 Hello and welcome to the South Asian Regional Committee's Climate Change Conference. Before I introduce the topics of discussion for today's event, a little about our organization. The Tough South Asian Regional Committee, or SOC, is a student-run academic discourse and research group striving to promote student engagement with social, political, and historical affairs at the South Asian subcontinent. SOC hopes to create a space for students of all backgrounds, ideologies, and identities to foster informed engagement with and nuanced awareness of South Asia. If you are interested to be notified about future events, please fill in the form in the chat box. You don't need to be a tough student to be on our email list. So a little bit about our panel. South Asia is one of the largest geographic regions in the world, and its nations primarily rely on three river basins as irrigation, hazard power sources, and economic resources. Due to geopolitical conditions in South Asia, including the ongoing hostilities between India, Pakistan, and China, as well as the imminent threat of climate change and water scarcity, water diplomacy and water policy are some of the most pressing issues facing the region today. In this panel, we welcome Dr. Shafiq al-Islam, a professor in the Department of Civil Environmental Engineering and a professor of water diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Dr. Islam is the director of the Water Diplomacy Program at Fletcher and specializes in the availability, access, and allocation of water within the context of climate challenges, health, and diplomacy. We also welcome Dr. Tadesh Mustafa, a professor of critical geography at King's College, London, who specializes in water resource geography, environmental hazards, development and critical geographies of violence in Qatar and with an emphasis on Pakistan. And now over to Uzair for the opening remarks and moderated section. Is it Uzair or is it me? Did you? Uzair, son. Okay. If you have your opening remarks ready, I think you're good to go. Me or Dr. Shafiq? I think we can start with you. Dr. Mustafa. Okay, that's fine, that's fine. Okay, so I guess the topic really is what are the sorts of, from what I understand, if I'm not right, please by all means correct me. And I'm sorry, I'm standing because it's very hard for me to sit when I'm talking, because I fidget a lot. This topic seems to be what are the implications of climate change for water security and water scarcity and water challenges within the interspaces, as I understand it. Is that a fair understanding, if you will? So within that climate change is definitely a signature challenge of our times. And my engagement with climate change started relatively early back in 1992. And yes, I'm that old and I don't need any caddy cons on that particular count. I was part of a team that did the first climate response strategy for Pakistan back in 1992 and 1993. And one of the things that I learned actually working on that particular project was that a lot of challenges that the climate was gonna throw up for countries like Pakistan were in fact very much there. They were already there. And what we had to do in order to confront those climate challenges were the sorts of things that we should have been doing all along anyway. I think the question then becomes, do we live in an ideal adapted present, which is threatened at the moment by a future biophysical change, i.e. climate change? Is all well today that presumably will not be well as a result of climate change? As my colleague Marcus Taylor at, I think he's in Canada, McMaster or something, McMaster University in Canada. He wrote a book about political ecology of climate change. And he said, a lot of the IPCC version of climate change, the IPCC conception of climate change is about an adapted future and adapted present. We have already adapted, we're all sorted. And into the future, climate change will throw a few biophysical uncertainties as a result of which we have to change to remain the same. Is today's normal acceptable? Well, if the answer is yes, then by all means let's try and adapt to future challenges. But if the today is unbearable, if today in the District Headquarter Hospital of Mithi in Tharparkar in Southern Pakistan, in the maternity ward, women have a... Maternity ward women have a hemoglobin level of four, whereas it really should be nine or 10 or 12. And if that present is acceptable, then let's get worried about climate change. And if that present is not acceptable, then we need to talk about the present. And I felt like I had gone completely bonkers or something and I was a climate denier or anything and I do not deny the science of climate change. I often ask people, how do you know about climate change? And you know, well, because these clever people and with these big computers, they go round and round and round and come up with results and they say, you're gonna be in serious trouble should there be climate change into the future? And you're asking us to believe that high science and I believe that high science. I do, I really do. But can you make a fisherman in Indus Delta believe that science? Do you expect them to believe that science? What is the cultural connection? What is the geographical connection? Why should they believe them? And then equally my mentor, Jim Westcote, who just recently retired from MIT, right in your neighborhood in Boston. And he wrote this article back in 1991, the first issue of global environmental change. And he said that four conceptual approaches. One is general circulation models. The other one is historical anecdotes. The third one is about critical water problems contemporaneously dealing with the present. And the last one he said was a foundational political cultural reconstruction or call it political cultural reconstruction. And I submit to you that the question of water by itself is not just about the materiality of water. The materiality of water is about, you got to drink water, you got to use it for irrigation, you got to use it for bathing, you got to use it for health and hygiene. But beyond the materiality of water is also the discursive framing of water. How do we produce ourselves through water? Do we produce ourselves to water? Stop by Las Vegas, if anyone of you have been to Las Vegas. And that, and you see a reflection of how a society produces itself through waters. White picket fences, green lawns, putting greens, urban horticulture, lush fields of wheat, rice, what have you. Those are the sorts of, those are not just material artifacts. They are also manifestations of our imaginary of what water is supposed to do and how do we produce ourselves through that particular imaginary, if you will. Question of scarcity in Pakistan. Everything that the climate is supposed to throw in our direction, in a future climate, in a climate change future, has already come