Libra’s mission is to enable a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people.
This document outlines our plans for a new decentralized blockchain, a low-volatility cryptocurrency, and a smart contract platform that together aim to create a new opportunity for responsible financial services innovation.
Problem Statement
The advent of the internet and mobile broadband has empowered billions of people globally to have access to the world’s knowledge and information, high-fidelity communications, and a wide range of lower-cost, more convenient services. These services are now accessible using a $40 smartphone from almost anywhere in the world.1 This connectivity has driven economic empowerment by enabling more people to access the financial ecosystem. Working together, technology companies and financial institutions have also found solutions to help increase economic empowerment around the world. Despite this progress, large swaths of the world’s population are still left behind — 1.7 billion adults globally remain outside of the financial system with no access to a traditional bank, even though one billion have a mobile phone and nearly half a billion have internet access.2
For too many, parts of the financial system look like telecommunication networks pre-internet. Twenty years ago, the average price to send a text message in Europe was 16 cents per message.3 Now everyone with a smartphone can communicate across the world for free with a basic data plan. Back then, telecommunications prices were high but uniform; whereas today, access to financial services is limited or restricted for those who need it most — those impacted by cost, reliability, and the ability to seamlessly send money.
All over the world, people with less money pay more for financial services. Hard-earned income is eroded by fees, from remittances and wire costs to overdraft and ATM charges. Payday loans can charge annualized interest rates of 400 percent or more, and finance charges can be as high as $30 just to borrow $100.4 When people are asked why they remain on the fringe of the existing financial system, those who remain “unbanked” point to not having sufficient funds, high and unpredictable fees, banks being too far away, and lacking the necessary documentation.5
Blockchains and cryptocurrencies have a number of unique properties that can potentially address some of the problems of accessibility and trustworthiness. These include distributed governance, which ensures that no single entity controls the network; open access, which allows anybody with an internet connection to participate; and security through cryptography, which protects the integrity of funds.
But the existing blockchain systems have yet to reach mainstream adoption. Mass-market usage of existing blockchains and cryptocurrencies has been hindered by their volatility and lack of scalability, which have, so far, made them poor stores of value and mediums of exchange. Some projects have also aimed to disrupt the existing system and bypass regulation as opposed to innovating on compliance and regulatory fronts to improve the effectiveness of anti-money laundering. We believe that collaborating and innovating with the financial sector, including regulators and experts across a variety of industries, is the only way to ensure that a sustainable, secure and trusted framework underpins this new system. And this approach can deliver a giant leap forward toward a lower-cost, more accessible, more connected global financial system.
The Opportunity
As we embark on this journey together, we think it is important to share our beliefs to align the community and ecosystem we intend to spark around this initiative:
We believe that many more people should have access to financial services and to cheap capital.
We believe that people have an inherent right to control the fruit of their legal labor.
We believe that global, open, instant, and low-cost movement of money will create immense economic opportunity and more commerce across the world.
We believe that people will increasingly trust decentralized forms of governance.
We believe that a global currency and financial infrastructure should be designed and governed as a public good.
We believe that we all have a responsibility to help advance financial inclusion, support ethical actors, and continuously uphold the integrity of the ecosystem. Full Article
Cryptocurrencies are constantly becoming more mainstream.
With the changing landscape of work and workers, financial systems also need to evolve.
Cryptocrrencies have a lot to offer workers in this new age, but they still have some hurdles to face before they become the norm.Since 2018, cryptocurrencies are no longer operating just on the fringes of the financial system.Digital currencies have made significant inroads at traditional financial institutions so much that many banks already offer Bitcoin investment options. Several prominent retailers, including Starbucks, Whole Foods, and Nordstrom, are already accepting Bitcoin at checkout. More importantly for the future of the currency, global regulatory oversight has matured since Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies burst on the scene a few years ago.
With cryptocurrencies becoming more mainstream all the time, it only makes sense for them to be affecting other elements of the financial system, which is exactly what we are starting to see in the significant sector of employee wages.
While it’s true that right now those receiving their salaries in crypto are an oddity, this won’t be so in the long run.
