Javaid Afzal

Greening Growth in Pakistan through Transport Sector Reforms : Strategic Environmental, Poverty, and Social Assessment

The Government of Pakistans (GoPs) 2011 Framework for Economic Growth seeks to place Pakistan on a sustained high economic growth path of 7 percent per year through measures to reduce the cost of doing business, improve the investment climate, and strengthen institutions. Trade and transport reforms are central to achieve the Frameworks goals. The transport sector constitutes 10 percent of Pakistans Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and provides 6 percent of the employment in the country. The sector plays an important role in linking other sectors in the economy, contributes to both domestic and international trade, and helps facilitate the spatial transformation occurring in Pakistan. The present patterns in transport and trade logistics generate inefficiencies that are costing Pakistans economy roughly 4-6 percent of GDP per year, which is a major constraint on the aspirations set out in the Framework. This report examines the poverty, social, and environmental aspects associated with trade and transport sector reforms aimed at increasing the freight transport sectors productivity to meet the Frameworks goals. This report is organized as follows. Chapter 1 provides the objectives and methodology of this work. Chapter 2 discusses the sector status and the trade and transport policy reforms. Chapter 3 establishes the priority issues associated with freight transport reform. Chapters 4 and 5 focused on the social and environmental aspects of the reform, respectively. And chapters 6 and 7 conclude the report by discussing policy options to promote environmentally and socially sustainable trade and transport and an agenda to advance environmentally and socially sustainable trade and transport reforms in Pakistan.

Sustainability and poverty alleviation : Confronting environmental threats in Sindh, Pakistan

Sindhs environmental and climate change problems call for urgent responses. A number of feasible interventions could be carried out to address the categories of environmental degradation that have the highest impacts on Sindhs population. Many of those interventions have positive benefit-cost ratios, meaning that every rupee invested in them would result in health and social benefits worth more than one rupee. Addressing these challenges also calls for targeted institutional strengthening and policy improvements, particularly after the 18th Constitutional Amendment devolved environmental management responsibilities to provincial governments. The underlying goal of this book is to facilitate and stimulate sharing of information on these phenomena, and to provide an interdisciplinary framework for bringing about improved environmental conditions in Sindh. It includes a methodology that enables the identification of environmental and climate change priority problems; the analysis of interventions to address such problems; the establishment of a social learning mechanism to continuously improve Sindhs responses and build resilience in the face of climate variability and change; and opportunities for the potential involvement of different stakeholder groups to decisively tackle climate change and deteriorating environmental conditions.