to pass for about 90% of the people in Pakistan. I have seen young girls, deathly sick from renal failure, from impending renal failure, six years, eight years old in the same province of Pakistan, because they've been ingesting this saline water, they don't have access to sweet water. Make a case to that girl that climate change is a problem into the future. Climate change is a problem into the future. One of the things that scientists would tell you, we don't know if it's gonna get wetter, if we don't know if it's gonna get, if we don't know if it's gonna get drier. But what we can tell you is, whatever the averages were into the past, are not gonna hold into the future. But uncertainty is not something that the human beings have recently rediscovered. Uncertainty is part of the human condition, except that we live in a society where we try to model away uncertainty. We try to assume away uncertainty, where we try to impose our models of average, normal. What is an average? What is normal? It is a predictor model of the data this uncertain, this variable data, we impose a certain order to it to make it apprehendable to us. Most local farmers, most indigenous people do not think in terms of normal conditions. Most people tend to think, what is the worst that can happen and what is it that I have to be still alive? That's the planning paradigm, pre-modern paradigm, i.e. planning in from extremes. Contemporary planning paradigms are assuming a certain average, mean, modal, median conditions and planning outwards from those. We all long for normality so much, right? The normality that was there pre-COVID, right? And normality presumably that will be there post-COVID. Do you want to go back to that normality? Do you want to go back to that normality of millions of children dying from lack of access to water supply and sanitation? Do we want to go back to a reality which is the reality today in the Indus Basin that in a desert like Send, they're producing rice? Do you want to go back to a reality where Pakistan is the largest exporter or depleted groundwater in the world, ahead of United States, ahead of India, ahead of China? If you want to go back to that reality, then definitely we need to long for normality. The question is, what is the new normal? What is the, how do we negotiate? How do we internalize the uncertainty that is inherent in human environment relations? And in order for us to do that, we need to think of different planning paradigms. Today, Pakistan says it is water scarce. I just gave you one statistic, not statistic, one reality, one analytical insight. That water is, that Pakistan is the largest exporter depleted virtual water in the world. Most of its water gets 90, according to the Pakistan water policy, 97% of the water resources in Pakistan are devoted to the agricultural sector, which means 200 million plus people living in vast cities like Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Raul Pindi, Peshawar, Hyderabad, Faisalabad, they get only 3% of the water. 1% of it goes towards industrial, 2% of it goes towards domestic water supply and sanitation. So climate challenge of increasing uncertainty into the future is very much a reminder of how perverse and unjust are contemporary water distribution situations. We are talking about intersectora, interclass, in a city like Karachi, where 80% of the people do not have access to reliable drinking water, you have golf courses. A golf course takes up enough water to supply reliable water to 22,000 people, to 22,000 households or something like that. This is from the American Golf Association, by the way. Karachi is also a place where in the elite neighborhoods you have exotic plants everywhere. You have date palms everywhere. And did you know that in urban water, about 60 to 70% of the water is used outside for horticulture, only 40% is used for actual health, hygiene, drinking and everything else. So I think that the Pakistani water challenges are multifaceted. I am trying to capture too much of the diversity of challenges that are there in my opening comments, but let this be a provocation for us to rethink and reframe the conversation simplistically. Oh, there's not gonna be enough water. Oh, the glaciers are gonna melt out. Wait a minute, glaciers do not make water. Glaciers just store water. It's just a question of where, even if there's not a single glacier up there, the precipitation that's there is gonna be there. It's just the timing that's gonna change. How does a production system negotiate the uncertainty and the changes in timings that are gonna emerge out of climate change? And I think the answer to that question is very much embedded in our present planning paradigms, our present cultural interactions with water, our present distribution of water, and most importantly, the present power relations within societies, not just in Pakistan, but also in India. I mean, for heaven's sakes, you have all the Indian farmers camped outside of Delhi talking about rural livelihoods and how might those be sustained? And that's, I'll just leave it there and just take it onwards towards question and answer where I could answer any specific questions because when you start talking about an expansive topic like this, it's really hard to sort of, what shall we say? Be tidily coherent and focused. I think I've rapid fire, I've thrown out a lot of missiles out there or grenades thrown in there. Let's see which one of them so we can diffuse through the course of the conversation. Thank you. Thank you for those opening remarks, Dr. Mustal. We have a lot of food for thought, which we hope to get into in the moderated portion of the discussion and the audience Q&A. Dr. Islam, if you may, please begin your opening remarks and if possible, please try to limit them to five to seven minutes so that we have time for the discussion. Yes, so as Dr. Mustafa mentioned, so this is a large topic. So I'm not going to go really that far. So I want you to be really, since you're students, you want to make some changes, try to be focused because just to say that this is a multifaceted problem, there are too many things going on, true. This is probably the problem that we have in our academic setting in terms. So we have forgotten how to sharpen the question. So I'll pose you three questions and then maybe that can lead to some discussion. So does life cause death? Does oxygen cause fire? And does rain cause flood? So I want you to come back to this when we go into discussion. So just think about this question. Does life cause death? Does oxygen cause fire? Does rain cause flood? So why am I asking this question? The reason I'm asking this question, so we talked about this climate change. Is this really something real? Is it really something that we need to worry about when people are dying because of renal failure for saline water consumption? A very valid question. So