The way we view work is changing
There is a shift happening in the very way work and compensation are viewed in the world today. Rather than working traditional 9-5 jobs, many employees, particularly younger ones, are joining the gig economy, choosing to be their own bosses and work for short-term, temporary contracts for everything from freelance work to driving an Uber.
In the U.S. alone, 57 million people participate in the gig economy, where transfers and transaction costs are the norm. This is a landscape in need of secure, fast, and cheap solutions that will improve participants’ lives significantly.
Currently there are many pain points and regularly occurring annoyances in the market.
Editor: This is one viewpoint. Is Medicare for all the panacea for all our health care system ills? Do we know how much it will cost? Will it work? Will people who have employer sponsored insurance be ready to give it up and go on Medicare? Who will control fraud and abuse? Do you have another smart solution?
Article below submitted by Dr. Ehtisham Original author Beverly Gologorsky.
On this extremely hot summer day, the ear-splitting siren screaming through New York’s streets is coming from the ambulance I’m in — on a gurney on my way to the ER. That only makes the siren, loud as it is, all the more alarming.
I fell. The pain, its location and intensity, suggests I’ve probably broken my hip.
The kind face of the emergency medical technician hovering above me asks questions softly and I confess that I’m in terrible pain. Other gentle hands are busy taking blood pressure and doing oxygen counts. These EMT workers, employees of the Fire Department, are good at what they do.
At the ER entrance, the gurney’s lifted out of the vehicle, wheels are dropped, and it’s rolled inside. Under a ceiling of bright white lights, it passes — and so I pass — one cubicle after another. I catch bits of voices, speaking in several languages.
My friend, who’s come with me to the ER, roots around in my purse for my insurance and then heads for the admissions office. Alone, I close my eyes to shut out the glare of the ceiling lights. I want one thing: relief from the pain. Oblivion would even be more appreciated.
My friend returns to my cubicle and asks, “Is this the only insurance you have?” I panic. Will they not accept me? But they have to! It’s the ER! That’s the reassurance I offer myself and then I tell her, “Yes, it’s all I have.”
She looks doubtful.
“What?” I ask desperately. “What?”
“Don’t you have some kind of supplemental?” And she begins to try to explain, but I can’t deal with this right now. All I want is relief from the pain. Any other moment, I’d worry about the money, but not now. I can’t! Instead, simply to remain half-calm, I remind myself that I have insurance, that I have a Health Maintenance Organization, or HMO, a plan that offers a wide range of healthcare services through a network of providers who agree to work with members.
After vital signs are taken, I’m moved to a hospital room and given pain meds that don’t offer oblivion, but do help. There, I learn what the X-rays show: a hip fracture. Surgery necessary. Operating rooms all taken. It may be two days before they can operate, the orthopedic surgeon tells me. My friend whispers that every extra day in the hospital will cost a mint. She then appeals to the staff to expedite the surgery. They can’t.
At that moment, I don’t care if the hospital costs a million dollars a day, I just want to get better. However, I, too, want the surgery to happen, within the hour if possible, since my leg is now frozen in a distinctly awkward position, thanks to the way I fell, and I realize that it won’t be straight until the operation’s over.
Two days later, after successful surgery, I develop an infection, pneumonia, and the days in the hospital begin multiplying into weeks. My doctors are so busy they can only visit once a day, if that, but the nurses, well… they’re the healers, the angels, though they themselves are desperately overworked.
Everyone’s so busy here. Hospitals have grown larger than ever in recent years as they’ve swallowed smaller hospitals and medical treatment centers. Given the overworked nature of the staff, I hire a healthcare aide to be with me several hours a day. My friend tells me that insurance won’t pick up this expense either, but I can’t worry about that now. I simply need to heal.
Finally, I’m discharged to months of physical therapy, three times a week. Fortunately, the therapy practice takes my insurance (not always a given). But on that first visit (as on every visit thereafter), they run my Visa card through their machine and I get charged a $40 co-pay. There’s nothing I can do about it. After all, my goal is to get back on my feet, literally as well as metaphorically. Still, that’s $120 a week for 16 weeks and so my out-of-pocket patient expenses begin to add up.
