Daily Times

The climate threat is over to South Asia, a wake-up call for SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) as water shortages, drought, floods or landslides and tsunamis are not constrained by national boundaries.

Addressing to a virtual conference on “Climate Threat to South Asia” as keynote speaker on Monday, Coordinator to Federal Tax Ombudsman Meher Kashif Younis said without joint action “the collective economy of six countries, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka could shrink by up to 1.8pc every year by 2050 and 8.8pc by 2100 on average and Pakistan and Afghanistan are not far behind”, which he added is a serious wake-up call for SAARC to tailor a strategy to hammer this situation.

He said the Asian Development Bank recently underscored the impact of climate change in South Asia and a “warming trend of about 0.75 C has been observed in temperatures in South Asia over the past century.”

He said unless there is a strenuous endeavour worldwide to cut greenhouse gas emissions, this region will suffer huge economic, social and environmental damage from the consequences of climate change.

Meher Kashif said the South Asia club could do well to iron out political differences between Pakistan and India to jointly vacate the threat the member states are confronting. He said a climate-driven deep crisis can be like a locust invasion.

He said it affects the hydrological cycle, influencing both water availability and demand. Climate change, several studies, say is inevitably “greater in the Hindu Kush Himalaya(HKH) mountainous region of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan, than other parts of the world.

He said glaciers are one of the most important indicators of climate change and the KHK region is host to some of the world’s largest glaciers which are the major water sources of the Indus, Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers.

He said these river basins remain very sensitive to climate change. The glaciers in this region are also feared to be among the world’s fastest thinning glaciers, he added.

Meher Kashif Younis while concluding his remarks said if the looming threat were not offset post-haste to thwart the inevitable, the impact would not spare Indian states surrounding Bangladesh as well as other countries in the neighbourhood.