Can Pakistan be saved?

Oxfam New Zealand was quick to respond to my suggestion that the world’s aid organisations had been slow off the mark in the Pakistan flooding disaster.

I described Pakistan as a pariah state and inferred it would be difficult for non-government aid agencies to raise money for a country that is rife with Islamic extremism, terrorism and corruption.

Since then the disaster has risen to unbelievable proportions with 18 million people affected, two million homeless and 1600 deaths (figures from the Council for International Development). The UN has desperately tried to raise money – but it has been as slow as the Pakistani government’s own efforts.

The president, Asif Zardari, famously left for Europe as the disaster unfolded, and was seen taking a helicopter to his 16th century French chateau while criticising British Prime Minister David Cameron for describing Pakistan as an exporter of terrorism.

Apart from the horrendous figures, the media story has largely become the world’s lack of sympathy for the Pakistanis. The reasons are not hard to find: from the recent Wiki leaks on Afghanistan through to its aggression against India, Pakistan conjures up the definition a failed state.

‘Image deficit’

Indeed, this was confirmed by a spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

"We note often an image deficit with regards to Pakistan among Western public opinion. As a result, Pakistan is among countries that are poorly financed, like Yemen."

She is quoted in this report by Canada’s CBC, which notes that Canadians had raised $3.5 million from the public for the Haiti earthquake in a week but only $200,000 for Pakistan.

In scale, the Pakistan flooding is possibly the world’s largest ever disaster – bigger, according to some reports, than the 2004 Asian tsunami, 2005 Pakistan earthquake and 2010 Haitian and Chilean earthquakes combined, according to this detailed round up by Devex, an agency that supports the global development community.

Just where Pakistan goes from here is a question without an answer. As the flooding worsened, a suicide bomber killed a senior police commander in Peshawar and a leading politician was shot dead in Karachi, triggering a massacre that left 70 dead.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports the World Bank has eased Pakistan’s plight with a $US900 million loan. It adds:

Pakistan's High Commissioner to Britain Wajid Shamsul Hasan told the AFP news agency that 2000 people had now been killed by the floods - previous estimates have put the number of dead at around 1500. He said it would take at least five years for the country to recover, and put the reconstruction bill at "more than $US10-15 billion."

Clearly, Pakistan will have to start mending its ways soon if it is to have any pretence of being a state that has any credibility.

It lies in the soil

Fertiliser, which is critical to the New Zealand economy, has become the new gold rush.

It has taken Australia’s largest company, BHP Billiton, to remind us that enriching the soil for agriculture can be just as profitable as digging it up for coal, iron and precious metals.

BHP has launched a hostile takeover bid for PotashCorp (formerly Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan), an otherwise stolid Canadian company that has attracted little attention in the past.

BHP, which already owns a potash company in Canada, has seen the opportunity of low share prices and a load of cash from its exports to China, to launch a huge $US38.6 billion takeover. The Economist reports:

World demand for potash has been growing steadily if not spectacularly for some years as a growing world population has made ever greater demands on the productivity of arable land. This growth is forecast to continue at some 5.5% a year…

China and India, both booming economies, are big importers of fertiliser, and arable land in China in particular is of poor quality. As both countries get richer a greater appetite for meat could boost fertiliser demand considerably.

In New Zealand, fertiliser is a billion-dollar business but one that passes largely under the radar. It has just stepped up its research activity with a $10 million, three-year programme to reduce nitrate leaching while boosting pasture growth.

The programme involves all the main players – MAF, Fonterra, DairyNZ, Ballance Agri-Nutrients, Ravensdown Fertiliser Cooperative, New Zealand Fertiliser Manufacturers’ Research Association and the Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium.

Followers of fashion

Both sides of the intellectual property debate are compelling to those who have no direct stake.

Last year I wrote about a talk by Professor Jane Ginsburg, a professor of literary and artistic property law at Columbia Law School in New York.

Her message was that the origins of copyright law went back to the 18th century and it was intended to protect authors who “produced good books.” But since then creators had lost out to powerful publishers and broadcasters, who have imposed some silly restrictions to pursue their IP, such as Disney cartoon characters painted on toilets.

The issue has now broken out in New York’s fashion world, where a senator, Charles Schumer, is promoting a law that would prevent protect clothing designs.

In the US, such designs are not covered by law and many would say this is why the industry is vibrant and exciting – reworking designs and jumping on board trends is the key driver.

Opponents, such as these professors of law, say if designs cannot be imitated or copied, the industry could grind to a halt.

A backup to this argument has come from Germany, where historian Eckhard Höffner, argues that the lack of copyright laws in the 19th century led to that country overtaking Britain as an industrial power.

Höffner’s work, reported in Spiegel Online, says the lack of copyright led to a flourishing book publishing industry, compared with Britain’s, where the industry was tightly controlled.

Practical instruction manuals of the type being mass-produced in Germany, on topics from constructing dikes to planting grain, were for the most part lacking in England. "In Great Britain, people were dependent on the medieval method of hearsay for the dissemination of this useful, modern knowledge," Höffner explains.

Eventually, the copyright laws took root in Germany, cranking up prices and doing away with the low-price market. It’s a debate that will no doubt continue for years to come.