Imagine you shifted to a house 78 years ago. The house had a few rooms and sufficient resources to take care of the needs ofyour family.
Soon after you shifted, you realised that the neighbourhood of that house started to expand, affecting the overall environment with the consequences for you in future. This demanded some action but you chose not to take it seriously.
Meanwhile, as your family grew, the house once sufficient for you suddenly became stifling. You should have heeded the signals, but you again shrug off the warnings and this neglect persisted for years.
After 78 years of not taking anything seriously your house starts trembling, the system succumbs, infrastructure collapses and the disasters become more frequent and all you could do is to watch it fall apart. Will you still consider it an unforeseen shock? Will you not attribute it to decades of negligence, poor planning and governance?
If you are already relating it to the story of Pakistan, your guesswork is spot on. We watch the country tremble because we chose not to take anything seriously. Our climate change crisis amplified over the years and nature with all its wrath is calling the shots now because we chose not to respond to the alarms. And if you think this is the worst we are facing, unfortunately this will only get severe from here on. If we still choose to stick to our favourite strategy of not taking this seriously, the collapse is inevitable. We need to acknowledge that we are precariously placed with a ticking time bomb which can implode anytime and the least it demands is to be taken seriously now.
Climate change has been resonating in power corridors as a ‘topic for debate’ for a long time now, culminating in multi-layered and intertwined authorities, ministries, committees and think tanks, etc. On the other hand, academia has found in ‘climate change’ a handy term to exploit by flooding research journals with articles and essays. The impact of all these efforts, however, is hardly visible anywhere. Does this imply that all the efforts are futile? It would be a little too harsh to discard all the efforts made towards combating climate change challenges. However, sometimes all you need is to spot a lacuna to make everything work in your favor.
Plenty has been said and written on this subject. However, one important yet least discussed dimension is the need for vertical and horizontal integration and coordination of all the stakeholders. A large body of research provides strong support to cooperation as an efficient strategy as it enhances the capacity of the stakeholders. Now is the time to effectively use this evidence and ensure the logical and workable integration of all the stakeholders.
Climate change is an inter-disciplinary subject, which means no single entity can provide the solutions to all the problems. For instance, efficient predictions and forecasts alone are not sufficient, unless shared and coordinated with local departments and authorities. National and provincial housing policies are useless, unless rigorous compliance by the concerned departments is ensured and developing tourism infrastructure may have negative outcomes if the cost of it is deforestation etc. These examples make a strong case for placing all stakeholders at one dashboard. This will ensure that all the efforts are aligned and rationalised to achieve a bigger common goal of sustainability by strengthening the governance structure.
Climate change-driven disasters are the new normal for Pakistan and lamenting them will not prevent the recurrence. Effective disaster management is not limited to post-disaster responses; pre-disaster actions are equally important. For this to work, coordination among all the stakeholders is essential. Pakistan needs strong and well-integrated governance framework to tackle the nature’s challenge. The recent floods are a serious wake-up call and we as a nation need to take it seriously this time. We may not get another chance.
The writer is a lecturer at Climate Change Sciences Department, University of Agriculture in Peshawar. He can be reached at: ahmed.sheharyar1990@gmail.com
