Threats against the sustainable development of climate change are hard to overstate. Natural resources are depleting, threatening the survival of millions. Droughts, floods, wildfires and super-storms have become the order of the day. Climate change is also going to exacerbate vector-borne diseases.
In 2015, the government agreed to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts by committing to SDG 13, which is a part of the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” and the Paris Agreement. The agreement states; that all parties will agree to: “maintain the global average temperature well below 20C, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.50C above pre-industrial levels”.
However, no concrete measures have been taken by signatory governments to mitigate and control rising temperatures and extreme weather events, like Hurricane Irma and Maria in the Caribbean, or the extreme heat waves in Pakistan.
From rising of temperatures to erratic rainfall patterns, climate change has been impacting the South Asian population in a plethora of ways. Scores of studies predict that these climate changes are going to further exacerbate the situation.
According to the latest report by World Bank Group, South Asia’s Hotspots: The Impact of Temperature and Precipitation changes on Living Standard, extreme fluctuations in temperature, such as the 2015 heat wave have killed more than 3,500 people. There are many regions which are extremely vulnerable to climate change.
However, the failure of governments to deliver on their collective promise to address climate change has given birth to an alternative, in the shape of national-level litigation. Court cases that try to guarantee that governments fuse environmental change into their basic agendas, for instance when endorsing vitality framework, are not new.
No concrete measures have been taken by signatory governments to mitigate and control rising temperatures and extreme weather events, like Hurricane Irma and Maria in the Caribbean, or the extreme heat waves in Pakistan
An ongoing study expressed that by 2017; about 900 environmental change cases have been recorded. Nonetheless, in recent years, there has been a noteworthy increment in environmental change cases — those that try to challenge the foundational strategy of governments.
Only a couple of months after the judgment in the Urgenda case which was filed by a Dutch NGO (Urgenda Foundation) and 900 individual offended parties. They drove the Hague District Court, to arrange for the administration to decrease its ozone harming substance emanations by 25 percent, by the year 2020.
Inspired by this case, a Pakistani rancher was also effective in highlighting; in the Lahore High Court that the Pakistani government was not doing what is needed to deliver and adjust to the effects of environmental change, which in turn is undermining the nation’s food, water and energy security. The court agreed, and requested that the administration bring its National Climate Change Policy to actualisation. Additionally, the court formed a Climate Change Commission to manage the administration’s advance.
Since 2015, environmental cases that test the deficiency of the government’s environmental change approaches have been recorded, in Belgium, Switzerland, New Zealand, UK, Norway, India, Colombia, and the US. In the US, for instance, around 21 people are suing the government on the premise; that the administration’s arrangements encroach upon their rights to life, freedom and property.
Climate change is a threat to Pakistan’s security. The number of cases will increase exponentially over time and people will demand political accountability. These developments coupled together with the public’s growing impatience in dealing with political leadership makes litigation an effective tool to combat climate change.
The writer works for Islamabad Policy Research Institute and can be reached at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, September 2nd 2018.