then the problem is that really so, how do I reconcile these short-term problems with long-term consequences? Whether I like it or not, the climate change is happening. And I tell my basically students and also my daughter say, look, it will not probably matter to me. By the time it has impacts really on the global level, I'll most likely be not here. So I could be very selfish. I could essentially do whatever I want without worrying what will happen to my grandchildren. Because there is no consequence for me really. Nothing will happen really. See today really you see Texas is having lot of snow, it's very unusual. So now people may say, yeah, look, there's this climate cooling going on. I can see outside my house really this is snowing. So in February it should snow in Boston. So the challenge here is that really we have basically gotten so much hung up with the beauty of the problem that we have something called climate change is happening. So let me give you just one example really, this idea of water scarcity or water crisis. This is also something that we made up. Why do I say that? If you look at UNICEF, UNICEF tells you that if you have 20 liter per person per day amount of water, you have access to water. 20 liter per person per day. Now if you look at water scarcity that is 1000 meter cube per person per year. That translates to 2,740 liter per person per day. So 20 to 2,700, very large gap. So I claim, although at the cost of my own profession that there will never be a water war because for humans survival really, we don't need much water. So where is this 2,700 coming from? That 2,700 is coming from all kinds of things that most of us are telling that that is virtual water. There is water in irrigation, water in urban development. How much water do I need as an individual to survive? If you are in a developed country like the US is considered about 1000, 100 liters per person. If you're in Africa is 20 to 25. If you are in Bangladesh or Pakistan maybe 40. That's very small. And we have enough water really to give everyone. So to give an idea really, if I want to give access to water to everyone, 7 billion of us every day it will cost you about 120 billion dollars. Global GDP is about 84 trillion dollars. So it's less than 0.1%. So how come we're not doing it then? So it's not that we don't have resources. It's not that we don't know how to solve the problem. When I was a graduate student I heard that every eight second one child dies because of lack of water. Since then that number has not changed. Technology has changed. We have more resources now. How come still people are dying because of lack of clean water where I only need 0.1% of GDP, global GDP? So the question really is not that whether we have resources then where is the bottleneck? Because we are posing the problem at a level that cannot be solved. There is no climate change at a global level. It doesn't matter. When I'm sitting here at Tufts really I could care less really what is happening in Pakistan or in Bangladesh or in Ethiopia. Because it's not directly affect me. I just feel good talking about this. What I'm trying to challenge you really see stop feeling basically feeling good that I'm doing something about climate change through the South Asia forum. Try to find out something that you can do that will have a tangible impact on the society. Otherwise really we are just having some interesting intellectual conversation which is useful. I think for students I think is very useful to get those perspective. But since you are Tufts students and many of you are if not all I would challenge you to essentially go beyond that. So these I would call really to make it very maybe not very generous is this a performative action really so that we can feel good. That's not good enough. So try to do something that is actionable. So if I go into my water diplomacy framework I'm not interested really to learning the beauty of the problem. I want to see really what can I do so that there is a tangible impact that can be measured. So let's stop here and say I asked basically you to basically raise some questions. Thank you. Thank you for those comments, Dr. Islam. And you highlighted the technical aspect of water scarcity with the figures that you provided. Water experts in the UN have created a threshold of a thousand cubic meters per person per year as the threshold for scarcity. It's 500 cubic meters for absolute scarcity. But I sense that there is a non-technical more linguistic component to terms like water scarcity. By definition, if something is scarce there isn't enough of it. By further extension, if water is scarce there isn't enough water. By further extension, if South Asia as a region is water scarce and there isn't enough water in the region at least that's what the linguistic component of water scarcity informs me. And so my question to you is, as you've highlighted the actual technical definition of water scarcity does not translate into actual scarcity. If you are given 20, 40, 100 meters of water a day but do you believe that terms like water scarcity are helpful in making people understand the severity of the problem? And if not, how do you shift sort of the conversation to capture the true nature of the water crisis as you both see fit? And I'd appreciate if you could limit your responses to three to four minutes. So raise your hands if I'm going beyond three minutes or four minutes. So let me tell you one example. So I think you raised some very interesting question here. So today we just went into again basically Paris climate change protocol. So if you look at climate change document in basically that was signed by 194 countries is climate change protocol water has not appeared once. I checked it basically through my PDF, Google says water has not appeared once. So how come? It is a climate change document and we're talking about water and it's not there. So that means water is not a problem. But we keep telling that water is a problem. Why is it a problem? Then if it is so much of a problem how come it doesn't show up? So I'll tell you why it doesn't show up because water is everywhere. Water is virtual. The code that I'm wearing it needs water. The food that I eat that needs water. So water is everywhere. So we created this term called virtual water. So look at what is happening in Mina, Middle East and North Africa. This is probably one of the most water stress region in the world. It's not a problem. The reason it's not a problem. Well, there is a problem with water. I import food and I'm getting embedded water. Bangladesh did not have famine after 1975. That was the last famine. There are a lot of drought. How come it did not happen? The reason it did not happen because government is extremely clever. Whenever there is a food crisis because of water problem, they will import food. So as a result, there is no crisis. So we need