December 17, 2010 will be reckoned as a turning point in the history of the Arab region. On that day, Mohammed Bouaziz, a young educated Tunisian who eked out a living by selling fruits on a handcart, set himself on fire after being harassed and slapped by a municipal inspector who confiscated his handcart and fruits. He eventually died on January 4. The event triggered an unprecedented wave of protests and demonstrations across Tunisia. The police caned the rampaging mobs, used teargas shells to disperse them and even opened fire, killing at least 78 civilians. Following mass protests across the country, Tunisia’s long-time president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country on 14 January 2011.

The Tunisian uprising triggered a tsunami of massive, unprecedented public protests and demonstrations across large parts of the Arab world. The protests represented a surge of deep-seated resentment and anger against autocratic rule, rampant corruption and nepotism, incompetent and insensitive administration, poverty and unemployment, suppression of human rights and civil liberties, widespread inequalities of wealth and power, and the marginalization of large sections of society. The uprisings led to the inglorious end of autocratic regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. The reverberations of the Arab Spring were also felt in Bahrain, Syria, Iraq, Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman and Sudan.

Tunisia’s disgraced former president Ben Ali and his second wife Leila Trabelsi’s family controlled between 30 and 40 per cent of the country’s economy, amounting to about $10 billion. The assets held by the two families covered all sectors of the economy, including banks, insurance, distribution, transport, property, tourism, television channels and retail businesses. France’s Le Monde reported that relatives of Ben Ali fled the country with 1.5 tonnes of gold ingots valued at $65 million. In Egypt, former president Hosni Mubarak’s family’s wealth is estimated to be worth $40 billion. The Mubarak family owns properties in London, Paris, Madrid, Dubai, Washington, New York and Frankfurt.

The repercussions of mass protests varied from country to country. While the Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country and Egypt’s president resigned, Gaddafi was overthrown and killed on August 23, 2011. In Algeria, a 19-year-old emergency was lifted following large-scale protests and demonstrations. In Oman, Sultan Qaboos announced economic concessions for the population, dismissed some ministers and granted law-making powers to Oman’s elected legislature. In Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah announced a package of economic concessions and conceded women’s voting rights and their right to be nominated to the Shura Council. On July 10, 2011 Morocco’s King Mohammed unveiled the outlines of a new constitution, according to which nearly half of the powers previously held by the king came to be vested in the office of the prime minister, who would be appointed from the majority party in parliament.

A remarkable feature of the popular uprising in the Arab region was its representative character. The protesters and demonstrators included a wide cross-section of the population, including men and women, young and old, judges and lawyers, doctors, academics and research scholars, artists, writers, students, administrative staff, housewives and businessmen. Women participated in the uprisings in substantial numbers, shouting slogans, throwing stones at policemen and nursing the wounded. They defied the widely prevalent stereotype that Arab and Muslim women continue to be silent victims of an oppressive, male-dominated social order.

Elections to Tunisia’s Constituent Assembly were held in October 2011, which the Ennahda Party, which was banned under the Ben Ali regime, won 41 per cent of the vote (90 seats out of a total of 217) in the country’s first free elections. It formed a coalition government with the human rights activist Moncef Marzouki at the helm. The transition to democracy in Tunisia in the aftermath of the ouster of its former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has been fraught with several challenges and impediments. In March 2012 disagreements surfaced between the Ennahda and hardlines Islamic groups over the issue of making the Islamic Shariah the main source of legislation in the constituent assembly. The Ennahda maintained that it was opposed to making the Shariah the main source of legislation and that it was in favour of making the secular character of the state. This was supported by secular parties but vehemently opposed by the hardliners. On 6 February 2013, Shukri Belaid, the leader of the leftist opposition, was assassinated, which led to a stand-off between the ruling Ennahda Party and the opposition parties. In December 2013 the Ennahda-led government stepped down, and a caretaker government was formed. In the presidential elections held in 2014, Nida Tounes, a secular party, won the majority of votes. In 2015 there were terrorist attacks on foreign tourists, following which the Tunisian president imposed a state of national emergency. The Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet was awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts for the establishment of a peaceful, pluralistic political order in the country. In 2016 Youssef Chahed became Tunisia’s prime minister. His government includes a broad coalition of secular and leftist parties, independents, Islamically oriented parties and trade union allies.

