Food insecurity

Why is the plight of millions of Pakistanis invisible? In a recently concluded two-day symposium on ‘Climate Change, Agriculture, Human Nutrition, and Development in Pakistan’ (Nov 29-30), hosted by the Institute for Global Health and Development (IGHD) at the Aga Khan University (AKU) in collaboration with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Pakistan (SDSN), experts painted a bleak picture for Pakistan if authorities continue to fail to take any meaningful step to mitigate the effects of climate change. These alarm bells have been raised intermittently, but unfortunately there has not been any constructive work in this regard. Prolonged heatwaves leading to crop damage; droughts; and apocalyptic floods have brought uncountable challenges for a majority of people, but since most of them are from the country’s rural areas, their suffering is rarely highlighted.

Climate change became a buzzword in 2022 when floods left one-third of the country underwater. But it quickly lost its relevance as most people shifted their focus to other issues. What needs to be emphasised is that climate effects are not limited to large-scale destruction of fertile lands or loss of cattle. Such events also push people down the poverty line. For example, hundreds of thousands of people who have been internally displaced are living hand-to-mouth in urban cities, with no major skill to earn a decent income, and yet we see the government not much interested in working for their rehabilitation. We have children going to sleep on an empty stomach. We have malnourished pregnant women who gave birth to underweight babies who require urgent medical care. All the while, we have leaders in Pakistan who keep bragging about the country’s young population, but do next to nothing about the health challenges that these people face. In most major cities, people line up in front of organisations to collect food parcels – most survive on one meal per day. The rising cost of food items and stagnant salaries have made living miserable for most people.

A healthy nation is key to a country’s success, and yet we have allowed prices of food items to be determined by market players. If we are to improve food security in our country, we have to analyse where we lack and what we could do to improve it. What we need is a home-grown solution to our problems. Regardless of foreign financial institutions’ critical role in the country’s economic stability, we cannot keep on nodding our heads to the economic model they provide. We have to involve grassroots organisations to better understand how climate change is impacting our people and what could be done to tackle the issue in an affordable way. Until then, we will keep expressing ‘thoughts and concerns’ – an exercise that has no positive impact on the lives of people – over the reports published by health institutions.