Date: 19/01/2023

Relevance: GS-2: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests; effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests, Indian diaspora.

Key Phrases: Airshed Approach, Global south, Global Geopolitical Developments, Russia-Ukraine crisis, Multilateralism, ASEAN, Regional Defence Strategy, South Asian regional Integration, Regional Forums.

Why in News?

• As per a recent World Bank study on air pollution, about two million people die prematurely in South Asia each year as particulate measure concentrations put nine South Asian cities among the world’s top 10 worst affected by air pollution.
• The ill effects of this pollution, regardless of where it originates from, are clouding even the region’s once-pristine tourist destinations.
• However, the climate crisis is only one of the immediate challenges of the times where South Asia has failed to build a platform for regional cooperation.

Key Highlights:

• As per a study in Bhutan, the average PM 2.5 concentration from 2018-2020 was three times World Health Organization-prescribed limits.
• The Maldives Meteorological Service has already warned that visibility had been reduced by 60% due to smog for which it has blamed “winds from the Himalayan foothills”.

Solution Suggested by the report:

• Whole of region approach: It is clear from success stories in other parts of the world, including countries of the ASEAN, European alpine nations, and China, that the solution to the problems of air pollution lies in a “whole of region” approach, and is not one that any one country in the “air sheds” can resolve on its own.
• Joint Collaboration of South Asian region: The report asked India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and all other South Asian countries to begin talks between scientists, officials, and eventually ministers and leaders to create a mechanism for the cooperative management of the six air sheds the region is made up of.

Illogical Rejection of the Idea Of South Asia:

• The rejection of the idea of South Asia as one geographical unit is clear from the fact that such a conversation does not exist or is not even being contemplated.
• This is particularly illogical when all SAARC nations which are members of the Group of 77 Developing countries negotiated a breakthrough at the COP27 Climate Change summit at Sharm el-Sheikh under the chairpersonship of Pakistan last year but were unable to convene a climate change conference for themselves.
• Phrases such as “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” and “diplomacy and dialogue” as the only ways to resolve the conflict sound hollow when compared to India and Pakistan’s act of holding up the SAARC Summit from meeting for nearly a decade.

Why India And Pakistan Need To Work More Closely Together:

• While India and Pakistan, the chief opponents of an integrated South Asia, continue to point to past disputes as the reason to hold up South Asian summits such as SAARC, block trade, connectivity and other avenues for cooperation.
• Pakistan has refused talks with India to its detriment, and now stands to miss out on being part of the South Asia energy grid that is already powering dreams of regional connectivity between Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal (BBIN grouping), and possibly Sri Lanka.
• The undeniable truth is that every immediate geopolitical challenge is pushing the region to work more closely together:
  • The climate change crisis that saw Pakistan being engulfed in floods
  • The Ukraine war that sent costs of procuring energy, grain, fertilizers all soaring,
  • Persistent global economic recession
  • More variants of the COVID-19 virus
  • Terrorism, especially arising from the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan

Need of Regional Defence Strategy Against Plethora Of External Shocks:

• The failure to build a regional defence to the issues arising from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and from North Atlantic Treaty Organization sanctions, trade ban and weapons stockpiling, means that South Asia has missed the chance to position itself as an energy “cartel” commanding a better price for the region.
• Apart from crude dependencies, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India buy more than 50% of their liquefied natural gas through the spot market — an indicator of how vulnerable they are to global energy trends.
• If India can virtually hold a special meeting for the “Global South”, with the impact of the Ukraine war on the agenda, there is no reason why it cannot convene or participate in a regional dialogue to discuss the issue, or even to include the regional agenda in its G-20 narrative.

Need For South Asian Regional Integration:

• Health security cooperation:
  • Opportunities for regional cooperation in health security are being missed, although India has worked bilaterally with most of its neighbours to provide vaccines and COVID-19 medicines.
• Countering threats of terrorism:
• India and Pakistan talk about terrorism at the United Nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), but do not discuss the issue bilaterally or within South Asia.
• India does not hold talks with Pakistan due to its support for terrorists, but now has a dialogue open with UN designated terrorists themselves — Taliban leaders.

Regional Forums Replacing Globalisation Across The World:

• Given the deepening polarisation in the world, climate chaos, and the growing scarcity of resources, it is clear that the underpinnings of globalisation over the past century are about to be overturned by regionalisation and forums closer home.
• Regional trade now makes up for more than half of global trading, and regional agreements are further boosting this trend such as:
  • United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)
  • the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR for its Spanish initials)
  • the European Union
  • Eurasian Economic Union
  • Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf
  • African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)
  • Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
• However, South Asia, defined by the Himalayas and HinduKush to the north, and the Indian Ocean to the south (an area distinctly different from West Asia and South East Asia on either side), is the exception, the outlier to this most logical principle.

Conclusion:

• In the absence of logical behaviour, any chance of coordinating or cooperating against the developing chaos in Afghanistan, and countering extra-regional terror threats are also lost for South Asia, the one region affected the most.
• In any case, it is necessary for the future to delink South Asian cooperation from the summit itself, and allow other parts of the agenda ( health, energy, women’s rights, security and terrorism) to be held even if a leadership event is not.
• To reject this idea would mean a missed opportunity, with repercussions more dire than those that come from the poisoned air the region breathes today.

Source: The Hindu

Mains Question:

Q. Regional trade now makes up for more than half of global trading, and regional agreements are further boosting this trend. However, South Asia, is the exception, the outlier to this most logical principle. Discuss. (250 words).