Climate change and Pakistan

Pakistan, like much of the world, is vulnerable to climate change. Over the past few years, we have witnessed extreme weather conditions that include floods, heavy monsoons and heatwaves — even while the country has contributed less to the overall environmental damage than other climate offenders.

According to a new report submitted to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, Pakistan ranks 31^st in terms of global emitters while it is the seventh most affected by climate change fallout. The increased frequency and intensity of heatwaves which claimed more than 1,200 lives in Pakistan in the year 2015 is a warning sign that the country is a victim of global climate change. Floods and hydro-disasters have also increased in frequency over the past few decades. Small communities near the riverbanks are routinely washed away. And if by any chance, floods spare these communities, they are hit by droughts that cause misery in areas like Tharparkar in Sindh, as well as in Balochistan.To address the growing threat from the climate change phenomenon, the federal government has already launched ‘Billion Tree’ plantation drive across the country. And this project has now been upscaled with plans to plant ‘10 Billion Trees’ countrywide over a period of five years. The mammoth project is meant to restore depleted forests and perhaps even reduce the impact of climate change.

With low emission levels and environment-friendly policies, Pakistan may be able to reduce the impact of climate change, but it will not be able to stop the process entirely. Faced with a host of issues that have been hampering a robust industrial activity for years, Pakistan is nowhere close to the big climate offenders, who have been involved in strong economic and industrial activity. The world’s biggest polluters — in both absolute as well as per capita terms — must now take action over their increasing emissions rates to prevent further damage to the global environment. For Pakistan the challenge is to create national environment-friendly policies that can further lower our emission levels in the future without hurting our economic and industrial growth.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 16^th, 2019.

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