State of denial, yes this is the term which is very familiar to every Pakistani at least. When the world is facing the worst effects of climate change, Pakistan has still not bothered to take this issue seriously and take practical steps to address the climate hazards rather than claiming and issuing warnings…Pakistan still has miles to go before it can be considered prepared for inevitable climate change-related events.
Even if we are to ignore increasingly intense natural disasters, water scarcity is becoming more severer by the day, setting the stage for a major food crisis. There has been little effort to switch away from water-intensive crops. In fact, several political leaders have actually been pushing for expanding the domestic production of rice, wheat, sugarcane and cotton without offering up suggestions for where the water will come from. At the same time, food price inflation is also inevitable. Just as the war in Ukraine caused international grain prices to shoot up, recent record wildfires in Europe will also take their toll.
The recent heavy rains and floods have created an alarming situation for the country which is already facing diverse problems. The recent floods that have been triggered after heavy rains across the country have badly affected the infrastructure, especially in Balochistan, KP and Sindh. This is not the first time Pakistan is receiving heavy rainfall or faced floods, but our politicians always leave things to God rather than taking practical steps and then leaving the rest to Almighty Allah.
Climate change impacts are also causing massive changes in population concentrations — a new KTrade Securities report has noted that after the recent rains in Karachi, people are moving out of posh areas due to its rain sensitivity and moving to suburbs with better drainage. On food, the report stresses the need to widen the focus from raising fertiliser quality and yields to increasing storage capacity to reduce the impact of food price shocks. On the broader economy, however, the report ties everything back to food, noting that food inflation can cause significant political unrest, which in turn affects every sector of the economy and even daily life.
As for the other impacts, a recent UN report estimated Pakistan’s annual climate change-related economic losses as high as $26 billion a year, with fears that losses would increase until concrete action is taken. This makes Pakistan, in economic terms, the most at-risk country in South Asia, and among the most at-risk in the world if we exclude tiny island nations.
The government must take the climate hazards seriously and take steps on a war footing before it’s too late.