Tunisia continues to grapple with a crumbling economy, rising prices, high unemployment rates, lawlessness and crime, terrorism and sectarian violence and political instability. Since 2014 the economy has been in a state of stagnation. Youth unemployment rate is nearly 35%. Foreign direst investment is down from 5.8% of GDP in 2008 to 1.7% as of 2016. There has been a noticeable decline in the highly lucrative hydrocarbon and phosphate mining sectors, from 11% of GDP in 2011 to 3% in 2015. Terrorist attacks on foreign tourists have severely undermined the country’s booming tourism industry. Corruption remains endemic, particularly at the local government level. There have been widespread public protests against the austerity measures announced by the government.

A significant challenge to the country arises from continuing economic and social inequalities between states. The southern part of the country and the hinterland suffer from a lack of basic infrastructure and services and have a disproportionately high poverty rate. In some of these regions the poverty rate is as high as 32% compared with the national average of 15.5%.

The Arab Human Development Report 2009 focused on economic insecurity associated with poverty from two interrelated perspectives: income poverty and human poverty. Income poverty was defined in terms of people’s enjoyment of goods and services, represented by real per capita consumption expenditure. Income poverty takes into account both the international poverty line at $2 a day and national poverty lines. Human poverty, on the other hand, is defined by income as well as by other significant dimensions of life, such as education, health and political freedom.

The report estimated that the overall poverty rate in the Arab region was 39.9 per cent and the number of Arabs living in poverty could be as high as 65 million or about 20 per cent of the population. The overall poverty rates in the Arab world range from 59.5 per cent in Yemen and about 40 per cent in Egypt to 28.6--30 per cent in Lebanon and Syria. In Somalia alone five million people live in poverty. Income poverty, and the insecurity associated with it, is more widespread in the rural areas. Human poverty, as reflected in the deprivation of capabilities and opportunities, is far more widespread in the Arab countries than income poverty. The report revealed that in most Arab countries, inequalities and social exclusion have increased over the past two decades.

The report pointed out that despite its abundant natural resources, hunger and malnutrition in Arab countries are rising. According to Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) figures, Arab countries have a low ratio of undernourished people to the total population. Yet it is one of the two regions in the world -- the other being sub-Saharan Africa -- where the number of undernourished people has risen since the beginning of the 1990s -- from about 19.8 million in 1990-1992 to 25.5 million in 2002-2004. The report noted that the main direct causes of hunger in the Arab world are poverty, foreign occupation, domestic conflict and economic policies for dealing with globalisation.

Egypt continues to be faced with endemic and widespread poverty. In 2016 the International Monetary Fund approved a $12 billion loan, following which President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s government cut fuel subsidies, allowed the currency to depreciate and levied a 14% value added tax. These measures helped cut the deficit from 12.5% of GDP to 8.3%. But there was an unanticipated flip side to the gains as Egyptians soon realised that they had to bear the brunt of these measures. The slashing of fuel subsidies pushed the costs of transport, which led to a rise in household expenditures. Since 2015, average household expenditures have increased by a whopping 43%. Though incomes rose by 33%, household debt accelerated by 58% and inflation levels rose to 33%.

In 2018 Egyptian economy experienced 5.6% rise in GDP. But this growth presents a misleading picture. Economic growth, caused by a boom in oil and gas, did not bring about any tangible benefits for the masses.

