 Welcome to another episode of Slavad today on Things Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Kamdari Reza-San. I'm not in Slavad. I'm actually in Lahore. But the question that we're going to be examining today has an impact on cities, geographies, and regions all across the world. That question is a development question. We're talking about sustainable energy. We're talking about climate change. We're also talking about prosperity in economies, as well as underdeveloped societies as well. What sort of strategies, what sort of plans, and what sort of, you could say, blueprints are actually needed to try and alleviate suffering for most people all across the world and make tech-stabby societies and economies prosper in the world that we live in today. I have with me president of Re-Energia and he's also been associated with the World Bank, Al-Mizafir Durrani, Amir Zafar Durrani. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. You're most welcome. I'm glad to be here. That's great. So, Amir, let's start off with a basic question here. When we've spoken about development for quite some time, it's in the news. It's been published all across the world as well. What do you think are the three to four fundamental, you could say, principles which should drive sustainable development all across the world? Well, thank you very much and I think that's a very interesting question. Not sure if I can pinpoint three to four, but I think that the core of sustainable development is basically going back to ensuring the number one, we do not disturb the balance of nature. I mean, that sounds very kind of blasé and simplest to say, but essentially what sustainable development boils down to is that are we going to stay within the carrying capacity of the nature that's around us and the earth that we live on? And I think that everybody has a different answer to that, but I think that for me is at the core of it. And the reason I say it's got, everybody's got a different answer to that is simply because, as you know, a lot of people have been challenging the limits of the earth. In other words, there are many articles, there are many scientific journals and research that has been done saying the earth's carrying capacity is 7 billion, 9 billion, 1.15 billion, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And the earth has always amazingly surprised us. However, what we keep forgetting is that it's not earth's carrying capacity, but it's the habitable part of the earth. It's the clustering of how civilizations have developed. And I think that's therefore the second part for me when we talk about sustainable development is can we sustain the modern, unique geographic world? I mean, so Friedman put it as the world is flat, but I think that very soon, it's this very flat world itself, which is actually causing us to pause and again rethink, is this sustainable for us? So as you know, then extreme reaction to that, to my second point, are things like reshoring. And I think the third thing, which it connects to is the way we consume. And when I say the way we consume, I think it's got a lot to do with the energy we use, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the way we use water, everything you're putting together. Now, I think my last point on, and you said three, but let me get to the fourth one. The fourth point that I put there is actually sustainability is not just sustaining, the sustaining capacity of the earth, staying sort of in a very neutral so that we do not destroy the balance of nature. But I think the last thing which we forget in sustainability is the human interaction and the society itself. Is society sustainable in the way we interact as human beings, in the way we conduct. So I think then that's how the whole security, the angle just expands right in front of you. And I think what you're seeing today from Pakistan to Afghanistan, the earthquake, the Ukraine war, what's going on in Gaza, I think, just to mention a few, we keep forgetting we have very limited times. But I think that's the angle which most definitions of sustainability development miss is this whole sustainable human interactions. And I think that on that depends the entire sustainability for me in the sustainability equation. Thank you. All right, so let's speak about population and this has been a recurring theme throughout, most seminars, workshops and conferences and also part of academic debate. And now a country like Pakistan being the most populous country in the world, immense amount of strain on the resources and we've also seen that population explosion can also have a negative impact on GDP growth. Now that is actually one aspect of it. But conversely, Amit, there's other arguments which suggests that population growth could actually be a good thing. You'd have more manpower, you'd more have skill set. You would also have more employability. And that will also have a positive impact on global livelihoods as well. Which of the two schools of thought with regards to population and development do you subscribe to and why? Well, you know, so I think that for me, I neither subscribe to the 60s that's cut down the one child policy, et cetera, et cetera, provide drugs because it has turned quite amazingly negative for some of these problems. You can see the demographic development in China, look at Japan and to