Rendering climate justice

E minent science fiction writer William Gibson is often credited with his bestknown aphorism: “The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed yet.” In the case of Pakistan, the possibility of climate-destabilisation is no longer a myth but a reality. The message is quite obvious: the harms have begun, and eventually becoming more widespread with the passage of time. Consider the recent floods: one-third of the country is underwater, more than 1,500 people have lost their lives among a total of 33 million victims.

The net result of this climate crisis, which has resulted in eight weeks of torrential rains, is nothing short of an apocalyptic — catapulting a nation of 220 million people into a humanitarian crisis, a food crisis, an economic crisis, a health crisis and an education crisis — all in one. With the nation’s climate minister very accurately labelling, it as a “crisis of unimaginable proportions”. Much worse is how the survivors now continue to face fresh fears, with an impending malaria and dengue epidemic on the rise, loss of crops, and a rapid increase in starvation. Having inflicted an estimated $30 billion loss on the country’s economy, these floods are a wake-up call for the world’s most densely populated region.

Although the US and several other nations continue to pledge their humanitarian assistance, these pledges fall short of what is actually needed to overcome the scale of this atrocious calamity. How unfortunate it is that the world’s largest carbon emitters have collectively failed to embrace loss and damage efforts while simultaneously falling short on mitigation and adaptation strategies. Though this is certainly not new, as the colonial tradition of extracting resources from the Global South to enrich the Global North and releasing large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere has put some of the world’s most vulnerable populations on the front lines of the impacts of climate change.

The IPCC report, released earlier this year, clearly states that the vulnerability to climate impacts differs between regions and is driven by patterns of intersecting socioeconomic development, unsustainable sea and land use, injustice, marginalisation, historical and persistent patterns of inequality such as colonialism, and governance. Historian David Gilmartin outlined the extensive environmental changes which during the colonial era occurred in the Indus Basin, the very heartland of today’s Pakistan as “one of the world’s greatest environmental transformations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries”.

In particular, he notes that the areas of western Punjab, being established during the colonial era to meet the rising demands of agriculture, “were not settled, even at the height of the Mughal Empire”. It is therefore unsurprising that, despite its large historical culpability, the United Kingdom’s response to Pakistan has been to champion charity over justice. It has recently offered to match public donations and gift a paltry £26.5 million in total, extremely inadequate considering Pakistan’s losses, now estimated to be far greater than $30 billion.

And, this very failure to fund a loss and damage mechanism has been viewed by many as a “gaping hole” in the international legal governance structure of climate change. Considering how the US, which is responsible for a quarter of historical emissions, still continues to reap benefits of this unabashed exploitation, raking in insurmountable wealth and power while, its emissions cause a distressing $2 trillion worth of damage on developing countries like Pakistan, where the floods are a direct result of melting glaciers. And as glaciers melt, not only are ecosystems and industries annihilated, but an important source of freshwater also disappears.

Not to forget that with the burning of fossil fuels, it is only a matter of time before disaster strikes the rest of the world. Reminding us how crucial it is in today’s day and age, to realise that the idea around intergenerational climate justice is an extremely vital step for bringing legal accountability to those actors who fail to effectively play their part in mitigating climate change. As climate negotiators prepare to gather for the annual UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt later this year, with images of Pakistan’s massive human suffering being prominent in everyone’s minds. This might be the most ideal of all situations for pushing the developed world on agreeing with the establishment of a loss and damage finance facility at their very earliest.

Last year, the 2021 Glasgow Climate Pact fell short of establishing a loss and damage facility that could have helped streamline aid to Pakistan and other developing nations. As establishing a loss and damage facility could have set in motion more concrete financial commitments to compensate for climate harm and streamline aid. Instead, the Glasgow Pact offered a loss and damage “dialogue” that sought to “minimise and address loss and damage associated with the adverse impacts of climate change”. However, it is not yet too late. The international actors can certainly play their part by supporting local actors in their short-term response as well as long-term prevention and rehabilitation efforts.

The floods should serve as a formidable reminder for countries in the Global North to cut emissions drastically so that those in the Global South, contributing the least to climate change, no longer face these consequences. This is not just about aid anymore — but also about climate justice. Our people are the latest victims of a global crisis to which they have contributed almost nothing, and which has instead been fueled by the excessive emissions of rich countries and corporate polluters. The country is warming much faster than other nations. By the end of the century, it is predicted that the region’s temperature could rise by 4.9 degrees Celsius, more than double the “safe” 2-degree limit. And this, as NASA forecasted, could render swaths of Pakistan entirely uninhabitable.

This fundamental injustice is at the root of the increasing demands from Pakistan and the Global South for climate change redress. If immediate measures are not taken to improve climate crisis preparedness, mitigation and adaptation, then such disasters will worsen. UN Secretary General António Guterres urged: “Today it’s Pakistan. Tomorrow, it could be your country.” Hence, for the foreseeable future we need to build a global Green New Deal capable of transforming our economies, eliminating colonial capitalism, and building the world anew