Inflation is steadily on the rise and consumption levels and sales have plummeted. Poor people spend nearly 50% of their income on food. Public school fees have jumped by 20-50%. The government welfare schemes have benefited only a small proportion of the population. The cash transfer schemes for the poor covered only about 10% of the population. The International Monetary Fund reckons that inflation rates are likely to remain in double digits until at least 2021. According to a report on household finances, released by the National Statistical Agency in July this year, 33% of Egypt’s 99 million people can be classified as poor in 2018, compared with 28% in 2015. The actual percentage of people faced with endemic poverty is over 60%. In April 2019 the World Bank said that 60% of Egyptians were either poor or vulnerable.

Environmental degradation and climate change, which have extremely damaging consequences for biodiversity and the environment as well as for the livelihood, well-being and health of millions of people around the world, emerged as a major global concern in the 1970s. A landmark event in the global concern with the environmental costs of industrialization and economic and technological development was the publication of a pioneering report The Limits to Growth, published by the Club of Rome in 1974. The report argued that rates of industrial growth were likely to outstrip the earth’s limited resources in the near future, which would have extremely damaging short-term and long-term consequences for human populations and for ecosystems around the world. The United Nations brought out a path-breaking report Our Common Future in 1987, which emphasized that economic growth need not involve the depletion of the planet’s finite and precious resources and that levels of pollution caused by rapid industrialization needed to be kept at the minimum. The report espoused the idea of sustainable development, which is now widely endorsed and used by governments, policy makers, NGOs and academics. The reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, backed by credible scientific data, have highlighted the damaging consequences of climate change for ecosystems and for human populations. The United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005), backed by over 1,300 scientists from 95 countries, noted: “Overall, people have made greater changes to ecosystems in the last half of the 20th century than at any time in human history. These changes have enhanced human well-being but have been accompanied by ever-increasing degradation of our environment. Human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of the earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystem to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted.”

A major cause of climate change and environmental degradation is the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, CFs and nitrous oxide, in the atmosphere and the oceans. This is caused by the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas, cement manufacture and deforestation. The combustion of fossil fuels to generate electricity is one of the principal sources of carbon dioxide emissions. Another major source of carbon dioxide emmissions is transportation, including motor vehicles run on petrol and diesel, international shipping and huge fishing trawlers which run on diesel. Transportation accounts for more than 23 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. The number of motor vehicles in the world now exceeds one billion, with the largest number in the US (254.4 million), followed by China with 154 million. It is estimated that the number of motor vehicles will reach 2.5 billion by 2050.

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century, the burning of fossil fuels and extensive deforestation has increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 40 per cent, from 280 parts per million (ppm) in 1750 to 392.6 ppm in 2012. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, more than half a trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide has been burned since the mid-18th century. The concentrations of CO2 have now reached more than 400 ppm. The world’s biggest carbon dioxide polluters are the US, China, Russia, Australia, Japan and India. The US and China together produce a third of the world’s total annual emissions of CO2. Some 38 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions in the US is caused by automobile emissions and the rest from industrial processes. Environmental degradation is also manifested in water pollution, caused by the dumping of industrial waste, sewage and harmful substances into oceans, rivers and lakes. The earth’s atmosphere is becoming increasingly polluted as a result of the growing use of agrochemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides. The Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has convincingly shown that climate change is the product of human activities. Atmospheric pollution is taking an increasing toll of human lives in many parts of the world. An estimated 1.6 million people in China die every year due to air pollution.

Forests and oceans are the main sources of biodiversity. Biodiversity refers to the infinite range of variations in life forms, including organisms and species of animals, birds and insects, on the planet. Forests play a key role in maintaining the ecosystem. Trees and plants take in carbon dioxide and give out life-giving oxygen. Forests are a major source of clean air and water, fertile oil, food and medicinal plants. Forests have provided habitat for millions of species of animals, birds and insects that pollinate crops and control agricultural pests.