some extent, even Bangladesh for all practical purposes. So to me, again, you know, this is about, I think I see the popular, let me answer this way. I subscribe to neither this view that totally curtailed population nor do I subscribe to the other view that just go ahead and have as many children as you want. Now there are a few stats that I wanna talk about and I think the first of them is the fact that recently, I think it's one of the UN development reports or one of the UN global reports, which basically has now shown us that it's famine, the societies under famine and under drought or under duress actually have higher birth rates than societies that are developed. Now go figure Hamza, I mean, tell me, how does that, one would think that as you got richer, as you had a better quality of life and when you say quality of life, it's basically the quality of mind and means both, right? So you're able to think better, you're able to eat better, you're able to live better, you're able to happy and you would think that a society like that would create more children and apparently these societies are not creating children. So I was trying to understand in my mind, I mean, what is it that really gets us, what is the real panacea sort of solution to all this? I think barring solutions, one of the things why this has begun to matter are artificial boundaries, which again brings us back to my starting premise on sustainable development, which is that we are not a sustainable society when we have closed borders. Human movement, it's GATT article four, movement of human beings. I think this is a fundamental right of humanity. This artificial imposition of nation-state borders, artificial, because try and understand that these nations or these areas could be natural, crucible balances of nature, where forthright migration could take place back and forth, back and forth and imagine how easy it would be to sustain the earth if this was happening. It is only when we convert this into unified segments or unified pieces, which are actually not interconnected, then obviously you have instability. So to read the question of population growth is moot and which actually is my fundamental learning from now almost 36 years in this field of trying to say that I work in development. What does it mean I work in development? Well, to me, one of the lessons I'm getting out of this is that it's not an issue that more populace or less populace. The issue is actually society is unable to commute, travel along its various parts, and therefore because of this sort of society that's not knit together, that is artificially according to the Washington consensus being knit together by things like trade and everything. So not only is that actually causing pressures on the climate change on G8G, et cetera. I'm sorry, this is a very kind of strange way to address your question, but I support needed theory. Okay, okay. So we talk about sustainable development that's economic development. You mentioned regional connectivity. There's a lot of coverage of the BRI, the Belton Road Initiative and the OBOR as part of the One Belt, One Road. And obviously the China-B Pakistan Economic Quarter or the 62 billion dollar project is a flagship project called the OBOR. The Chinese claim, and it's not necessarily a claim that can be considered, I mean, you know, it's a claim that the veracity of that claim can actually be questioned. The Chinese consider it to be a political development which could actually usher in prosperity for all of the countries that are part of the BRI. The Americans would actually contest it. So my question is, when you talk about geopolitics and its impact on development, do you think geopolitics could stymie regional connectivity prospects? Or do you think geopolitics is actually healthy? It encourages competition between corporations. It also ensures that linkages can actually be bridged. What are the, which of the two schools of thought do you subscribe to when you talk about geopolitics and regional connectivity? So geopolitics and your connectivity, that's a very, I mean, it's an interesting dimension to approach this or as we said, an interesting lens. For me, I mean, you know, we'll get to BRI, but let's first look at what's been happening in the world. So the world basically has moved from basically kind of empires. I mean, look at Europe, 1500s, then we go to Westphalia, 1640. We move ahead in the, and you know, I'm gonna ignore the US of air because it's an island with two large ponds. I don't think it was ever part of the central world. That's a joke, but I think that at the end of the day, let's talk about the main civilization islands, right? So basically, when you start looking at them, you realize that as we got into the post-Luddite or the industrial revolution, so we're talking about 1800s, we see the emergence of the nation states, right? Before the nation states, essentially you had empires, right? You had large, maybe some autonomy within the empires, you had states within large empires, but what did that do? Did that restrain connectivity? No, it actually enhanced connectivity across regions which now you don't have connectivity. Let me give you a simple example. Before the during line was drawn, before the world war started, and earlier, this whole region from Asia to Central Asia, Asia to Central Asia to China, the