Back at home to recuperate, I find a stack of unopened mail, including notices from my insurance company alerting me to the bills that are to follow. Soon enough, they begin to arrive. They include out-of-pocket patient costs for the ambulance, the hospital, doctors, tests of all sorts, drugs of all sorts, and sundry other services. Those bills list both what insurance has paid for each service and the amount of money that I still owe.
And here I experience what must be common to so many Americans. I’m surprised and distressed to learn how much of the cost my insurance doesn’t pick up. The surgery, for instance, was $72,000, but my insurance only covers $67,000 of it. The other $5,000 is my co-pay. Add in the co-pays for everything from that ambulance to other medical services and my costs come to almost $13,000.
An Insurance System of Out-of-Pocket Disasters
I’m sharing my recent journey as a cautionary tale. And, yet, what am I warning against? That we are all somewhat powerless when sickness strikes, but that those of us who aren’t wealthy suffer so much more. The thought of being without insurance is frightening indeed, yet in our present system we pay in so many ways for the existence of those insurance companies. We pay in co-pay; we pay in not getting treatment we need if insurance deems it unnecessary (no matter what your doctor says); we pay yearly out-of-pocket fees whether we’re 20 or 80 years old. (For Medicare patients, a monthly payment comes out of Social Security.) For most American families with insurance, whether workplace-based or individually purchased, premiums go up regularly, if not annually. At present, we have no alternative to the existing health insurance system, yet it is actually failing us all in so many ways.
What do you do when sickness occurs, if you aren’t rich? Suffer the illness, for sure, and then suffer the out-of-pocket costs afterward. And keep in mind that tens of millions of Americans under age 65 don’t have any health insurance at all. (In the age of Trump, in fact, those numbers are on the rise.) Moreover, the persistent growth of income inequality to Gilded Age levels has had a decided effect on the health of many Americans. For low-paid wageworkers, the unemployed, and/or undocumented immigrants, getting sick or having any kind of medical mishap is a disaster of the first order. For them, paying out-of-pocket costs of any sort may simply be impossible, which means that they will often do without medical treatment or even medicine. To put this in perspective, 40% of Americans can’t afford an extra $400 even in a medical emergency. Imagine what $5,000 or $10,000 in expenses means!
After an illness, accident, or chronic disease hits, a startling number of those of us with health insurance find that we have to choose between paying for daily needs and paying our medical bills. Such expenses leave people even more impoverished and often in debt, which is tantamount to remaining unhealthy.
For the poor, Medicaid, the government program that helps those with limited or no incomes, can make a major difference, but many people don’t have Medicaid because their states don’t readily offer it. Even where it’s more easily available, many with incomes not much above the poverty line don’t qualify for it. And as Elizabeth Yuko pointed out in the New York Times recently, “Even if you are fortunate enough to have health insurance, that doesn’t mean that all of the members of your medical team — which may include out-of-network specialists — are covered by your plan.”
As I learned with my fractured hip, someone who is in great pain or out of it for any number of physical reasons can’t be expected to focus on that future bill. And even if you could, who would want to cancel any of the services needed to heal?
Though Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, helped significantly, there are still far too many people who will have to agonize over how to manage both an illness and the co-pays that go with it. Meanwhile, of course, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are working overtime to undermine Obamacare and deprive ever more Americans of any sense of a medical safety net.
What Medicare for All Would Mean
All the talk about making insurance affordable, under the present medical circumstances in this country, adds up to just so many wasted words. Unless something changes big time, insurance companies will continue to sell us their services at ever-higher prices because we can’t do without them. Since we lack alternatives, they remain indispensable. The result: out-of-pocket costs will continue to rise, no matter what any politician promises. And if the Republicans in Congress were ever to succeed in doing away even with Obamacare, the services that insurance companies now provide would no longer be guaranteed. What then?