Expanding human settlements, farming, livestock raising, reckless logging, construction of roads and land development have resulted in extensive deforestation around the world. Deforestation refers to the clearing of forests and the removal of trees for non-forest uses, including human settlements, ranches, logging, fuelwood collection, cattle grazing and commercial farming. Deforestation has extremely damaging consequences for biodiversity and ecosystems, habitat, environment and human populations. These include desertification, soil erosion, extinction of species of animals, birds and insects, global warming, flooding and droughts. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the planet has lost almost 52 per cent of its biodiversity with the disappearance of forests over the past four decades. It is estimated that almost 50,000 plant, animal, insect and fish species are lost every year due to deforestation. Deforestation accounts for nearly one-third of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions. More than 850 million people in Africa’s Sahel region have been affected by desertification.

The Amazon rainforest, which belongs to 9 nations in South America, covers a vast area of 5,500,000 square kilometers and represents more than half of the world’s rainforests. It is an unparalleled treasure house of biodiversity and is home to the largest number of plant, bird, fish and insect species in the world, including 2.5 million insect species, 40,000 plant species and more than 2,000 bird and fish species. In recent years large areas in the Amazon region have been converted into pastoral fields. Expanding human settlements, slash-and-burn farming, extensive logging and construction of roads and highways have destroyed a substantial part of the Amazon rainforest. Brazil, where about 60 per cent of the Amazon rainforest is located, is the second-largest producer of soybean after the US, and most of it is exported to Europe and China or is used for biodiesel production. With the rising global demand and prices for soy, farmers push further into the forest areas of the Amazon for soy cultivation. It is estimated that the Amazon rainforest will be reduced by 40 per cent of its present size by 2025. In 2005 and 2010 large areas in the Amazon region experienced severe droughts.

When Sierra Leone became independent in 1961, 40% of the land was covered with forest. Extensive deforestation caused by logging, slash-and-burn method of agriculture, human settlements and cattle grazing has led to a dramatic drop in the forest cover, which has been reduced to about 4 per cent today. Sierra Leone has experienced frequent flooding due to deforestation.

In Argentina, one million hectares of rainforests were destroyed between 2009 and 2012. The country’s rate of deforestation is 0.8 per cent per year, twice that of the Amazon region. A major cause of deforestation in Argentina is the extensive cultivation of soybean, which leads to the clearing of forest areas. Argentina is the third-largest producer of soy after the US and Brazil, and practically all of it is exported to Europe and China. The expanding cultivation of soy has increased deforestation and has released greenhouse gases due to the loss of forest cover. An extremely worrying manifestation of climate change is global warming. Global warming refers to a gradual increase in the average temperature of the atmosphere and the oceans. Temperatures around the world have risen during the past three decades. According to NASA, 2014 was the warmest year in the past 135 years of record keeping. Most of global warming is caused by the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2013) estimates that global temperatures are likely to rise by a further 0.3C to 1.7C in the coming years, which will have a particularly damaging effect on the Arctic. A visible effect of rising temperatures is seen in the Arctic ice cap which has been shrinking by about 12 per cent per decade since 1979. Between 1979 and 2012, almost half of the Arctic ice area had melted. As ice sheets in Greenland and parts of Antarctica and glaciers in Alaska melt due to rising temperatures, sea levels are rising. Sea levels have risen by about 8 inches over the past century and are expected to rise by 3 feet by 2100. The retreat of glaciers and the melting of the permafrost have caused frequent extreme weather events such as heat waves, heavy rainfall and snowfall, flooding and droughts. By 2070, 150 million people in the world’s large port cities will be at risk from coastal flooding. The flooding of large areas around the world will expose nearly 330 million to the risk of displacement. Over 70 million people in Bangladesh, 6 million in Lower Egypt and 22 million in Vietnam could be affected by flooding. Warming seas are expected to give rise to tropical storms. At present about 344 million people are exposed to tropical cyclones. The number of affected people will sharply rise with more intense tropical storms.