to understand where is the bottleneck is? When water is embedded everywhere, what is nowhere? So what I keep telling my water professional friends that look, you can talk as much as you want about water. Water is not important. Not important in the sense of global politics or not in the sense of changing the politics of water around the decision-making process. Otherwise it will just end up getting into this type of academic conversation with no meaning. I give you an example. The climate change protocol does not have water even once mentioned. So how do you change the conversation? The way to change the conversation is to make it clear that it's not about virtual water really. Is water going to affect someone? And then you have to essentially reconcile future with the present. And that's not easy. So that can only happen. So basically the friends who are wiser in water commit, they'll say unless water becomes a high politics, you have no chance. Right now water is a low politics. So how do you make water high politics should be the challenge really that you can take on? Let's stop there. Yeah, Dr. Mosul, do you have anything to add? Yes, I do. I think that I guess your question was about water scarcity. I'm reminded of a book. I'd recommend that you take a look at by Jamie Linton at East Anglia. The title of the book is What is Water? On the one hand, it sounds like the stupidest question in the world to ask, right? What is water? Everybody, the idiot knows that it's H2O, right? That's what water is. But the reality is that H2O doesn't exist. H2O does not exist outside of the ratified confines of a laboratory. As soon as H2O leaves a laboratory, it bonds, the molecule bonds with other things, right? It becomes different water. It takes on a cultural meaning, it takes on different materiality. So when you're really talking about water, drinking water is not the same as irrigation water, right? Holy water, abezumzam is not the same as any ordinary water coming out of your tap, right? Rainwater is not the same as canal water, so on and so forth. There's all sorts of cultural and other sorts of valences that are put upon water. I agree with Dr. Islam that we perhaps need to differentiate in between different kinds of water. That said, why doesn't water appear in the big sorts of conversation? In the first instance, because water is typically talked about by men. And guys tend to think about water in terms of abstractions. For example, here, Uzair, I really like you. Tell you what? I'm gonna let you have three cubic meters of water. What does that mean to you? It's okay to say, I have no idea what that means. If you're gonna give me three cubic meters or four cubic meters or 80 cubic meters or 500,000 cubic meters, what does that freaking mean? Because at a human level, it's something that some people find very exciting and some people get really into huge fights about. But I have seen my own mother go crazy at times, worrying about where the water for this morning's breakfast is gonna come from. We used to live in a part of Raul Bindi where there wasn't enough water and our dug well sometimes won't have enough water and we wouldn't very seriously struggle. So it completely abstracts water. There's a certain technocratic construction of water, which is pretty good. And the holy grail and the holy metric of that abstraction is a cubic meter, right? What does a cubic meter mean to a human being who uses it, say, for ablutions, say, for pious certification, say, for entertainment, say, for aesthetic pleasure, you run it in Shalimar garden, and you run it in the Taj Mahal and whatever. Those are different kinds of waters, if you will. So that's the first thing I'd say. Second thing is that there's a scalar aspect to it. There's a certain way that important men, almost invariably men, with their numbers and statistics, talk at the international scale between waters. Oh, how dare you take water from the book and how dare you take water from the Jordan River? Oh my God, we need more water from the Indus. Oh my God, what's going on with the Brahmaputra water? Oh, what the heck's going on with Mekong River? Those are huge abstractions. But underneath those abstractions, are these lifestyles, livelihoods, histories, and cultures of people, say, the Fisher communities of the Indus? For example, shall we talk about that? No, let's not talk about, well, let's talk about virtual water. Let's talk about, so what I'm trying to say is that what to do about water is also very much embedded in the question, how do we talk about water and at what scale do we talk about water, you see? So the scarcity question, fair enough, does it work in terms of changing social practice? Does it work in terms of changing behavior? If it works, by all means use it. But again, the question becomes, if in the deserts of Sindh, you want to do camel herding, there is no scarcity of water. But if you want to grow bananas and pineapple, there's a huge scarcity of water. So it's all a relative to what the society expects to get out of that particular resource. And it is not just about the cubic meters, if you will, it's about making it real to the lives and livelihoods and spiritual world of the people who actually interact with them. And there, I'm sorry to say, at the moment, water is practically held hostage within a certain masculinist, technocratic frame of thinking about water. And I think we have to legitimize and bring up a more feminine and a more, I shouldn't say feminine necessarily, but certainly a more grounded experience and understanding of water. I think that was a very pertinent point, right? I sometimes think if the people that talk about water, as you mentioned, often men would have to walk three kilometers every day to fetch water and bring in fast food, right? I was in, I was in Tharpakar. Women on average were walking six to seven hours a day to fetch water. Tell them about cubic meters of water and see what happens. So let's be provocative. Siddhok, these type of statistics we've heard, this is not new. So if you really want to make a change, you need to find out what is the bottleneck is. Yeah, see, we know that basically women are walking seven miles, 10 miles, understood. But I gave you a very simple statistic, really. So it will cost you $120 billion as a global community. So how come we are not doing it? We also know, if you want to basically take that angle, really if you invest $1 in essentially water and sanitation, you return on investment would be anywhere between seven to $14 based on the assumption that you make. So this is not an economic argument. So what is the argument then? The argument that basically we are just trying to be polite or hypocrite, just to not to see the problem, just to glorify the problem so that we can have some intellectual conversation. I'm just trying to force you to think, look, forget about this intellectual conversation. Just telling me that basically, yeah, women have to walk seven miles. I'm not impressed. I've been hearing for the last 30 years. What did we do? If I cannot come up with an actionable plan, then let's think about that, really, rather than just trying to beautify the problem. We've heard about this problem for too long right now. So to tell that basically, there is a scarcity of water or not really, yes, understood. And I think what Dr. Muslova mentioned, I think is very critical here. This is an idea of scale. And that scale has all kinds of components. It could be space, it could be time. Take Bangladesh for an example. Bangladesh, it rains 100 days, 100 hours, 90% of the rain. 100 hours, nine months of the basically year, it is a drought place. But in a popular society, it is a flood prone country. Bangladesh has never seen flood except between July 15th and September 15th. So is this a water scarce region or is a water basically flooded region? So these questions are basically very simple, but never addressed. The question then becomes really, so what can we do? What I'm trying to essentially promote here is that look. Ultimately, science is good and we're trying to use science for the cycle impact, but science is also not relevant if it is not making relevant to the person I think that most of us fishermen could care less. Could care less really what your science tells. I have to have food. So that's a different scale of problem. But at the same time, that just because the farmer or the fisherman doesn't have access to water really, the climate is not real. So these are two different scale of problem. What we need to figure out really, how do we reconcile these two? How do I address my short term problems? And the same can be cognizant of the long term issue that we are facing as a planet. What we end up doing is we keep on mixing these things up because our mind is extremely clouded. So then we talk about things and we write in generality. We publish papers, we have PhD thesis, and then it just ends up in being in the larger. So what I'm encouraging you to do the look and forget about this, I mean from this lesson if you want to get anything out but think about really what can I do or what can I do as a group or as individuals or as a society that will have some tangible and measurable impact. I think Dr. Islam's challenge is absolutely right on. I think it is by definition a very practical problem and we have to think about those practical problems. But I'm reminded that Mark said at some point said that even the worst built house by human beings is better than a beehive. Because if you think about a beehive, it is probably the most beautiful, most resilient, the most functional, the most strongest structure ever designed by practically any organism. And yet we humans are very good at designing really bad buildings by the way. I mean, we see many of those. But the reason why that's better is because we first build it in our minds and then we build it by hand and actually practically. I don't think the bunch of bee architects get together and design. Do you think we want to go with a hexagon or pentagon or maybe let's do a triangular one next time? You don't do it like that. They just code it to do what they do and that's how it works out. So I think how you talk about a problem also is very material to how you actually try to tackle the problem or to actually try to solve the problem. Let's talk about just a simple problem of water supply and sanitation. Water supply and sanitation has been held hostage to the orthodoxy of piped network systems for the past 150 years. And there was actually a debate right up till early 20th century, early 1920s that whether we should have modular groundwater-based systems or shall we go for a piped network system? Eventually piped network system one. And today, find me a civil engineer or a sanitation engineer who thinks beyond when you're talking about large urban systems for that matter or otherwise in terms of a network piped system. Now, societies, human societies have had all sorts of wonderful contraptions from caresses in Pakistan to Baulis in India to so on and so forth and all sorts of cultural experience of how do you deal with water? I was part of a project which actually installed piped water system in Mardan in Northern Pakistan. Of course, a month later, the entire system stopped working and this was funded by the GTZ and the Germans told us like this is not possible. Forgive me for, I mean, I don't mean to be culturally insensitive like this is not possible. How can a system installed by GTZ not work? Well, it turned out that women had sabotaged it. Well, why had they sabotaged it? Because that was the one bloody chance to get out of the freaking house and be sociable and have a good time. Privately without having their mother-in-laws and without having their husband and children and everyone else, that's why they sabotaged it because they wanted to go out. What I'm trying to say is that not that, that's not a good thing. What I'm trying to say is that we need to change the way we talk about it because how we define the problem ends up being material to how we try to solve the problem. And in that respect, we need to listen to a bigger, a wider universe of voices. I mean, everyone says that, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's old news, yesterday's news that women have the most stake in terms of procuring water. Do we ever listen to them? Is there a single woman in any water board in any one of the countries? Does a woman who actually collect water, has she ever asked by any donor agency? How would you like to procure your water? What quality of water would you like? What do you think would be an ideal solution to what you need? Everyone talks at them, never do them. So I'm submitting to you that a wider universe of voices, yes, we know the problem. It is 150 billion or 100, what was it? 150 billion, sir? 120 billion. 