Ray, I. (2007) Ann. Rev.Environ. Resour. 32: 421-429.
10) Sanger, D. January 11th 2009 New York Times Obama’s Worst Pakistan
nightmare. Online at: