It takes a 17-year-old to tell the world, without mincing any words at all, that its denial will cost it its children. Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has condemned the “empty words” of world leaders, a day before the fifth year anniversary of the Paris Climate Accord. The very glaring fact is that global climate change is no longer a problem that may occur in the distant future; the catastrophe is already upon us. Years of rising temperatures and melting polar ice caps have caused a massive increase in natural disasters. Famine has become more commonplace and coastal areas around the world may soon be inundated, creating millions of climate refugees.
The UN has warned that earth remains on course to warm more than 3 degrees Celsius by the century’s end despite a dip in greenhouse gas emissions. On top of it all, experts fear that a rebound in carbon emissions is nearly inevitable in the coming year. And yet the international community has been slow to respond. The Paris agreement on reducing carbon emissions was signed by most countries of the world but it didn’t set binding targets and even its suggested recommendations do not go anywhere near far enough to avert disaster.
As far as Pakistan is concerned, it is one a country that — despite not even contributing one percent to global emissions — is the fifth most vulnerable to climate change. Encouragingly, Prime Minister Imran Khan was chosen amongst the top 10 global leaders to showcase climate action by the country at the Climate Action Summit recently held. Pakistan has said it has tried to effectively combat climate change by focusing on nature based solutions as a prime climate mitigation tool, as well as staying away from more dirty coal projects. It is not all doom and gloom though since there is still hope that if the world cut down global emissions drastically it would result in a reduction in the risk of unprecedented warming even within the next two decades. As one of the countries predicted to suffer the most due to climate change, we should be operating on an emergency footing. We will only overcome the worst effects of climate change with concerted global action but every country needs to start doing its bit now.