Post 1.5 C

Last week’s unseasonal spell of rain and snowfall in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan turned to tragedy, resulting in the deaths of around 45 people, including at least 27 children. The loss in homes, food crops, livestock and damage to infrastructure was also extensive, with hundreds of homes reported to have been washed away. Such intense rain and snow, that too during the dying days of winter, are indeed rare in Pakistan, with one resident of Karak District in KP reportedly claiming that he had only experienced snow in his area for a few minutes around 25 to 30 years ago. Combined with the fact that Pakistan is a country that struggles to prepare for even the most predictable outcomes and one gets the recipe for last week’s disaster. The damage is only compounded by the fact that many of the areas affected are still struggling to recover from the devastation wrought by the 2022 floods.

Changes in one’s environment should prompt changes in behaviour. Appropriate responses to the 2022 floods, a warning of the kind of damage climate change can unleash, should have prompted a serious and concerted effort towards building climate-resilient infrastructure. This is not much in-evidence. In fact, it would be fair to say that humanity is for the most part blithely unperturbed by the increasingly dangerous climate patterns we are witnessing, when judged by its actions and not words. This view is only reinforced by the fact that the Loss and Damage Fund meant to compensate and remedy the damage done to communities most affected by climate change, principally poorer countries in the Global South, is still yet to be fully operationalized and financed.

This is over a year on from the agreement to establish the fund at COP27 in 2022. The rich countries are apparently having a hard time parting with the pitiful $700 million estimated to have been pledged to the fund thus far but have no problems shelling out around $7 trillion every year in subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. It is thus of little surprise that experts are coming to the terrifying conclusion that the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit set at the Paris Agreement back in 2015 is looking increasingly untenable. Meeting this target would reportedly require a 43 per cent cut in emissions by 2030 relative to 2019 levels. Given that even mobilizing $700 million for climate compensation appears to be a challenge, staying under 1.5 degrees Celsius seems utterly fantastical at this point. After all, 2023 was the hottest on record and by the end of January 2024, the world marked its first 12-month period above the 1.5 degrees Celsius. We already appear to have entered the post-1.5 degrees Celsius era, and what happened in Pakistan last week might just be a small taste of what is to come.