120 billion. Yes, we all know it's 120 billion it takes to make a five-quarter system or whatever it is. How many women had a contribution to that conversation? How many diverse voices had an input into that particular statistic in how did they come up with it? I'm submitting to you, it won't even take 120 billion. It would probably not even take a billion. It would take for us to open up our ears and remove the blinders from our eyes and look around. The solutions are all around us except that we refuse to believe them that the solution to Bangladesh water problems are gonna come from University of Minnesota. The problem, the solution to Pakistan's problems are going to come from textbooks written at Storado State University and not by the everyday lived experience of people who actually deal with water, mostly women. That would be my submission. I think your point on monopolizing the discussion over what the problem is has ramifications for how we deal with the solution. I think that's right on. I think since I study international relations and I've studied economics in the past and I've always felt that for the best part of the 20th century, the term development has sort of seeped into this monopolized discourse around where the world should be going and how the world should be progressing. And the term development has sort of been monopolized by economists and policymakers and institutions like the World Bank and the IMF and that's sort of the playbook by which many countries seek to operate. And from my experience growing up in Pakistan, the development discourse is very limited. You don't really move past an expensive urban infrastructure projects, highways, roads, private housing schemes that model themselves of the Bay lifestyle. Exporting crops that as you mentioned need so much water where we have become the world's largest exporter of virtual water. This is the discourse. This is the development discourse that at least I've experienced growing up. And so I'm curious to understand how the traditional models of development are understood by water experts such as yourself. To extend this further, I'd like to know how a citizen such as myself can encapsulate the water lens when I think about development. And I'd leave it at that. And I'd also just mentioned that if anyone has any questions for the panelists, please submit them now. We'd like to move on after the responses to this question to the Q&A section. Dr. Saff, do you want to go first or? I don't know. See, like, again, I think was that what I would ask you you're asking question. Those are at a level really. These are still at a very highly abstract and intellectual level. You need to make your question much simpler. So let me give you an example. So I tell my friends in World Bank, look, don't give basically a billion dollar project to Bangladesh because a billion dollar project, 20% kickoff is $200 million. And that is real. Whether I like it or not, this money essentially is borrowed money for your next generation will be spent and will be bribed and all kinds of things will happen. So give maybe $1 million project or $10 million projects. Those will have tangible outcomes. So I challenged them, look, show me one example that in last 50 years, Bangladesh has basically taken over 500 World Bank projects. That is your poster child in water sector only. I could not find one. So what is going on then? We talk about this development projects. It's a development projects are essentially for letting us talk to most of us, saying, okay, fine, you are looking for solution to outsiders. Your problem is your problem. You need to find that your local experts and local expertise and local knowledge and then bring in some best practices from outside the world. Best practices are very useful. I don't want to basically Bangladesh to start learning how to build dams. But why should we build the dam is a local question. We don't do this. We say, World Bank, I need to get a dam. So give me $100 million. What do I do with this dam? I will support my army infrastructure that is very different than I'm going to support the education of women. That question should be discussed locally. Then I borrowed the money from World Bank to do the thing. We got it all mixed up. So World Bank wants to give us money to give us a bank. It wants to give you the money so that it can get the interest. So it has no interest really in development. Their development, their metrics really for a success of a project based on really how quickly the country paid it back. It's not really what they did with that money. So we need to essentially question those fundamental premise really what is World Bank doing in basically developing countries in the name of development? I'll just answer really quickly. I mean, I've just worked with CARES system, which is essentially groundwater based aqueduct system, which is prevalent in West Asia and North Africa and also some parts of Southern Europe as well as in Mexico. And what I found them to be was, well, definitely environmentally sustainable. There's no question about it, but more so socially sustainable. I tried advocating for them. I mean, when Obama presidency came in, I went all the way from State Department to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and everyone. And I made a case to them that you're working in Southern Afghanistan, Southern Afghanistan, livelihoods are dependent upon rural livelihoods. Rural livelihoods are dependent upon water and water basically comes from groundwater and what you're doing over the course of time comes from groundwater. And what you're doing over there is sheer idiocy because you're giving out water pumps, high-powered tubules to farmers which are basically appropriated by local warlords and basically people get dispossessed of their water rights. I mean, for example, in Balochistan, you ask a farmer how much land you have and they say, I have absolutely no idea. That's one place in South Asia, no farmer has any idea how much land they have. Because land doesn't matter. In Balochistan, you can have thousands of acres of land if you want. As fast as you can run, you can have the water and the land. What matters to them is the water right. And the water right, one can say, hey, I'm a respectable farmer. I have two hours of water right in my local car. That is what gives you respectability. That's what gives you your sense that I'm a shurika. Now, if I were to say to anyone of you, who are you, you would say, I'm a student at Tufts. I'm a professor at Tufts. Not one of you would say, hey, this is much I earn. Because that doesn't matter. Your dignity and your identity comes from what you do. In a rural environment, at least in a carest context, it comes from the fact that I'm a shurika. I'm a water right owner. And the destruction of that water right is the same if you could think of it in our own parlance for us to lose a job, to lose a livelihood and not be able to be called a professor or a doctor or a student or what have you. What I'm trying to submit to you is that these local scale water systems, Carre's is one that I have studied. I've also looked at these Babli's up in Kathmandu in Nepal, in Kathmandu valley. And what I have found is that those are perfectly sustainable, viable solutions to providing quality water along with other benefits that societies hope to realize from water. For example, there's a whole ritual element to using water in Nepali society, as there is in the Balochee society. There's a whole economic element. There's a whole social element. So this complexity of things that people expect from water, as Dr. Saabari rightly said, the solutions to Bangladesh's water problems are in Bangladesh. The only need is for us to remove the blinders and get the little wax out of our ears, listen and see what those solutions are and what do they mean. Time after time, what we bring in are technocrats who know a single aspect of the problem and not the multiple aspects within which that problem is embedded. I was working about flood hazard, for example, in our community. I asked all the women, so if flood is a big issue, there would recently been a flood. 