With a single payer system, whether called Medicare for All or universal health care, everyone would be able to access health care; health would, that is, become a right. Most likely, such programs would be covered by a tax increase, yet they would cost each person so much less than what is now being paid out to insurance companies. With single payer or Medicare for All, there would be no more co-pays, no more premiums, no more refusals of non-doctors to pay for services recommended by medical specialists, no more bills arriving at a patient’s house.
Understandably, some might be reluctant to part with a familiar healthcare system, however flawed, in exchange for a new but untested universal program. Yet once implemented, any version of Medicare for All would be likely to cost less, be so much simpler to access, and ultimately save lives.
The present Medicare system is a good indicator of not only what’s possible, but of the ways in which health care can serve people’s needs. However, Medicare is offered only to those who are over 65. Nevertheless, Medicare and Medicaid prove the positive. Those programs work well for the elderly and the poor. Even with Medicare, however, insurance companies continue to handle many aspects of your services, should you opt for a Medicare Advantage plan (an all-in-one alternative to original Medicare), in which co-pays and other costs are still the patient’s responsibility.
According to Open Secrets, insurance companies, Big Pharma, and hospitals spent a staggering $143 million in 2018 alone in their lobbying efforts against any future Medicare for All plan. Nonetheless, as the National Nurses United Association has pointed out: “There has never been this much public support and momentum for Medicare for All. Eighty-five percent of democratic voters and 70% of all voters support it.” With significant administrative setups already in place, thanks to Medicare and Medicaid, the expansion of those health systems to include everyone seems doable; nor is it hard to imagine that many of the workers now employed by insurance companies would be able to shift to working for an expanding single-payer or Medicare for All program.
Truly decent health care is a necessity for a society in which people do more than just survive. Health is not a negotiable matter. You can decide not to buy a new coat and so shiver through another winter, but you really can’t decide to ignore sickness, disease, broken bones, or chronic illness, all of which can put lives on the line. How can any society function properly without health care available to all? How can any society survive in a reasonably decent way when so many millions of people are left with the choice of either being impoverished by illness or living with an otherwise treatable one?
Health care should be as much of a right as public education — the right to educate all children, that is — which was only won after its own set of lengthy struggles. After all, who can now imagine making all Americans pay for the first 12 years of schooling? Yes, we know that there are people wealthy enough to pay for whatever kind of education and health care they want, but they are hardly the majority of Americans.
Good health care must not only be affordable, but also provide easy access to medical services — to better nutrition, a healthier environment, and greater longevity. In this context, Medicare For All would be a literal lifesaver.
Finally, good health care is peace of mind, which, at present, our system does not deliver. In my case, the cost of recovery was far too high.
There’s a general rhetoric that, one, Pakistan is soon going to run out of water; and, two, building more dams is the ‘only solution’ to the crisis. Is this really the case?
Nature’s mechanism that brings water to Pakistan has three major components: the Indian Ocean in the south, the sun in the sky, and the high mountains—Himalayas, Karakorum and Hindukush (HKH)—in the north. When the sun shines on the ocean, it creates moist air (aka clouds) that moves north towards the land. When it strikes the mountains, it cools down and releases the moisture as rain or snow—creating glaciers, rivers and streams flowing into our landscape all the way to the Arabian Sea. This system is in place for millions of years and is not going away any time soon. For Pakistan to really run out of water, therefore, either the Indian Ocean should be dried up, the sun switched off, or the mountains flattened. As long as the sun, the ocean, and the mountains are there, Pakistan is not running out of water.
And global warming can only increase rainfall because it will provide more heat to the ocean which will result in bigger clouds – and more rains. This is evident from the data of Rawalpindi/Islamabad rainfall which has slightly increased in the past 115 years as shown in Figure 1. Global warming is not going to reduce the amount of water in our country.
Figure 1
Now let’s see how much water we need and how much nature brings for us.
After Pakistan permitted India to divert three eastern rivers of Indus Basin away from the country, we now get an average of 145 million acre-feet (MAF) of water in our rivers each year with which we have to manage all our needs. The primary needs are food production, drinking, hygiene, sanitation, municipal, and industry.
