Global warming and citizens’ involvement

France sees several initiatives by non-government organisations

The interim government sworn in early August has talent that was not available to the political government it has replaced. This is the case in particular in foreign affairs which is now looked after by a person with rich knowledge of world affairs, of the global problems that Pakistan will need to deal with, and of finding an appropriate place for Pakistan in the rapidly changing political and economic world order. Of great urgency is to involve the country’s citizens in finding ways to save the country from being hurt by climate change. One way of proceeding is to educate the public about various aspects of not just global warming but also improving the quality of the air we breathe. Pakistan, as is the case with neighbouring India, has the world’s most polluted city airs. According to some estimates, the poor quality of air has already reduced life expectancy in the major cities of the two countries. What could be done to improve the quality of citizen’s environment? This brings me to the initiative non-government organisations are taking in France.

Fresco is not a commonly used word in English language. It refers to the art of putting together bits and pieces to paint a whole picture. This is being done by a group that organises ‘Climate Fresk’, named for fresco. These are workshops run by private organisations that are known by that name. People gather in public places such as pubs and restaurants and use cards depicting various aspects of global warming to draw the full picture. The final product is a large and colorful board that has small pictures about the environment and how it could be hurt by what the people do. The popularity of the events has drawn more than a million people in France and has expanded to the other countries in Europe to alert people how they might be hurt by global warming. Cedirc Rigenbach, creator of the Climate Fresk, explains that the messages conveyed by the cards is focused on the science behind climate change and allows participants to make up their minds about what needs to be done to deal with the rapidly worsening situation. “It is not the fresco that challenges the political-economic paradigm,” he said, “It’s the participants who come to these conclusions. We are here to pave the way.”

The workshops use cards to convey information provided by reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body which has developed 42 cards representing the various stages of climate change, from the use of fossil fuels to the melting of glaciers. With guidance provided by a trained facilitator, participants are asked to arrange the cards on a large sheet of paper to represent the causes and consequences of climate change.

Since they began in 2018, the cards that are assembled to draw the whole picture have been translated into some 50 languages and about 200,000 people outside France including thousands in the United States have learnt about the meaning of global warming. These events have become a popular way of transmitting important messages to the citizenry.

I am focusing on the work being done by Climate Fresk and how the technique is being used in France to draw some lessons for Pakistan. Interest in the approach has been such that it is now an important part of the introductory courses at various elite French universities. It is also being used to train civil bureaucracy. Claire Landais who, as the government’s secretary general, is one of France’s top civil servants. She said the stakes were high in training fellow civil servants because they were the ones who would be putting climate policies in place and watch its implementation. She underwent an initial training that included Climate Fresk which she described as “a very rich and dense” workshop.

This discussion leads me to draw three lessons for Pakistan which faces a situation that is not fully understood by the policymakers in the country.

The first lesson is to centre the training of the bureaucracy that has the wherewithal to lead the effort. Given the recent changes in the civil leadership in the country, I would assign this responsibility to the Foreign Ministry which is now led by a person who has good knowledge of the way the rest of the world is addressing the problems created by climate change.

The second lesson is to use the systems of cards developed by Climate Fresk but include the material that is pertinent for Pakistan. The Pakistani government, both at the federal level as well as in the provinces, must train the civil servants to develop an understanding of the reason why the country has one of the more polluted atmospheres in the major cities. We know the reasons, but little action is being taken to deal with them. On a recent visit to Kartarpur from Lahore — where I had gone to see the rebuilt temple that honours Guru Nanaka Sahib, the founder of the Sikh religion — I saw dozens of brick-making plants that were burning soft coal. They were throwing dark smoke into the atmosphere. A law was on the books that banned the operation but was totally ignored. Also, the farming community continues to burn crop residue to prepare the land for the next crop. This happens in both the Pakistani and Indian Punjabs, sending polluted air from one country to the other.

Third, we need to take action to store the water that is now coming down the major rivers because of more-than-normal melting of the ice on the mountains in the county’s east (the Himalayas) as well as northwest (the Hindukush). One impression I have of the Pakistani bureaucracy is that its members don’t read the readily available reports on various aspects of life in Pakistan. For instance, the Lahore-based Burki Institute of Public Policy, the BIPP, writes and publishes a report every year that focuses on the state of the economy as well as on one subject on which the institution’s professional staff has done serious work. These reports could be followed by policymakers to take appropriate action. However, my impression is that the bureaucracy pays little attention to what we have analysed and the policy recommendations we have made.

To get the civil service informed, I would place the management of the Climate Fresk in the Foreign Ministry. The ministry would obtain the cards and then make changes to make them relevant for the situation in Pakistan. It would then develop training programme for the bureaucracy. An informed bureaucracy is necessary for making good public policy.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 28^th, 2023.

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