essay on climate change in pakistan

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The future is in danger

Climate change is the most important issue of our age; we are the first to see its early warning signals and the last to have a chance to prevent it from occurring. Living in a bubble of ignorance can only get us so far; our globe is indeed a scene of melting glaciers, rising floods, animal extinctions, extreme weather events and the list continues. Spreading climate change awareness using every way possible, including seemingly insignificant forms such as writing school essays, cannot be overstated.

Climate change has put a lot of countries at hazard, and the risk is significantly larger for developing countries. Because of this serious problem, which is having a severe impact on the area, South Asia has grown more disaster-prone. In general, climate change is accelerating and having severe consequences for Pakistan.

Pakistan is geologically located in a region where the effects of climate change are being felt fairly strongly. This climate disaster has had enormous economic, social, and environmental consequences. Statistics from the 2010 floods demonstrate the devastating effects on the 20 million individuals who lost their homes, were injured, or went missing. Similarly, another flood in Pakistan in 2012 wreaked havoc.

Climate change puts Pakistan’s income, housing, food, and security at danger. Considering the tough facts, the Pakistani government must take urgent measures to combat the detrimental effects of climate change. Without a doubt, the authorities are paying close attention to this problem, which they see as sensitive and serious.

Pakistan faces “significantly higher average temperatures than the global average, with a potential rise of 1.3°C-4.9°C by the 2090s over the 1986-2005 baseline,” according to a study, which also noted that Pakistan had “some of the highest disaster risk levels in the world, ranked 18 out of 191 countries by the 2020 Inform Risk Index.”

Under the most optimistic emission scenarios, the global average temperature rise by 2080-99 will be around 3.7°C. Furthermore, changes in Pakistan’s hydrologic regimens, and hence its water supplies, are largely unknown, although dry situations are projected to become more common. Extreme climatic events are expected to become more common and intense, increasing catastrophe risk, particularly for the poor and minority populations.

Including an average monthly maximum of roughly 27°C and an average June maximum of 36°C, Pakistan often witnessed some of the world’s greatest maximum temperatures. In Pakistan, the current median yearly likelihood of a heat wave happening in any specific region is roughly 3 percent. As seen by estimates that over 65,000 individuals were hospitalized with heatstroke during Pakistan’s 2015 heatwave, a huge section of the population is at danger.

Communities offer to the problem of improving resilience and tackling climate change unique views, skills, and a wealth of information. Rather than being seen as recipients, they should be treated as participants in developing resilience. Community leaders may define goals, influence ownership, and create and administer investment programmes that are responsive to their community’s needs, according to research and experience.

Many parts of Pakistan endure yearly temperatures of 38°C or more, and when weather patterns combine to produce protracted periods of heatwave, major human health consequences can occur. Between 1997 and 2015, Pakistan witnessed 126 heatwaves, an average of seven each year, with an upward trend.

Pakistan is a low-middle-income country with a primarily agrarian economy; however, it is gradually industrializing and more than a third of the population currently lives in cities. For food and nutrition security, the country significantly relies on its climate-sensitive land, wa ter, and forest resources. Agriculture continues to be a significant occupation for 42 percent of the population. Irrigation from the glacier-fed River Indus and its tributaries supports about 90 percent of farmland. Glacier melt has accelerated due to climate change, increasing the likelihood of glacier lake outpouring floods (GLOF) and mudslides downstream. Faster glacier melt, rising temperatures, shifting seasons, and irregular rainfall patterns are all affecting the flow of the River Indus, which will have a growing impact on agriculture, food production, and lives. Already, 39 percent of the population lives in poverty, and the loss of livelihoods indicated in this research will have a significant impact on people’s health and capacity to access healthcare.

Heat fatigue, starvation, the introduction of vector-borne diseases like dengue fever, and an increase in the burden of aquatic infections will all have an impact on people’s capacity to work and make a living.

Migrants, internally displaced individuals, and religious and ethnic minorities will be particularly susceptible, since they are frequently confined to hazard-prone land and face challenges to treatment, including financial constraints resulting from informal work. Child marriages, early births, and domestic violence may become more common as a result of climate change. Due to decreasing food production, women and children will be more prone to malnourishment and malnutrition.