One of the serious consequences of climate change is food insecurity. Droughts, flooding, water scarcity and fall in agricultural production have exposed millions of people around the world to chronic hunger, malnutrition and starvation. According to the United Nations estimates, droughts and floods cause damages worth $6-8 billion worldwide every year. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that the number of chronically undernourished people around the world exceeds 900 million. Water tables are falling in scores of countries due to climate change as well as widespread over-pumping with powerful diesel pumps. Water shortages affect nearly 2.8 billion people worldwide. More than 300 million out of Africa’s 800 million people are faced with water scarcity. The World Commission on Water estimates that more than half of the world’s rivers, lakes and other water bodies in developing countries are seriously depleted and a large number of them are becoming increasingly polluted. The 2015 World Water Development Report titled ‘Water for a Sustainable World’ warns that there could be a 40 per cent shortfall in water supply around the world in the next 15 years if the existing patterns of management of water resources are not radically altered. Water from more than half of China’s largest rivers and lakes is now unfit for human consumption. More than 1.2 billion around the world lack access to clean drinking water. It is expected that rain-fed agricultural production in some parts of Africa could fall by almost 50 per cent by 2020. Climate change has increased the grim prospects of droughts. Drought-affected areas in sub-Saharan Africa could expand by 60-90 million hectares by 2060.

Consumption patterns have a significant bearing on the environmental crisis. There are striking disparities between the consumption patterns of industrialized nations and those of developing countries. People living in North America and Western Europe, who make up 12 per cent of the world’s population, account for 60 per cent of private consumption expenditure, while the one-third of global population living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa account for only 3.2 per cent. The US, with less than 5 per cent of the world’s population, uses more than a quarter of the world’s fossil fuel resources, burning up nearly 25 per cent of coal, 26 per cent of the oil and 27 per cent of the world’s natural gas.

Though the share of responsibility of industrialized countries for climate change is much higher than that of poor countries, it is the latter which mostly bear the brunt of the environmental crisis. Over 98 per cent of climate disasters such as flooding and droughts from 2000 to 2004 occurred in developing countries, affecting some 262 million people. In rich countries, one in 1,500 people is affected by climate disasters, while the comparative figure for developing nations is one in 19.

A lesson that can be drawn from the looming crisis of climate change is that the model of economic growth adopted by industrialized nations, which is invariably accompanied by profligate consumption and huge environmental costs, is not sustainable. The idea of sustainable development, enunciated by the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, emphasizes that economic growth should not be accompanied by environmental degradation or rising inequalities.

Coastal cities around the world are becoming increasingly vulnerable due to rising sea levels, caused by climate change. Sea levels are rising because of thermal expansion and the melting of polar ice.

Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, with a population of over 10 million, sits on swampy land. Due to climate change, parts of the city are sinking by as much as 25cm in a year and almost half of the city is now below sea level. Jakarta is one of the fastest-sinking cities in the world. North Jakarta has already sunk 2.5 metres in the last 10 years and continues to sink by 25cm a year in some parts. Environmentalists and other experts say that if this continues unchecked, abut 95% of northern Jakarta would be submerged by 2050.

Thirteen rivers run through Jakarta and often cause flooding in large areas of the city. Part of the reason for the rapid rate at which Jakarta is sinking is the excessive extraction of groundwater for drinking and bathing by the residents. Most parts of Jakarta have no supply of piped water. Therefore, people are left with no alternative but to pump water from the underground aquifers. As groundwater is constantly pumped out, the land above it sinks. Regulations about pumping groundwater are lax and illegal groundwater extraction is quite rampant. Many residential buildings extract groundwater illegally and with impunity.

Alternative water sources like the Citarum river are extremely polluted (AFP) Indonesian government is planning to shift the capital to the province of East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. The project of shifting the capital will cost $32.79 billion.

The population of Muslims in Myanmar is estimated at 2.27 million, which accounts for about 4 per cent of the country’s population. A decade after independence, the army seized power in a military coup in 1962. Shortly after he assumed the reins of power, General Ne Win launched a policy of “Mynmarisation” based on the dominance and ascendancy of the ethnic Mynmar population, ultranationalism, Buddhism and the exclusion of non-Myanma ethnic minorities, such as Rohingya Muslims, Shan, Lahu, Karen and Kachin.