Pakistan is now a food-surplus country and we consume 104 MAF of water annually to grow our food. However, Pakistan’s current irrigation system is one of the most wasteful systems in the world. Compared to us, Israel produces 70 per cent more, California 50 per cent more, and even Indian Punjab 30 per cent more with the same quantity of water.
If we upgrade our outdated irrigation system, we can produce surplus food with less than 50 MAF of water.
According to international standards, a community needs 35 gallons per capita per day to meet drinking, cooking, health, hygiene and municipal needs. If we want to supply this amount of water to every community in the country, all we need is 12 MAF. Catering for growing requirements of 207 million individuals, our domestic requirements can be managed well within 17 MAF.
Finally, our industrial requirements at the moment are around eight MAF. With a combination of industrial growth and efficient use of water, our future industrial requirements can be met with 10 MAF or so.
Water availability in the country versus the demand is summarised in Figure 2. This shows that we have almost twice as much water as we need.
Figure 2
Then, why the crisis?
In the irrigation sector, which is the biggest consumer of available water, the wastage is too high both in state-managed distribution system of canals as well as on-farm practices by the farmers. The wasteful consumption has raised the demand in irrigation sector at least twice more than the need. But wastage of water aside, this is the prime reason that from neighbouring provinces to neighbouring farmers, every water user is fighting with the other over, so called, water rights and allocations. This has, therefore, compromised on the peace in the country, and thus has created a dangerous dividing line within the communities and the provinces.
The next major problem is pollution of water resources. Despite having enough water, our cities, industries and agriculture sectors, all have become engines of pollution for the natural water repositories. There is indiscriminate pollution of both the rivers and underground aquifers – leaving their waters unfit for use.
The third major problem is mismanagement and corruption within the water sector, both in the rural and urban settings. The rural sector suffers from head and tail disparities along irrigation canals where theft and manipulation of water by the powerful is common. In the urban sector, selling of public water supply through tankers is an everyday routine. Poor planning, leakage, theft, and pitiable maintenance of water supply systems in the cities deprive the citizens from getting water even when it is available.
And finally, our water managers are always lamenting that though there is enough water in the natural system, most of it is only available during the monsoons.
So, what is the way to go around these problems?
Dams don’t help
Let’s first consider dams in relation to the problems identified. Would dams fix wasteful irrigation practices? Would they control pollution? Would they help curb corrupt practices? Would they help manage excessive water supply of monsoon?
Except for the last issue, dams don’t seem to help at all. And even if the last issue is fully resolved through the construction of a large dam, the first three issues would continue to loom and our water problems would hardly improve. Moreover, dams have many downsides. Besides being exuberantly expensive, environmentally destructive and taking decades to build, they have a limited useful life before they silt up. But worst, they can act like a hammer on the dividing line between provinces on water issues and dangerously compromise peace within the country. In other words, dams do not provide a holistic solution to our major problems.
If dams cannot address wastage, pollution, mismanagement, and corruption issues, nor does their storage last long, do we have any alternatives?
The good news is, yes. Because we can think of Dam-Equivalents or DEs.
A DE comprises suites of contemporary technological, structural, and institutional interventions within a hydrologic regime, which mimic the purposes for which large dams are built, but avoid replicating their downsides.
Today’s knowledge, tools and technologies, together with a naturally-gifted hydrological regime of Pakistan, present us a grand opportunity to develop DEs in Pakistan and become the world leaders of contemporary water management.
DEs can help transform our outdated canal irrigation practices—which account for 95 per cent of all water consumption in the country—into modern systems, not only rivaling that of California’s in terms of smartness and productivity, but also raising the bar for the rest of the world in terms of sustainability, eco-friendliness, and low-carbon green-growth standards.
DEs can help us exploit the potential of Pakistan’s 3,500 kilometers of natural river network to be used as inland navigation waterways, connecting Lahore and Peshawar—and possibly Afghanistan—to the Arabian Sea, providing warm water access to the land-locked Central Asian States, thus adding billions of dollars in our economy through trades and tariffs.