Smog is another major issue in Pakistan’s industrialized eastern Punjab region, where the provincial capital, Lahore, is clogged with smoke throughout the winter months. Authorities said they are working to solve the problem, which involves thousands of brick kilns.

Millions of impoverished people will confront significant problems as the climate changes, including severe events, health consequences, social protection, economic stability, mobility, water security, cultural heritage, and other dangers.

Climate change is inextricably linked to global inequality patterns. Climate change harms the most vulnerable individuals the most, although they contribute the least to the catastrophe. Millions of vulnerable people are facing disproportionate problems as the effects of climate change worsen in terms of severe events, health effects, food security, economic assurance, water security, and cultural identity. Female-headed families, children, persons with disabilities, Indigenous Peoples and ethnic minorities, landless tenants, migrant workers, displaced persons, sexual and gender minorities, older people, and other socially excluded groups are all highly prone to disasters. Their vulnerability stems from a variety of factors, including their geographic location, financial, socioeconomic, cultural, and gender status, as well as their access to medical care, decision-making, and justice.

Poor and oppressed people are demanding for more aggressive climate action. Climate change is more than an environmental disaster; it is also a social crisis that requires us to confront issues of inequality on many levels: between rich and poor nations; between men and women; and between generations. For more effective development outcomes, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has underlined the need for climate solutions that adhere to climate justice principles (i.e., recognition, procedural, and distributive justice).

Climate change mitigation initiatives frequently disproportionately affect the most disadvantaged. Climate change adaptation measures can impose a greater financial burden on poor households in the absence of well-designed and supportive policies; for example, policies to expand public transportation or carbon pricing may result in higher public transportation fares, which will disproportionately affect poorer households. Similarly, restricting forestry activities to particular periods of the year might have an impact on indigenous populations that rely on woods for their livelihoods all year. In addition to addressing the distributional effects of decarbonizing economies, there is a need to understand and address social inclusion, cultural, and political economy issues, such as deciding on the types of transitions required (economic, social, etc.) and identifying opportunities to address social inequality during these processes.

Furthermore, communities offer to the problem of improving resilience and tackling climate change unique views, skills, and a wealth of information. Rather than being seen as recipients, they should be treated as participants in developing resilience. Community leaders may define goals, influence ownership, and create and administer investment programmes that are responsive to their community’s needs, according to research and experience.

In creating climate resilience, the IPCC’s newest report highlights the relevance of many types of knowledge such as scientific, Indigenous, and local knowledge. Communities and marginalized people may be connected to higher-level policy, technical, and financial support for locally relevant and successful development outcomes through innovations in climate finance architecture.

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Pakistan Must Adapt to Climate Change. But Who Will Help Us?

T he record-breaking mega-flood in August 2022 that impacted 33 million people in Pakistan brought home to the world the urgency and scale of the climate crisis afflicting developing countries. At the 27th United Nations Climate Change conference (COP 27), it triggered widespread worry among other countries about the state of preparedness many will have to gear up to—even if, like Pakistan, they remain negligible emitters of the greenhouse gases. In 2022, Pakistan’s pavilion at Sharm-al-Shaikh positioned not just the global connectedness of the crisis by pointing out that “what goes on in Pakistan will not stay in Pakistan,” it also became the hub of the climate finance deficits that are growing exponentially in inverse proportion to global emissions. This has led, in part, to the creation of the Loss and Damage (L&D) fund at the end of the conference.

Yet as G20’s energy ministers remained unable to agree on a roadmap to reduce emissions by July 2023 (even as COP28 approaches) the realization set in that many of us will remain in the frontline of the burn. Pakistan has been home for three successive years where on at least one day temperatures reached 53°C (127.4°F). The hope that we were working with needed a home-grown plan. As heatwaves coupled with slow global action transformed the earth into a red planet in the summer of 2023, Pakistan launched a National Adaptation Plan in July to chart a strategic whole-of government approach with a framework toolkit that allows it to protect its population.

For instance, the province of Sindh, which to this day stands transformed by the 2022 deluge, and recently saw evacuations in the coastal areas from cyclonic activity in a warming Arabian Sea, began its rehabilitation process by transferring new land titles to the women of afflicted households. In all such crises, the most vulnerable always remain the poorest, the women and children, impacted disproportionately by multiple crises of food insecurity, displacement, and disease.