75 people died in this city, billions of dollars of damage. And I said, what is your biggest hazard that you're afraid of? They said solid waste. I said, number two, they said liquid waste. I said, number three, they said law and order. I said, number four, they said floods. Wait a minute. We are just devoting billions of dollars to millions of dollars to something that is not even a priority for the local community. The local community is saying we want to have clean, and in fact they said floods are a very good thing. They actually clean out this river. That our children are not safe constantly. That in fact, we can sort of have some health for at least a couple of months before the whole vermin comes in again. So again, in terms of what does development mean? It's a vast, vast subject. Uzair, I mean, neither one of us can even begin to start talking about it. I just got done teaching one of the modules on that. But I think the take home message is that new is not necessarily better. And another thing that I'd invite you to think about is the water energy nexus in the first instance. Pipe water systems need a lot of energy. A lot of times pipes are there. Energy is not there. The municipality is not paying the bills to the electricity utility to pump the actual water. There's a whole, I mean, an Israeli farmer, Israeli farmer is held up as an example. American farmers held up as an example of efficient per acre production from water. We need to increase the per acre. Seriously, mate? Do you know that an Israeli farmer puts in 14 calories of energy to derive one calorie of biomass? Your own farmer puts in one calorie of energy and puts his brawn and uses the metabolism, the biophysical metabolism of the land and water to extract two calories of energy. And you call that a person of bloody idiot. And you call the person who spends 14 calories of energy to extract one calorie of biomass, a genius. Now you see, stop looking at Israel. Stop looking at America. Stop looking at for God's sake, stupid Australians and what have you. Mare Darling Basin is a disaster. Don't go there. And listen to your own people. They have 6,000 years of wisdom, of cultural wisdom. And we call them bloody fools. That's the problem. Thank you. Thank you for those remarks. I wish we had more time to sort of expand on them, but we have to go to the Q&A section now. So I'm going to hand it over to Rhea and she's just going to ask questions that the audience have posed to us in the chat. And feel free to ask more and we'll try to get through as many as we can. So I'd ask if you limit your responses to as short as you can, that we can get through as many questions. Thanks for both of you for your insightful responses in the moderated section. So the first question that we're going to go to for the question and answer is from an anonymous attendee who asks, Dr. Islam, you have talked a lot about taking tangible and actionable steps to aid the situation and aid people on the ground. Could you then give us some examples of tangible steps that can be taken as South Asian students studying in the United States? So now if you want actual action, so when you're doing this, what I would argue that you want to look at two things. First try to identify a problem. So meaning that that identification now has to be very contextual. So you go and find out that a particular village needs clean water. If it does, then a very quick solution would be that you, so there is a group at the top, so we call engineers without border. So they will essentially come up with the plan and then the group will go and install that plan. They say rural village in Brazil. It's very good. And the students, we have done it with many, many students. So now what you need to worry about, you'll say, okay, fine, you have spent your summer designing that system and putting that in place in Brazil in a village. It worked out fine. And now you come back to tops, you graduate and then next year, that doesn't work anymore because they need a filter. So you have to do that. Doesn't work anymore because they need a filter. That filter is missing. So that essentially project essentially gets abundant and stays there forever. So what you have essentially done, you've taken a particular solution that will work very well in Boston and you put it in Brazil without appreciating that what is the capacity of that village in Brazil is, what of the constant they have. So when you're trying to do some projects that you see really in the long term, can it be sustainable on its own rather than just giving them a solution? So it is almost like saying that basically if you don't remember that story from the queen that yeah, the poor people do not have rice. So give them bread. She has no clue really basically that basically bread is more expensive than rice. So if you want to be actionable, what you want to really focus on is that wherever you're trying to solve a problem, you need to understand the problem. It is not your definition of the problem. It is the problem that you're trying to solve for. Otherwise it becomes a problem set for you to do your homework. If you want to be actionable, you want to go and find out what the problem is. What is the manifestation of the problem? What is the capacity of that system? What are the constants of that system? Then only you can basically focus. So I like something that Amurthoshan said that look, if I am blind, and if you take me to school, it doesn't really help. You need to give me the ability so that as a blind I can read. So just focus on the capacity of the constant of the system to define the problem. Then you will have some other ideas. Thank you for that. That was a very insightful response. And you spoke a little bit about the localization of solutions and the necessity of that. As you both have in some of your responses, which kind of brings us to our next question from who asks, is the need to move towards longer term, less interest oriented, more localized. So stakeholders being involved in the solution process and targeted debt by institutions such as the World Bank, the solution to solving the water problems in South Asia. Is it useful to polarize the discussion by displacing technocrats and academics from a water solution? If the issue is the practice of solving and a lack of information, is there a toolbox to be made to solve it? A toolbox that might perhaps include more stakeholders in the process and include everyone solving it? Who do you want to ask if I said no? I think he asked it to