What It Is Like to Be a Land-Locked Nation: Some Discriminatory Examples and Details from National Watersheds of the Hindu Kush-Himalaya Under the Neoliberal ‘Free Market’ Participation Paradigm

Abstract

Land-locked nations cannot really participate in the modern form of economy which requires international exchanges for the pure sake of so-called open (global) free markets and associated neoliberalism and unlimited growth. In addition, lack of fair access to ocean resources and airspace with related policies put already further pressure on existing resources in those nations. In the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region several of those constrained nations can be found, e.g. Bhutan, Nepal, Mongolia, Laos and Kyrgystan. They are often sandwiched-in between the super powers, and are politically bogged down by their need for oil, gas, imports, market sizes and market exchanges. A few short-lived large economic growth rates -e.g. caused by mining and hydrodam electricity – are misleading though as they bleed out land-locked nations further while their watersheds and environment get left behind in a devastating state and usually are used downstream. The current form of global governance leaves many of the land-locked nations out of options by design. It devastates rural areas and creates economic migrants that are separated from their families and landscapes having to support them and their nations with expensive remittance payments, e.g. making up c. 30% of the GDP respectively and fueling international banking instead of a properly-grown and well-designed resilient home economy allowing for sustainable lifestyles and resources within healthy watersheds (which otherwise existed fine for centuries).

Born to die, living to win and to be free

Source attributed to Motörhead

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