Why is it difficult to sell climate change story of our flood?

UN Secretary General António Guterres, US President Joe Biden, Angelina Jolie, as well as the Pakistan government are linking the Pakistani flood with climate change. But it is so difficult to sell the climate change story of the Pakistani flood to people in the Western world. Why?

Joan Didion wrote a famous book, We tell ourselves stories in order to live. Stories are powerful. Historically, stories have spread from philosophy and anthropology to politics and religion. Recently stories have conquered the world through public policies and business models.

People living overseas do not see positive stories about Pakistan in spite of our moral stand on Kashmir, sacrifices in the war on terror and now climate change miseries. Why?

Storytelling does not depend on language alone. Stories are also complemented by visual images, numbers, trust, democracy, transparency, reflectivity and creativity. All these components shape Pakistan as perceived by the West. We should ask ourselves whether our stories contribute to making this world better. By so doing, we contribute to creating a new perspective in the light of future climate change.

Are Pakistan’s stories about the superfloods of 2010 and 2022? Do these superfloods require a rethink of Pakistan’s existing development model? In the presence of scientific evidence and international support, why does the transition from the superfloods of 2010 to a sustainable future lack positive imagination?

For transitioning to a climate change future, Pakistan has to play a role in devising the future of the country and the world.

In 2008, Professor Nick Low of the University of Melbourne wrote: “Pakistan will suffer from climate change in a horrifying way. The Indus will first swell with the additional melt water. But once the ice has gone, the Indus will dry up. Unless global warming is contained below two degrees, Pakistan’s future will be limited to not much more than 200 years .. Pakistanis are not to blame for climate change. Their impact per person is many times smaller than that of the developed economies. But Pakistan can no longer follow a fossil fulled path to development. That path is illusory and leads not to the satisfaction of wealth but to famine and disaster for Pakistan.”

Since the 2010 superflood, we have failed to develop our stories and our role in devising future paths of development. The silence is such that government, industry, academia and society in Pakistan still find themselves locked in the carbon-intensive development model of building motorways, ring roads, promoting car-based gated communities and developing a consumer society. This model of development is a social and political force compelling everyone to choose a carbon-intensive lifestyle.

We cannot blame the developed world only for climate change miseries in Pakistan without addressing our own model of carbon-intensive development and its associated financial privileges for the elite. The automobile city of Islamabad and suburban satellites of DHA and Bahria Town in every city are a major causes of carbon emissions because such development drains natural resources from sand to water, from steel to cement. Looking at urbanisation trends, the carbon-intensive model is evidently unsustainable and weakens our story of blaming developed countries as the cause of climate change and the flooding in Pakistan.

The problem is not one of awareness, policy, funding and political stability. Breaking out of the existing pattern of development and instead devising and transitioning to a more sustainable path is difficult. We could blame IK, NS and Zardari, but the professional leadership is missing to imagine a Pakistani model of climate-sensitive development.

Pakistan, in large, has a problem of imagining both the problems and the solutions in every field. Pakistani governments and professionals present the environment and climate change as an interest of the rich West and fail to connect the causes to our own everyday behaviour of development and consumption. Images of our cities obscured by smog and air pollution, the 12-lane highways of Islamabad, farm houses and the crushed machine images of Margalla Hills and Hasan Abdal Hills show the world our development model, making it hard to sell our story of the West’s moral responsibility when asking aid for flooding.

Pakistan has to clear its own skies, clean its own waterways, protect its local biodiversity and discourage urban sprawl and motorised traffic before selling its story of climate misery to the world. Pakistan has to try an alternative carbon-sensitive model of development by providing streets for people rather than cars, supporting apartment-style housing over bungalows and farm houses, supporting local businesses over malls, and supporting local food products over imported equivalents. The stories of the alternative model and our positive contribution to addressing climate change will send a powerful message to the world.

Pakistan’s response to this flood and future climate change events should be to address its own behaviour first and then develop an alternative path that speaks for itself. Pakistan has to become an agent of change in devising climate-sensitive knowledge for developing countries. We have to demonstrate how the future influences how we act today. Our policies and projects should be built upon the foreseeable effects of climate change, connected to the social aspirations of the Pakistani people.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 18^th, 2022.

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