The climate hypocrisy in Pakistan

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It's easy to say that we're the ones hit hardest by climate change while contributing the least to it, but only those truly suffering its effects understand what that really means. Driving around in our own cars, spending our work and personal lives in air-conditioned spaces during the hot summer, eating food perfectly suited to the weather, and then shedding crocodile tears over the miseries of climate change is just a joke.

Even though the famous "Let them eat cake" line is likely a myth attributed to her, if the Queen of France were alive today, she'd probably suggest installing AC if the poor are suffering from scorching heat. Looking around, many people who constantly complain about the suffering of the poor due to climate change have likely only seen poverty in movies and read about it in books.

If they've ever actually met someone poor, they probably first worried about the person's germs and smell towards them before pretending to be kind. Is this what real climate leadership looks like in Pakistan?

Another, less intense form of climate demagoguery sometimes appears in Pakistan. These individuals, often educated in grammar schools but maintaining a lifestyle reminiscent of government school graduates, are gradually becoming more popular. They strategically use their English fluency in upper-class circles, especially when dealing with donors or those who benefit from their projects.

However, when they need to connect with the general public, they switch to a deliberately slower, translated Urdu. This bilingual display often impresses donors and sponsors, leading them to consider these individuals for future grants. The real challenge arises after receiving funding, as their background primarily lies in grammar schools and they struggle to connect with the real native majority.

The often-disheartening process of using grants typically starts when a handful of capable individuals from the public are brought in to carry out the project and meet its goals. But even then, those receiving the grants often stumble by choosing the wrong people for the job. Individuals who claim to truly represent a community can become so professionalised that the community itself recognises them as elements who exploit it for small sums of money.

The grant recipients realise this when they begin mobilising communities for a cause with the help of their mediators. A good number of people do participate from the communities, but their proportion is insignificant compared to the total population.

The Thar Coalfield serves as a stark example. Despite significant threats to both its people and environment, effective protests that reach the project's potential beneficiaries have been quite difficult to organise so far. While a small number of people from across the country occasionally join demonstrations, the participation of local residents also remains surprisingly low mostly as compared to Thar's total population. It's understandable to attribute this to fear of repercussions.

However, one must also consider if the limited local involvement is due to a different factor: the financiers of protests against coal power plants often bypass genuine community representatives — those who may not be fluent in English — and instead fund a select few.

It has also been noticed for some time that when a well-funded NGO struggled to gain significant traction in a community, it would change its focus to an easier area. They would then target specific groups like doctors, teachers or small business owners. While these are definitely community groups, they can't really be considered marginalised communities.

Some NGOs, regardless of whether an issue involves LGBTQ+ or transgender people, would include them simply to show their donors they were working with genuinely marginalised populations. Regarding climate change, it affects all kinds of communities, no matter their gender identity. It's also true that the communities mentioned earlier don't live together in a specific neighbourhood or settlement.

A noteworthy trend emerging recently is how NGOs adapt when their grassroots efforts to promote climate action falter. Instead of persisting at the ground level, they tend to shift their focus upwards. For instance, if working in informal settlements or slums becomes too challenging, they might move to lower-middle-class housing areas where labourers and manual workers live.

Even if they struggle to make an impact there, perhaps due to their initial lack of connection with the communities and continued reliance on partner organisations, they keep elevating their target groups. This upward trajectory can eventually lead them to engaging with the upper echelons of society, the very circles they often originate from.

This raises the question: what's the point of promoting a climate-friendly product by focusing on supply when the real need is to generate demand? Ultimately, these unsuccessful initiatives often culminate in events at five-star hotels, where business leaders and political figures readily join in, and such gatherings are then hailed as successes.

In Pakistan, genuine grassroots NGOs will continue to lack financial support unless their capacity is built and all obstacles between them and donors are removed. While this sounds simple, actually doing it is incredibly difficult. All those benefiting from NGO funding, from the primary recipients to the end beneficiaries, will likely maintain their alliances to sideline the true community representatives, who unfortunately bear some responsibility for this unfavourable situation.

Firstly, these representatives are often unwilling to improve their skills in areas like climate change and NGO grant management. In today's digital age, they don't need to travel far for in-person training. They can address this by finding online academies that can enhance their climate action skills.