DEs can help build urban water security in a way that not only every urban dweller, industry, and public utility gets enough clean water for drinking, health, hygiene, and other uses, but also provide sufficient water for horticulture that may be required for the greening and landscaping of public and private areas throughout the cityscapes.
To top it all, DEs in most cases are cheaper and faster to build as compared to building large dams, yet their functionality is way more sustainable and robust, compared to large dams – with much higher economic dividends.
Fortunately, the much-publicised water crisis in the country has nothing to do with the shortage of water. The real problem lies in obsolete infrastructure and outmoded management practices, resulting in the over-use, misuse, and pollution of our water resources.
Here’s how a DE could help
Take the example of the proposed Kalabagh Dam on the Indus River. According to Engineer Barkat Ali, a former consultant of The World Bank, the dam – at an estimated cost of $6,000 million – would provide water storage volume of 6.1 MAF (million acre-feet), bring 0.85 million acres of additional land under irrigation, and install a power generation capacity of 3,500 MW (megawatt). Annual revenue from the dam is expected to be $1,400 million from the irrigation sector and $1,500 million from power generation. However, the recent boondoggle of the Neelum-Jhelum hydropower project has cost us $5,150 million just to install 969 MW, without any storage capacity. Extrapolating from the recent facts, a project the size of Kalabagh Dam would safely be in the range of $15,000 million to $20,000 million today.
Leaving aside the politics and controversies surrounding large dam projects, let’s first consider a DE on the Indus River which may mimic the purposes of a large dam, albeit maintaining socio-economic and environmental sustainability and improved peace dividends in the region.
An opportunity for DE lies in Rohri Canal, which withdraws 8.5 MAF from Indus to irrigate 2.6 million acres. However, according to a study by the International Water Management Institute, the farmers of Rohri Canal area can only irrigate an average of 1.1 million acres in any given season (Kharif or Rabi) due to the insufficient supply of water to match the guzzling demands of the flood-irrigation methods given to the farmers.
For the suggested DE in Rohri Canal area, three interventions are proposed as illustrated in Figure 3. First, if farmers are provided with modern irrigation methods, wastage will be curtailed and water will be spared. Second, some of this spared water can be diverted to meet the chronic water supply problems of Karachi. Third, a navigation channel could be created between Kotri and the open sea, invoking the economic engine of inland navigation in the region.
Figure 3
Let’s elaborate on these interventions one by one.
A modern irrigation system for Rohri Canal command area would require the development of riverine well-fields, piped water supply systems, and all the doohickeys of modern farms like those of the Hunter Valley in Australia. The estimated cost for modernizing 2.6 million acres could range from eight to 10 billion dollars. Not only would this intervention enable farmers to cultivate the full area with just three MAF—saving 5.5 MAF—it would also increase per acre yields by at least 25 per cent, enabling farmers to earn an excess of Rs300,000 per acre annually. The overall agriculture economy of the canal command could thus reach $6,000 million a year.
This intervention alone addresses the storage and irrigation purposes of Kalabagh Dam – for the dam’s 0.85 million acres of irrigated area, the intervention brings in 1.50 million acres; and, for 6.1 MAF of storage, it provides 5.5 MAF. Interestingly though, the storage in DE is not achieved by blocking the water from reaching the downstream communities, but by releasing additional water downstream. So, while the dam would have deprived the downstream communities of water, causing conflict and discord, the DE intervention adds to peace dividends with the release of additional water for downstream users.
What about Karachi?
The second intervention suggests diverting water from the Indus River to meet the needs of Karachi – a population of 16 million or so. If we plan to supply 35 gallons per person per day of fresh water (an international standard), all we need is 1.7 MAF per year. However, to cater for storage and future needs, we can plan to divert 2.5 MAF.