both. So whoever would like to take over. I guess I'm most guilty of polarizing the discussion, right? So far. Should I answer for my sins here, Dr. Saab? No, go ahead. I think that that polarization, I did it deliberately and I do it deliberately to point out that everyone doesn't have equal power. The fundamental question is that of power. The technocrats have power and the women and the water users do not have power. Therefore, I tend to think that language is not an empty receptacle for us to convey meaning, but rather it is a dynamic and active mode of creating meaning, right? So what is wrong with saying a citizen instead of a stakeholder? I don't know. I've never seen anyone holding a stake, either a meat steak or the other steak that everyone talks about stakeholder. Stakeholder is a, to my mind, I find it very problematic because it's a patronizing. Yeah, you have a stake. Come on in. I'll let you play with us because we are playing. The adults are talking over here. You can sit on the chair and we will ask you once in a while what would you like? I mean, that's the sort of attitude that is there. And I'm trying to destabilize that sort of structure of the conversations. And within that, why not name the devil? Why not name who has the power and who does not? And talk about it in those terms. And yeah, yeah, yeah, the powerful people should be nice. They should be inclusive. I mean, hell, I've got a stake in my hand. Could you let me in and talk to me and have a conversation with me? And if those are the terms of the conversation, I'm sorry, I'm not talking, right? So what I'm saying is that it is ultimately a political question. It's a political question is how do people with less power will appropriate more power, will have more power? As I say in my, in my development class, one of my TAs once said to the, said to the class, that everyone comes to my development class thinking, how can I help the poor? And practically, at least most people leave thinking, how do I kill the rich? Because the problem is not helping the poor. It's someone who's keeping them where they are. And unless we understand that particular dynamic, we're going to be in trouble. And it is not just about rich and poor. It's also about gender, men and women. It's also about ethnicity. It's about upstream and downstream. It is about groundwater, surface water sorts of conversations. So that's why I, I did it. And I stand by that polarization because I think that polarization need to, need to happen because King's college is not the repository of all the wisdom about every place in the world. I certainly am not. And what I, what I can do with the pulpit that I do have is to rabble rows, which I do, which I've just done. No, I think this is good. I think, look, I think as academics, we have that role really to make things sharper. So in that sense, polarization may be a good way to do this. But the issue is not really that what we want to be focused on our, what is our long-term goal? Long-term goal is that we want to find a, an actionable solution. So I like Obama's. It is not about really that we are going to get the perfect union. Is our union better than yesterday? Is my problem definition that I'm trying to solve that I have gone a little bit better? So yes, I think this either or proposition I do not like. It's not really whether I am a citizen of a stakeholder, whether I'm a basically decision maker or, or not, or I'm rich or poor. This particular dichotomy was created to make it sharper, meaning that basically either you are with me or you're against me. So this type of polarization is useful for short-term, but in the long-term, I think these are not very useful in terms of developing actionable strategies. So what I ended up basically trying to promote is that no, it is not either or it is an end. It's not qualitative or quantitative. It is not rich or poor. You're poor and rich basically, we're not going to come together really just because they're nice. Powerful will just not come because they want to lose power. No, it will not happen. That has not happened. So let's admit that that is real. Now, what can I do really so that the powerful and the less powerful will come together. So once I was in Kathmandu and I was talking to a World Bank basically economist and I asked them basically, look, what is the interest of India to really to cooperate with Bangladesh? Bangladesh is downstream. India is more powerful. Why would they do this? They have no interest. She said, no, no, they have an interest because India wants to show to the world that I am the big brother. I am helping my younger brother downstream. That's a different interest. We need to find out what that interest is. Otherwise, why would India care? So just to say that, no, they will be nice. They will not be nice. They will try to protect their self-interest unless you can provide them something else. So the my basically suggestion would be, look, try to find out where you have not this whole idea of win-win. That is nothing called win-win. You have to create a situation where both party benefits in some ways when there is a conflict. How do they do this? It may not be optimal. The solution is not optimal, but solution has to be a little bit better. So India feels good in the global stage because they're helping Bangladesh is very good. What is that basically that India wants that Bangladesh can provide? Then only you have come to some level where this power can be equalized. Otherwise, we're in trouble. And this whole idea of power strategy is also changing. Look, right now with WikiLeague, you can be sitting really in a basement in Karachi. You can basically create havoc in the world. So you as an individual citizen also have a lot of power. It's no longer power, it's a military power or power of the basic US government. So think of our little bit differently than we have been used to. Thank you for that, Dr. Islam. I think that's a really interesting point about India and a different way to think. And I would love to explore that further. But unfortunately, we are out of time. So I do want to say thank you so much for both of you for being here today. We really appreciate your time and your very thoughtful answers. And we hope to have you come again to another one of our events. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Saab. Nice meeting you. And for everyone in the audience, be sure to check out the other panels that are part of our conference in the link that I have sent in the chat box. Tomorrow we have a panel on climate change and colonialism and a second panel on technological solutions to climate change. So we really hope to see you there. And again, the link to join our email list is also in the chat. So if you have an interest in that, please do fill that out. And thank you all for being here. Bye. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.