Buddhist trail, this was a contiguous mass. There was regional connectivity. No wonder that if you go back and believe in such a through the theories, which I actually think are facts that, or we know by GDP of current day of measurement, we know that we lived today in what was just about 300 years ago, one of the richest areas in the world. And if you've gone by and looked at, so I'll give you an example. So if you look at the center of economic gravity and how it's moved, and there are many people who've written about it and I don't want to go discord the name, but if you look at how these guys have done the research and it comes back, it actually started where India is, or China is, it actually went all the way to the Atlantic pond, stopped smack in the middle, and then it's now progressing. And if you look at 2020, I mean, the last number I saw was from 2017, it is smack there in Kazakhstan. So what it is telling you is that as regions connect, they grow better, they grow richer, et cetera. Now, is this whole regional initiatives, these geopolitical blocks, are they going to play a role? Now, just look at SEO, it's half of the world's population or more. It's about 30% of the world's GDP. Now, imagine an open SEO. I mean, I'm just taking that as an example out of the blue and also because maybe I worked on it in 2017, sorry, in 2013. So essentially, if you look at it, I believe that, and again, I will go say this and I don't want to say that this is my quote. It's actually Himal, the Nepalese thinker, I forget his name, but it's basically in 2001, we did a study to show that actually the world is progressing back to regional blocks. So what do you have now, ASEAN, you have the Sub-Saharan Africa, SSTP, you have lack blocks, so each just in this greater Asia, yeah, Eurasia, Euricek, blah, blah, SEO. We have about 24 of these spaghetti balls just where if we put Islam, I mean, Islamabad at the center, we have so many of these. So the thing is, if any of them one really works, then we have the beginning of a better world because it goes back to my thinking that it is very difficult to coexist looking after the planet if we go essentially flat is something and trade across from here to there just for a little shoelace or the end of a shoelace, it's just not right because the climate footprint of doing that is very, very high. So you can solve this problem by actually transitioning to different fuels, transitioning to cleaner stuff, but honestly, until we are able to teleport like being me up Scotty from Star Trek, we are definitely not looking at something. So is the BRI OBR the answer? The answer is in my mind, yes, if done rightly and if not taken as outright, you know, these could be taken as philosophical and sort of collaborations, right? Or soul collaborations, something beyond just commerce. And I think that's what BRI or what the Chinese are calling the Global Development Initiative now is basically a kind of an economic initiative which they are new, getting to be not so successful and successful somewhere, but what else do we have to go by? Is it the Washington Consensus? Is it the Bretton Woods Institutions? Is it the multilateralism? So you know, the multilateralism has failed. Let's be very, very straightforward about it because it basically subsumes the soul of human beings by asking people to subsume their cultural values. I will not even go to religious values, right? So I think for me, geopolitics is not a bad development. I think geopolitics is essential, but I think again in geopolitics, like if, you know, contiguity will be very important and you know what I mean by contiguity. So in other words, it's like Pakistan trades more with America than it does in the region. That makes for bad trading patterns, right? Because it just increases our cost of doing business. So similarly, I think in geopolitics, it's very important for countries and especially because, I mean, we are in, I mean, I'm in Islamabad and you were just about about 300 kilometers south, you know, we need to be very careful because Pakistan cannot choose to be in a geopolitical circle which is other than its neighborhood because I wish we could buy a piece of land somewhere and shift six large population, we just can't. It's not how we work. Right, how much of, you could say, underdevelopment in Sub-Saharan Africa and certain countries of Latin America, we also talk about, you know, the Pacific Islands, how much of that can be attributed to colonization? Now this is more of an academic question rather than a developmental one. A lot of, you could say scholars will come up to different podiums, seven-hour conferences that say that colonization from these empires that you rightly mentioned is the result, I mean, the result of that is the current predicament of many African countries and we specifically talk about the middle of Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and Central Africa, whatever that matter. When we talk about economic development, most, you could say, socioeconomic indicators are abysmal for many of these countries. Do you think it's fair to blame colonization alone or do you think there's a mixture of poor development, poor planning and colonization? Oh, okay, you got me on that point, right? I mean, because this is really, I mean, I'll try to be very short on this. I think it's pretty obvious. Why