IMPLEXI MUNDI: International Arts and Sciences Complexity Worlds

A Transition to Sustainability for Pakistan: How Chaos Can Help Prevent Anarchy
By: Enrico Wensing on: Fri 13 of Mar, 2009 [02:01 UTC] (305 reads)

Achieving long-term global sustainability is about more than climate change and going green. The global transition to sustainable development and sustainability requires an improvement in human-nature and human-human relationships. Sustainability science seeks to characterize the transition along three dimensions, 1) the best long term trends of social/environmental change, 2) vulnerability analysis/reduction of human-environment systems and, 3) effective learning systems that bridge the divide between knowledge and action (Clark, 2007).

The transition to sustainability for Pakistan is likewise a multidimensional challenge. The rising Taliban incursions, civil unrest, and political instability in Pakistan appear to be the early markers of a region heading toward a state of anarchy. This is not simply a domestic problem, or even a regional one. It is a global problem that requires global solutions.

There are the security issues. Pakistan stores an estimated 120 nuclear weapons that could fall into the wrong hands. In the January 11th 2009 New York Times article entitled Obama’s Worst Pakistan Nightmare David E. Sanger wrote that it was declared in a report to the Obama transition team prepared by aides to former President Bush that, “the United States has far more at stake preventing Pakistan’s collapse that it does in stabilizing Afghanistan or Iraq”. Sanger goes on to quote one Bush aide as saying, “For Al Qaeda and the other Islamists…this is the home game…for anyone trying to keep a nuclear weapon from going off in the United States, its our home game, too.” (See supp. 1 below)

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There are human rights issues. Pakistan is currently experiencing a water crisis of scarcity and sanitation. Each year an estimated 250,000 children die in Pakistan due to water-borne disease. Safe 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 the sustainability of our world. Human rights are being violated and terror is being propagated more directly. For instance, the Taliban is closing schools for girls in the SWAT Valley and murdering any dissention (See supp. 2 below).

Pakistan currently remains an opportunity to bridge science and technology with corporate social responsibility (CSR) into local action that furthers sustainable development, stability and security in the region and in our world. Anarchy is not a necessary social/civic precursor in the evolutionary process toward human rights and democracy. This presentation introduces the international “Phones Not Drones” initiative we are developing with Pakistani thought leaders. To achieve the broader objectives of sustainable development we are seeking to develop a safe water network throughout the country supported, in part, by cell phone technology and international corporate leverage.

In a counter-argument the moral/ethical dilemmas of such an initiative will be briefly discussed. How complexity science fits into this initiative will be described in detail in this presentation. In both formal and metaphoric terms complexity science provides multiple descriptors of human-human and human-environment relationships that are essential educational tools for sustainability science. In this sense chaos can help prevent anarchy.

Supplementary Reading/Viewing Material
1) David Sanger’s NYT article: Obama’s worst Pakistan nightmare, please visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine/11pakistan-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=obamas%20worst%20pakistan&st=cse external link

2) NYT ‘s Class Dismissed in Swat Valley, please visit:
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/02/22/world/asia/1194838044017/class-dismissed-in-swat-valley.html external link

References

Clark, W.C. (2007) Sustainability Science: A room of its own. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104, 1737–1738.

EJ Wensing
Ecosphere Net
St. John, US Virgin Islands
ejwensing@ecosphere.net

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