KARACHI:
The notion that climate change exacerbates political instability is backed by a Stanford-based study conducted in 2019 that estimated that the risk of armed conflict has increased from 3% to 20% in the past century with trends likely to accelerate in future. In this respect, it is apt to highlight that one of the major causes of the Syrian civil war can be attributed to the mass rural-urban migration triggered due to severe drought. Likewise, the 2018 UN report elucidated the connection between conflicts in the horn of Africa and climate change leading to subsequent calls for state-level climate risk management.
In this respect, the current focus of research studies is to identify the gap in the context of conflict and climate change. Thus, the conflict-climate nexus is visible in areas where conflicts are underway, services are inaccessible and institutions are weak and staggering. Most importantly, in autocratic regimes the political impacts of climate change are also likely to manifest. The reason why climate change has political ramifications is that it tends to shine a light on the poor system of governance. Consequently, decades of neglect and inability to foment disaster management strategies come to the forefront in the midst of a climate calamity. Furthermore, climate change also accentuates the state’s level of transparency and accountability with its citizens in the context of sharing accurate information about the upcoming disaster and the extent to which measures have been taken against it in the form of mitigation, prevention and future rehabilitation.
Thus, what is imperative in the current global scenario is to increase the scope of research in political dimension of climate change and how indicators such as food insecurity, inflation, internal migration and loss of jobs can lead to a political demise in climate insecure countries. In this respect, the political future of Pakistan doesn’t look much promising, with heat wave, locust attacks, droughts and cycle of flooding operating in the backdrop.
Hadia Mukhtar
Karachi
Published in The Express Tribune, April 21st, 2021.
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