US President Joe Biden has belatedly invited Pakistan to participate in the much-touted virtual summit on global climate change that is scheduled for later this week. Some 40 world leaders had already secured their place at the table. Those from South Asia included India, Bangladesh and Bhutan. Pakistan was conspicuous by its absence. Prime Minister Imran Khan tweeted his disapproval, noting that his government’s environmental. policies are driven by sustainability and the commitment to future generations.
To be sure, this was more than mere oversight. After all, Pakistan’s “Ten Billion Tree Tsunami” initiative, launched back in September 2018, had been well received around the world. The initiative in Phase-I is a four-year (2019- 2023) project implemented across Pakistan by the Ministry of Climate Change in partnership with provincial forest and wildlife departments; at a total cost of Rs125 billon. Yet that was seemingly not sufficient to win everyone over. As Cameron Munter, a former US ambassador to Pakistan, explained during last month’s Islamabad Security Dialogue: “Pakistan has lost a great deal of importance in the minds of the leadership in Washington. What that means is that for seventy years Pakistan has been seen by its location and importance to think. Location as a geo-strategic imperative. That question about location has changed!”
Of course, Pakistan’s geo-strategic location proved useful for Charlie Wilson’s war in expelling Russia from Afghanistan. More recently, Pakistan’s geo-strategic significance is what led it to being an important stakeholder in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which spans across 65 countries, involving 4.4 billion people and accounting for 40 percent of global GDP. Lastly, due to Pakistan’s geo-strategic location, the US has regularly outsourced responsibility to Islamabad for its exit from Afghanistan. This has not changed with Biden at the helm. The US has requested the Imran Khan government to facilitate US troop withdrawal by September 2021. Incidentally, this is 20 years to the day that the US approved the carpet bombing of Afghanistan, which was done with geo-strategically located Pakistan’s help.
It is the right time to build consensus and those vulnerable to climate change must take the lead in sharing experiences and offering technical assistance where possible. Pakistan is well placed to do just that
Pakistan ranks as one of the world’s ten most climate-vulnerable countries. Being home to the world’s fifth largest population (220 million), this vulnerability has immense human dimensions. Pakistan’s economy remains heavily dependent on agriculture. The country also faces serious water shortages has densely populated coastal spaces, and is susceptible to floods and droughts. All of which underscore its fragility and makes the initial delay in inviting Pakistan to the summit rather worrisome. Before Pakistan had been formally put on the virtual ‘guest list’, US-based South Asian affairs expert Michael Kugelman tweeted about how this represented a misstep, for the aforementioned reasons.
Perhaps the Biden White House came it its senses after doing a bit of homework. After all, TIME Magazine in its January 2020 cover, included the PM among the top five global leaders committed to the environment. Following the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, under former president Donald Trump, Washington has a lot of catching up to do on this front. By contrast, Pakistan’s landmark “Billion Tree Tsunami” project has won international acclaim, including at the World Economic Forum (WEC). Foreign office spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri said that the US virtual moot was bringing together the “leading global polluters” at a single platform to work out strategies to protect depleting natural resources and biodiversity levels. Not an international climate forum to decide future decisions on environmental conservation after all.
Pakistan’s Green Stimulus package has also been applauded by global experts. Launched in the wake COVID-19, it aims to protect nature while offering green jobs to the ‘guardians of nature’. At a lecture that this scribe attended in Boston, Dr Kathy MacKinnon, Chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas welcomed the move, saying: “This is an excellent model for linking economic development with a new deal for nature.” The Climate Change Ministry of Pakistan in a tweet on its official page asserted: “Pakistan has passed a crucial milestone on the road to environmental protection by meeting the overarching @UN Sustainable Development Goal 13, which calls for urgent actions to combat #ClimateChange and its impacts, 10 years ahead of the deadline, reveals the UN SDG Report 2020.”
Despite being eventually invited to the virtual summit, Imran Khan should begin looking towards hosting its own climate change moot — possibly in collaboration with China — including both the developed nations as well as those from the Global South. After all, Pakistan’s go-green polices are being picked by up other countries. Saudi Arabia, for example, recently announced a 10 billion tree plantation programme. It is the right time to build consensus and those vulnerable to climate change must take the lead in sharing experiences and offering technical assistance where possible. Pakistan is well placed to do just that.
The writer is a financial inclusion expert working for the Punjab government and tweets @MushafKhanPak