Daily Times

The environmentalists are of the view thatin developing nations like Pakistan, planetary climatic changes have acted as a threat multipliers and it’s high timethat the country needs to expand horizon of its national security policy by including environmental security.

Daily Times talked to some relevant experts on the occasion of World Environment Day 2022, which is marked on June 5 every year, who shared that leading to disease outbreaks, food insecurity, water shortage, poverty, and other violations of human rights, posing dire security and existential risks to the country.

Despite being blessed with a diverse topography and unique ecosystems, they added, Pakistan’s ability to cope with climatic changes and climate-related disasters is abysmal, added the experts.

Dr. Muhammad Irfan Khan, Professor of Environmental Science at International Science at International Islamic University (IIU), Islamabad said that the country direly needed to expand the horizon of its national security policy by including the environmental security in terms of water, food and energy security; and at the same time to include environmental diplomacy in our foreign policy.

In response to a question that why Pakistan is so vulnerable to climate change, Prof Khan responded that “first is the geographic location of Pakistan that its north is the third largest ice storage of the world in the form of glaciers, which are melting due to rising temperature causing floods that bring havoc and secondly, we have not developed flood protection mechanisms by constructing water reservoirs which can mitigate the devastating effects of flood. However, the experts also narrated, the country’s contribution to carbon pollution is negligible when compared to the big emitters.

According to a German watchdog survey, Pakistan has been ranked in the top 10 ten of the most affected countries by climate change in the past 20 years and the ever-expanding population was creating a major role in worsening this situation.

Moreover, the country so far remained dependent on fossil fuels, its agricultural and water management practices are antiquated and carbon-intensive, while deforestation continues to make way for brick-and-mortar structures and effluents and plastic choke our waterways.

Furthermore, the government’s inability to counter the hazards of a changing climate is also on account of a lack of resources required to mitigate its effects and set the country on a more sustainable path. Although incumbent climate change Minister Sherry Rehman seemed more active in political matters than engaging herself as per her ministerial portfolio but unlike her predecessor she at least stressed on climate financing at Stockholm+50 meeting held recently.

Another environmentalist of the some countries who are responsible for global warming and plundering natural resources have so far failed in mobilizing the promised $100 billion to aid environmental recovery in developing countries.

Pakistan is a country without a choice on climate adaptation as it is facing up to the impacts at ground “zero”. The country’s climate adaptation needs are between $7 to $14 billion per annum and this is all forced adaptation.

A senior official at the Climate Change Ministry told this scribe that besides some other laxities on policy making ever changing climate, it was imperative that the country has developed a long-term climate adaptation framework that permeates every level of financial and social development.

A young environmental activist Greta Thunberg once said back in 2019 that “change change is the biggest threat to national security and the house is indeed on fire.”

Each year, World Environment Day is hosted by a different country where the official celebrations take place. Last year’s theme was “Ecosystem Restoration” and Pakistan was the host and this year it was hosted by Sweden with the “Only One Earth”, which focuses on living sustainably in harmony with nature.

The available information stated that worse environmental condition in Pakistan also caused by the impact of back-to-back floods since 2010, the worst drought episode (1998-2002) as well as more recent droughts in Tharparkar and Cholistan, the intense heat wave in Karachi and Southern parts of the country in July 2015, severe windstorms in Islamabad in June 2016, increased cyclonic activity and increased incidences of landslides and Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) in the northern parts of the country.