Before discussing the details of transferring additional water to Karachi, a short stroll along San Antonio River in Texas could be a learning experience. San Antonio River runs through the city for 15 miles (24 Km) along which the ‘San Antonio River Walk’ has been created. Fresh flowing waters have always had an appeal for the humans. Taking advantage of the intrinsic value of its clean flowing waters, the city generates around $3,500 million worth of businesses along the River Walk. The river, however, is an illusion – a ‘tourist mirage’ as put by Robert Glennon in his account on America’s groundwater resources. It is an artificial river which receives its waters by pumping 10 million gallons per day from Edwards Aquifer to the northwest of the city.
The San Antonio River Walk model can be replicated in Karachi. As we divert 2.5 MAF to Karachi, it can be made to run through the cityscape as a carefully crafted ‘artificial river’. The river’s route could take the form of an interconnected course of lakes, streams, and ponds etc., surrounded by beautifully landscaped businesses and recreation areas. On the surface, this ‘river’ will be providing space for multi-billion dollar businesses in a beautified cityscape, but beneath its surface, this river will continuously recharge the aquifer with freshwater. Once the system is in place, it will take between two to three years to enable the city to draw water from the aquifer for day to day usage. The aquifer storage will ultimately reach its full capacity at 20 MAF or so, a staggering 10-year reserve for the city! This system will ultimately provide reliable access to clean and affordable water to every citizen of Karachi and make the city virtually drought-proof. Its cost will be more than offset by the development of water-front real estates and businesses. San Antonio River Walk earns $145 million per kilometre. If Karachi earns even half of it, the annual revenue from the intrinsic value of the ‘river’ would be around $20,000 million. Besides generating businesses and securing water for the city, the system will help turn Karachi into a clean and green city, offsetting heat waves and accruing many socio-environmental benefits. Of course, such a plan has to be implemented with carefully integrated considerations of sewerage and solid waste disposal systems under a unified authority for the entire city. The estimated cost of this intervention is in the tune of $5,000 million.
After diverting 2.5 MAF for securing Karachi’s water supply needs, we still have three MAF of water left that was saved from Rohri Canal. We can let this water flow all the way to the sea through the Indus River, but not without invoking another economic engine that runs with the flowing waters. Here we can go for the third intervention by turning the flowing river into an ‘Inland Navigation Channel’ – connecting the Arabian Sea to an ‘Inland River Port’ established at Kotri. A carefully designed and administered inland navigation system between the open sea and Kotri will help bring cargo worth millions of dollars each day at the inland port. This will not only relieve huge stress from the overcrowded port of Karachi but also free up the congested highway spaces within the city. The port will serve the industry and business within Karachi more effectively, while the cargo destined for areas north of Karachi will be more effectively handled at Kotri’s inland port. Of course, this intervention has to be preceded by meticulous design and development of state-of-the-art inland navigation and port facilities, as well as rules, regulations and by-laws of river navigation. The estimated cost of this intervention is about $4,000 million, while its per annum revenues are expected to exceed $10,000 million within the first five years of its operation.
(Figure 4 illustrates how the proposed DE interventions can create engines of water economy. The economic values assigned to these engines are conservative ballpark figures, used here only to expound upon the concept. These ballpark figures have been compared with similar figures for a large dam in Table 1. This form of comparison can guide us in future decision making for investment priorities in developing dam equivalents for the future.)
Figure 4
Table 1
* Non-consumptive use; projects can be built simultaneously
One of the biggest advantages of DEs is the ease of financing the interventions. Unlike large dams, which are unable to deliver any benefit until the whole project is complete from start to finish, any component of a DE intervention, as soon as it is complete, can start paying off its economic dividends. A DE, therefore, can start with a small seed funding and, with careful financial planning, its dividends can become the source-funds for the subsequent development phases.
We don’t need another mega project to solve our problems. What we need is a mega-vision to guide and coordinate smaller scale interventions into a grand vision—a “think global act local” approach.
Finally, it is worth noting that this DE illustration is applied to just one of the 42 canal commands in Pakistan, while the dividends already exceed 10 times the benefits compared to a large dam. We have at least another 41 similar opportunities to solve our own problems, and in Jinnah’s words, “let it not be said that we did not prove equal to the task”.
posted by f. sheikh
Abbas is an expert in hydrology and water resources.