The Rohingya Muslims, who number about 800,000, are among the poorest in the country and are largely concentrated in the coastal Rakhine state of western Myanmar. Most of them are of Bengali heritage who arrived in the country in the 19th century when Burma was a British colony. For more than five decades, the relations between the minority Rohingyas and the Buddhist majority have been marked by mistrust and hostility. The military regime launched Operation King Dragon in 1978 and unleashed a campaign of terror against the Rohingyas. They were attacked and terrorized by the security forces and the majority Buddhists and their houses torched. Their lands were confiscated and dozens of mosques were desecrated and destroyed. The orgy of violence led to the exodus of nearly 2500,000 Rohingyas to the neighbouring Bangladesh.

Rohingya Muslims are prohibited from owning land or property and barred from leaving their villages or travelling without permission from the government. They are not permitted to construct or repair the existing mosques. They are not allowed to marry without official permission or to have more than two children. The 1982 Citizenship Law stripped the Rohingyas of citizenship and they were declared illegal foreigners. Buddhist leaders call the Rohingya Muslims invaders, unwanted guests and “vipers in our lap.” In June 2012, following reports of the rape of a Buddhist woman by a Rohingya man, rampaging Buddhist mobs attacked the Rohingyas from all sides, systematically burning every building, and were supported by the police and the army. Entire villages were wiped out and a number of mosques were raised to the ground. The violence left more than 700 Rohingyas dead and nearly 100,000 displaced. Amnesty International denounced the Burmese security forces as well as the majority Buddhist population for violent attacks on Rohingya Muslims, which were systematically carried out and were state-sponsored. Faced with growing hatred, persecution and violent attacks, hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas have fled to Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and India. They are living – as unwanted guests -- in makeshift refugee camps under appalling conditions.

Following a brutal crackdown by Myanmar’s armed forces on 25 August 2017, nearly 740,000 Rohingyas fled the country to take shelter in the neighbouring Bangladesh. The Rohingya refugee camp at Kutupalong in Cox Bazaar in the largest refugee camp in the world, where nearly a million people live in squalid conditions.

In 2018, a United Nations-established investigation accused Myanmar troops of indulging in sexual violence against Rohingya women and girls. It recommended the prosecution of Myanmar’s top military commanders on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The charges were dismissed by the Myanmar government. The United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar said in a report that was released in August 2019 that Myanmar’s soldiers “routinely and systematically employed rapes, gang rapes and other violent and forced sexual acts against women, girls, boys, men and transgender people.” The report pointed out that large-scale violence against the Rohingya perpetrated by Myanmar’s military was made possible by a pervasive climate of impunity, where military personnel had no fear of being held accountable, punishment or disciplinary action. The United Nations has described the Rohingya crisis as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Rohingya refugees have no access to education. Consequently, an estimated 683,000 children are without any facilities for education or schooling. The camps do not have electricity at night. This has made women and children vulnerable and has facilitated human trafficking. The 2019 Trafficking Persons Report published by the US Department of State stated that “the government of Bangladesh does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, but is making significant efforts to do so.” International organisations allege that some Bangladeshi border squads, military and police officials facilitate trafficking of Rohingya women and children, including accepting bribes to gain access to camps.

In November 2017, signed a repatriation deal, which envisaged a plan for the return of Rohingyas to Myanmar. But the Rohingyas refused to go, saying that they were willing to return to their homeland if the state ensured their safely and granted them citizenship and allowed them to settle in their villages.

On 25 August 2019, nearly 200,000 Rohingya refugees held a rally at Kutupalong camp in Bangladesh’s Cox Bazaar to observe the second anniversary of their exile from Myanmar, or what they described as ‘Genocide Day’. They demanded that Myanmar should grant them citizenship rights before they return to their native land. The rally was attended by UN officials.