That said, while Sindh is struggling to cope with a cascade of disasters, it will need not just the National Adaptation Plan, but the resources to transform municipal, rural, and agri-water governance for the dangerous decade ahead—all of which needs time, capacity, and liquidity. Similarly, the province of Balochistan has already declared a flood emergency, while the northern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is impacted too by a gathering storm.

Read More: ‘I Lost My Son in This Water a Few Days Ago.’ Photos of Pakistan’s Catastrophic Flooding

For countries drowning in extreme weather, exogenous shocks, and high public debt, where will this money come from? Especially in the amount that the World Bank in its 2022 Country Climate and Development Report calculated for Pakistan: a staggering $348 billion by 2030. This is just the number to stay resilient—to keep our heads above water and build sustainability into a climate-adaptive future. All this while a summer of fresh flooding and melting glaciers redefines our lives, our social and economic experiences, into a lifelong struggle to rebuild with resilience while we fight the climate devastations wreaking havoc again.

Who is coming to the rescue of such countries? While U.N. has been in the frontline of immediate relief, even its flash appeals globally remain under-funded. Structural reforms involve pain. We are willing to undergo more pain, especially for enabling resilience, but some amount of change has to come from the Bretton Woods system—the monetary management structure that controls the U.S., Canada, Australia, Western Europe, and Japan—meant to lead the world out of egregious inequality and now climate distress. The financing gap to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in developing countries has enlarged from $2.5 trillion in 2019 to $4.2 trillion in 2023. Add to it the cost of realizing climate goals, and the amount reaches a whopping $5.2 trillion annually .

Our National Adaption Plan (NAP) is designed to build climate-adaptation goals into every aspect of development planning. The international financial system must do the same. As we approach COP 28, the Global Goal on Adaptation remains under-capitalized, while the L&D fund is yet to start functioning. The U.N. Secretary General António Guterres made detailed recommendations in a press conference on July 27 that countries must operationalize and scale up the funding of renewables. Donor countries have been bilaterally supportive but they too need to fulfill their commitment to provide 0.7% of their Gross National Income as development assistance. Multilateral Development Banks should be recapitalized and be enabled to provide portfolio and budgetary support to developing countries, rather than project finance only. They should vastly expand grant and concessional lending to developing countries, enhance the vote and the voice of the developing countries in both International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and link the distribution of new IMF SDRs to development and climate goals.

The transition to a sustainable global economy will require an investment of around $1.5 trillion each year in the developing countries. Business as usual will certainly not work. A large part of this funding pool will have to come from the private sector, which will need new structural incentives to bring their leverage and capital to the business of bending development history. Vulnerable countries cannot attract investment in times of epochal climate distress, but they do need more than band-aid financing. We now need transformational milestones to building global consensus for a financing architecture that can face the 21st century’s rapidly changing conditions that challenge resilience while fueling crippling inequalities.

Critical assistance for the most climate vulnerable countries must not further burden the poor. Actions will be as important as pledges and plans at this point. A real message of change from global leaders would contribute substantially to the success of the forthcoming SDG Summit in September and COP28 in December, and restore trust in global cooperation and international solidarity. Our people are looking to us with renewed hope for action. We must not fail them.

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Daily Times

Your right to know Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Perspectives

Climate change: causes, outcomes in Pakistan and a way forward

September 24, 2019

Climate change can generally be defined as a change in global or regional climate patterns. In particular, it is the change apparent from the mid-to-late 20th century onwards, and attributed largely to the increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by the use of fossil fuels. The Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in its Article 1, defines climate change as: “A change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.”

Human activities are the major cause of climate change. The foremost cause is global warming. Burning fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, has increased the concentration of carbon dioxide. Due to expansion of the greenhouse effect, global warming has risen. As per this phenomenon, gases such as water vapors, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons in the our atmosphere prevents the heat to leave the earth’s atmosphere; resultantly, the ozone layer depletes and the temperature rises.

In its Fifth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that there is a more than 95 percent probability that human activities over the past 50 years have warmed our planet. Industrial activities that our modern civilisation depends upon have raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from 280 parts per million to 400 parts per million in the last 150 years. The panel also concluded there is a better than 95 percent probability that human-produced greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have caused much of the observed increase in earth’s temperatures over the past 50 years. About half of the CO2 emissions, between 1750 and 2010, have occurred in the last 40 years.