does one colonize? You know, colonization is very different than being part of an empire that someone went over and you have 200 years of history together, et cetera, et cetera. Colonization was done primarily to extract something, whether it be natural resources, whether it be something, something, something, or so. So once, you know, the colonization by its, you know, sort of definition in my mind is extracted. So therefore colonization would result in negative outcomes. And therefore it is not surprising that most of these countries are where they are. Now, again, I don't want to quote, you know, our favorite session, Mr. Thirur. I mean, that's what he's arguing. He's saying that, you know, whatever we're doing, we're doing our own, but you made sure that you took every little inch and penny from us. Now, you know, we like lithium, don't we? We like these rare earths, don't we? Have you ever gone to DRC or have you ever gone to some of these places in Africa? Or even as for that matter, go to Argentina or, you know, or Brazil, you'll find that this mining is really extractive. So I think we have moved from outright colonialism by the empire so-called, you know, in the old days to commercial colonialism. So I think that, or well, I knew, I mean, okay. I don't want to call it that, okay? Please allow me that liberty. So the neo-colonial, yeah, the neo-liberal, the neo-whatever, I mean, there are just so many acronyms floating around. But in my mind, this is the commercial extract. And to be very honest, I mean, what is multilateralism? Yeah, I mean, multilateralism is actually, there's a lot of work done outside the World Bank, although if I'm in the World Bank, I had a right to believe in my views, but I still did what it is. I colonized countries, right? I mean, that's, I mean, there are many books you can even go through things like, and you know, it's easy to find excuses otherwise. Let me give you an example of Asimoglou's new book, well, the one that I guess they're coming up in, another one, The Narrow Corridor. So if you look at The Narrow Corridor, yeah. So you know, he gives these things about paper lewaitons, this lewaiton, that lewaiton. And in the end of the day, he's basically talking about people and how regulatory systems, so it's about a hundred year analysis. Now, if you realistically ask me, I think the governance of a country is a product of how it was colonized, right? So if that is true, until and unless the country and its people have the world with all of the things they had before colonization, I'm gonna give you two, three very quick examples. Okay, one example, save time. One example, Pakistan, for example, I won't even go to Africa on this one. I won't even go to East Asia on this one. But take Pakistan, right? You know, who drew the boundaries of Pakistan? Some colonialists did, right? I mean, at the end of the day, that's true. Who drew the boundary between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iran and Pakistan and between, you know, China? I mean, it's just some colonialists, right? Who drew the boundaries of Israel? That's another question we'll be about for decoration. Well, I won't go there. I mean, we still wanna be broadcast, right? I mean, in the US currently. So anyhow, so end of the day, if you think about it, these boundaries, what did they do? They basically did not respect the national human corridors. By national human corridors, there was a civilization, despite empires, despite everything, I mean, you didn't need visas in the days of the empires, right? You just went across an octroy post and you just kind of giddy up, air giddy up there. So imagine living in a, so essentially that had a lot of cross-fertilization of ideas, so had the colonialists left and not messed with the natural rhythms of the empires that were colonized and then left up with nation states as a present to the current people, no matter how many generations, no matter how we adapt, we still carry some of the remnants or the decadence of these colonialists, which you can see in Pakistan, you can see this all over, right? Look at Syria, look at Israel, look at, you know, Iraq, look at, you know, it's Sykes Pico on one side, it's just fantabulous how we have muddied up the world and the muddying has been a result of the colonization, whether we like it or not. And I'm not saying the colonization was bad, I mean, it's like Nestle moving into Pakistan, the initial few years are exuberant, right? Because they put all the milk industry in line, we started getting our cattle became healthier, but then suddenly you started seeing the destruction, it was reeking on the national value chains that existed, the trust quality, the stuff. I mean, so in other words, instead of these, Nestle is the modern colonialist, Lever Brothers is the modern colonialism, by the way, Lever Brothers for 300 years has gotten the backing of the British empire. I mean, now they must think that they have values of multilateral, whatever, but so, you know, you know where my mind lies on this one, so sorry if I disappointed you on that. Absolutely, no, you didn't disappoint me, but the point is that you give insights which are extremely important to understand as far as the impact of colonization on socioeconomic development is concerned, because it is a concept which is often misconstrued, it's quoted too