Deforestation and increase in the use of chemicals in domestic and agriculture life is another reason of climate change. Deforestation is the second leading cause of global warming and produces about 24 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists say that deforestation in tropical rainforests adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than the sum total of all the cars and trucks on the world’s roads.

The surge in the uses of chemicals in domestic as well as in agriculture, in the shape of fertilisers, also plays its role in climate change. The high rate of application of nitrogen-rich fertilisers has effects on the heat storage of cropland (nitrogen oxides have 300 times more heat-trapping capacity per unit of volume than carbon dioxide) and the run-off of excess fertilizers creates ‘dead zones’ in our oceans. In addition to these effects, high nitrate levels in groundwater due to over fertilization are cause for concern for human health.

These causes resulted in climate change and have a perilous aftermath. In this regard, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created by the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in 1988. It now engages with 195 member countries, which provides policymakers with regular scientific assessments on climate change, its implications and potential future risks, as well as to put forward adaptation and mitigation options.

The foremost hazardous evidence is the rise of carbon dioxide in out atmosphere. As per NASA’s scientific evidence, for a millennium, the level of carbon dioxide (parts per million) was below 300, which started to rise since 1950, and is now above 400. Secondly, as per NASA’s evidence, the planet’s average surface temperature has risen about 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit (0.9 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere. Most of the warming occurred in the past 35 years, with the five warmest years on record taking place since 2010. This is also established by the United Nations’ report, prepared by the World Meteorological Organisation, on September 22, 2019. It states that the period “is currently estimated to be 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial era of 1850-1900, and 0.2 degrees Celsius warmer than 2011-2015”.

Thirdly, the oceans are getting warmer, and ice sheets are shrinking. As per NASA, the oceans have absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) of ocean showing warming of more than 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1969. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased and have lost an average of 286 billion tons of ice per year between 1993 and 2016, while Antarctica lost about 127 billion tons of ice per year during the same time period. The rate of Antarctica ice mass loss has tripled in the last decade.

Fourthly, the glaciers are melting and sea level is rising. Around the globe, the glaciers are retreating including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa. The global sea level rose about eight inches in the last century. The rate in the last two decades, however, is nearly double that of the last century and is accelerating slightly every year.

There are other drastic evidences of climate change. Arctic sea ice is declining rapidly. Disturbed rainfalls and extreme weather events have increased. Also, the ocean acidification, which has increased by about 30 percent since the Industrial Revolution, is another evidence of climate change. It also has a negative impact on crop yield productions. The direct impact on the lives of humans is on the vulnerable and the marginalised segment of society.

As per NASA, 97 percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities

As per IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, numerous risks are involved that raise concern. These include risk of death, injuries, health or disturbed livelihoods due to storms, flooding and sea-level rise. The risk in water supply, supply of electricity and emergency situations are also there. The foremost risk is food insecurity due to droughts, flooding, and precipitation variability. There is the risk to lose marine and coastal ecosystems and biodiversity as well.

Although Pakistan is not much contributing in global warming and climate change, yet it is the seventh most affected country. The Global Change Impact Studies Centre of Pakistan shows that the mean annual temperature has increased in the recent past with greater increase in Sindh and Balochistan. During the last century, the average temperature over Pakistan has increased by 0.6°C, which is in conformity with the increase of the average global temperature. Future climate change projections, based on all four IPCC-AR5 RCPs scenarios, show that the average rise in temperature over Pakistan, by the end of the century, will be about 1°C higher compared to the global average. This increase, particularly in temperature, is associated with a number of adverse impacts, including the increasing frequency of extreme events (floods, droughts, heat waves, and cyclonic activity), steady regression of most glaciers (except a small minority in the Karakorum Range) that supply the bulk of the country’s water supply and changes in the rainfall patterns.

Pakistan’s water cycle is the primary affected area of climate change. Agriculture is one of the major sectors likely to be adversely affected by climate change. Climate change can disrupt food availability, reduce access to food, and affect food quality. Projected increases in temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, changes in extreme weather events, and reductions in water availability may all result in reduced agricultural productivity. Seasonal smog is also due to climate change and pollution.

Pakistan has also suffered economically due to climate change. According to experts, Pakistan has faced around 150 freak weather incidents as a result of climate change in the past 20 years: flash floods, smog in winter, forest fires in summer, melting glaciers, freaky heatwaves, landslides, displaced population. During the floods in 2010-11, almost 10 percent of Pakistan’s population was displaced in two provinces, one in the north and another in the south. Last year, the cost of extreme weather as a consequence of climate change was listed at $384 million; in the past 20 years, there has been a cost of almost two billion dollars to the national economy because of the ravages of climate change.

The writing is on the wall. The world is responding to the danger now. Greta Thunberg, a teenage Swedish environment activist, shookup the top leaders with a Global Climate Strike call on September 20, 2019, through which the protest was recorded in around 150 countries, in more than 4,500 places.

The UN has shown its commitment to fight in this noble cause. There are various agreements and protocols for climate change. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the main international agreement on climate action. It was one of the three conventions adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. To date, it has been ratified by 195 countries. It started as a way for countries to work together to limit global temperature increases and climate change, and to cope with their impacts.

In the mid-1990s, the UNFCCC signatories realised that stronger provisions were needed to reduce emissions. In this regard, they agreed to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which introduced legally binding emission reduction targets for developed countries. Next comes the Paris Agreement; the Paris climate conference took place from November 30 to December 11, 2015. On December 12, the parties reached a new global agreement on climate change. The agreement presents a balanced outcome with an action plan to limit global warming ‘well below’ two degree Celsius. There is also the Montreal Protocol 1987, which is a global agreement to protect the stratospheric ozone layer by phasing out the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances. There is also the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) 1994 to combat desertification and mitigate the effects of drought in countries experiencing serious drought/ desertification.

What requires is that we must change course by 2020, as the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterreshas said; we risk missing the point where we can avoid the “disastrous consequences for people and all the natural systems that sustain us.”

In this regard, there are the following suggestions to tackle global warming. Dramatically reducing our use of fossil fuels, especially carbon-intensive coal, is essential to tackle climate change. There are many ways to begin this process. Key action steps include: not building any new coal-burning power plants, initiating a phased shutdown of coal plants starting with the oldest and dirtiest, and capturing and storing carbon emissions from power plants. While it may sound like science fiction, the technology exists to store carbon emissions underground.

Taken together with the tropical deforestation, emissions from agriculture represent nearly 30 percent of the world’s heat-trapping emissions. We can fight global warming by reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and by making our food production practices more sustainable.

Using alternative sources of energy is more efficient and meets the problem of global warming. Energy producing from solar, wind, tidal, and biomass are more clean and renewable. There are least effects if we produce electricity from the alternative sources of energy. Nuclear power results in a few global warming emissions; an increased share of nuclear power in the energy mix could help reduce global warming.

A successful global compact on climate change must include financial assistance from richer countries to poorer countries to help make the transition to low-carbon development pathways and to help adapt to the impacts of climate change. The energy used to power, heat, and cool our homes, businesses, and industries are the single largest contributor to global warming. Energy efficiency technologies are the dire need of the hour.

Transportation sector’s emissions have increased at a faster rate than any other energy-usingsector over the past decade. For this, efficient fuel consumption modes of transport, and switching to low-carbon fuels are the requirement of time.

In a nutshell, we must develop a two-pronged approach: firstly, we must reduce emissions and stabilise the levels of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere; secondly, we must adapt climate-friendly lifestyles and pursue the principles of sustainable economic growth.

Although Pakistan is facing environmental challenges, which include climate change impacts, loss of biological diversity, deforestation and degradation of air and water quality, Pakistan is trying to respond well. Because of the deteriorating economy, the country could not do much. But still, the present government has launched the Ten Billion Trees Tsunami Programme to lead the country towards aiming at revival of forestry and control air, weather, wildlife, forestation, watershed management and soil conservation to combat the negative impacts of climate change. Pakistan is amongst the pioneers who have established a climate ministry. The country has also launched the Climate Change Policy 2012. The National Climate Change Policy comprehensively addresses all possible challenges of climate change and provides a foundational framework to tackle the problem. But Pakistan alone cannot do it. It is a global issue. The whole of the world’s future is at stake.

It is time that the United Nations, along with all 195 countries, do not let the grass grow under its feet and act now to save the mother earth.

The writer is an advocate of the High Court and teaches law

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