often, but it's important to have a realistic perspective. I think when you speak about a multinational cooperation that's coming into the developing world and setting everything up, I mean, the residual effects of that also have an impact on the local population. Towards the very end on it, we talk about your experience at the World Bank. What are the major takeaways that you took home as far as your experience working with them is concerned? Do you feel that there are any shortcomings? Do you think that you managed to come up with something substantial? So do you break us on that? Yeah, well, I mean, I have to tell you, everyone should join the World Bank for at least, or at least, well, okay, the World Bank that I joined, let me first qualify my statements by saying that the World Bank I joined was as the tethered end of the Great World Bank. Now, the Great World Bank by me is defined by Eugene Black all the way down to Wolfensohn, first year of Wolfensohn and the second year of Wolfensohn. So I joined during the first era of Wolfensohn, and so had a great time in the first five to seven years. Then obviously you start seeing the impacts of people like Malpass and prior to Malpass, Zolik, and prior to Zolik, we saw, I don't wanna name names, but I think the US people already know the ex-Secretary of Defense who bought his girlfriend into the World Bank as a vice president. So, but that's the great thing. So justice prevailed and you got thrown out in due time, but let's go to what this is this institution. So I think that of all the Bretton Woods Institution, I think the World Bank, which is actually, as you know, it's not just a monolith, right? So originally it was just the IBRD and the fund, right? Because as part of the, of the, the 19, or sorry, it's called 54, after which it was decided that we're gonna get into and have all these institutions set up. And yes, there was the Marshall Plan. And then, so I mean, the World Bank has evolved. It started with the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. And then slowly, you know, you had the, so for example, right now the five arms which are very prominent is the IDA, which came around in 1970 or 71, which is the International Development Association because this is not really a bank, it's really a development association. Hence came the birth of the SDR as a currency, which is a combination of basket currencies to help really, I mean, again, the target was the least developed countries and Africa at that time. But then also we have the IBRD survives, and then you have MIGA, which is the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Institute, which is essentially a guarantee that goes along which is kind of the insurance that goes along to countries at risk. We have the International Finance Corporation and am I missing anything? But if I did, forgive me. So essentially the World Bank, when you go into it, most of us work for the largest part, which is IDA IBRD. And IDA IBRD, you know, is like the depending on demographics and population of the world. We oscillate between 8,000 or sorry, my alma mater oscillates between 8,000 and 13,000 people on the earth, of which there are about three and a half thousand in any good day, are really the core professionals that go to about 180 plus countries. So at the end of the day, I think when one joins this, it's an overwhelming feeling, especially if you did so in the 80s or early 90s. I mean, just to give you an example, you got to fly Concord from London to New York. I mean, that's not many, even corporations even would allow you to do that. So they give you a royal treatment. But at the end of the day, if you think about it, you have a very royal job at your hands and it's very, very difficult. And the thing is, if someone was to ask me describe the World Bank in one word, I would say it's the world's best university where you get paid to live there. But that also has positives and negatives. It means that you are experimenting on countries. I think I should stop there in terms of, but I think overall, off these between a few, I mean, there is no comparison, to be very honest, I mean, there are new institutions in South, like the Asian Development Bank. Again, they have different textures that the African development, I've worked with them. I've worked a little bit with the American Development Bank. I've worked with EBRD, meaning we have interacted when I was in the ECA region. So I think it would be very fair to say, it's a great experience for those who want to get a perspective of the fiscal side of development, right? Because really this is about supporting the countries and treasuries and ex-shakers and actually going directly through the government. This is very difficult and different than those people who spend their entire lives in bilateral institutions and self-execute projects in countries. So I think that's my take on the World Bank. A lot more could be said, but I think we are running out of time. All right, so President Abri energy and formerly associated with the World Bank, honor is up with the running. Thank you so much for joining me on this show. Well, Cameron, thank you so much for having me here. Thank you. Bye-bye. You have for us today on things like Hawaii, you can follow us on our social media pages, do provide us with your valuable feedback. Until next time, take care.