As Pakistan battles the fallout from climate change that is rapidly engulfing the country, ongoing and recent policy failures dictate the need for a fundamental change in the country’s direction.
This is the notably powerful reality if Pakistan is serious about meeting the consequences of climate change, widely seen as the biggest challenge in the nation’s 77 years of history. In brief, tackling climate change requires a radical internal change for a higher cause.
The seriousness of this challenge was spelt out recently by no one less than Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb, who publicly named climate change and Pakistan’s population growth together as posing an existential threat to the country’s very existence.
That acknowledgement in public was indeed timely. But it is still far from becoming commendable unless the country moves quickly and decisively to back the words of policymakers with major policy shifts.
It is abundantly clear that a radical policy shift is essential if Pakistan seeks to make a meaningful difference in its future outlook. This is all the more essential as Pakistan has already witnessed an exacerbation of its challenges in recent years, which have tragically added further momentum to the process of climate change.
The most obvious area in need of change must primarily tie to the need for blocking a further aggravation in the outlook for Pakistan’s agricultural sector. In recent years, the consequence of years of neglect of Pakistan’s agricultural economy has returned to haunt the country, such as through rapid advancement in deforestation without urgently filling the gap through quick reforestation. Consequently, the depletion of Pakistan’s forestry resources has contributed to land erosion that contributed to the terrible floods of 2022. Recurring crop failures have also emerged from the effects of climate change.
Another major area that has given an impetus to rapid climate change, remains the increasingly challenged case of major crops at the centre of Pakistan’s farm economy. As farmers proceed later this month to reap the latest harvest of this year’s wheat crop, many of them already face the prospect of significant losses surrounding Pakistan’s main cash crop.
The cycle of loss surrounding wheat output in particular and the farm economy, in general, began following a policy failure in early 2024. Then the ruling structure in the Punjab – the largest wheat-growing region of Pakistan – while celebrating their electoral victory of February 2024 consciously forced the largest financial loss over wheat growers in recent memory.
The provincial government quietly withdrew an earlier offer which promised farmers to purchase stocks of wheat at Rs3900 per maund (40 kgs).The poorest farmers of Pakistan who did not have deep enough pockets to store their produce in the hope of a coming recovery of prices, were eventually forced to sell their stocks at discounts of up to 30-35 per cent or around Rs2600 per maund (40 kgs).
With that background, many farmers planted this year’s wheat crop knowing well that their yield would simply break even. Yet, early reports from Pakistan’s rain-fed areas in particular during recent months, have presented much evidence of the growth of the wheat crop falling behind expectations.
This was largely due to scant rainfall that left farmers in rain-fed areas without adequate water. Even farmers in canal irrigated areas were forced to rely on diesel-run or electricity-driven tubewells to meet their irrigation needs, adding a significant addition to their costs.
Away from the agricultural sector, the ruling structure’s order of priorities leaves a major gap. Its priority appears to be urban Pakistan. That Pakistan’s growth model will successfully proceed with initiatives like more motorways or train projects must be forcefully challenged. And among the most comical pursuits must be the plan to establish a new train line from Rawalpindi to Islamabad and northwards to Murree. To make matters worse from a planning and developmental viewpoint, that project is proposed to include a glass cover on top of the train, to enhance its appeal to the public.
Such proposed initiatives present the worst disconnect between Pakistan’s grassroots realities and developmental needs. In other words, this is another example of another pipe dream added to the scores of others in the past, that have led Pakistan to a high degree of indebtedness.
Going forward, Pakistan needs to urgently embrace ‘Change’ if it aspires to tackle the fallout from ‘Climate change’. That requires a new way of life beginning from the top tiers of the ruling structure to its lowest tier.
Changing the way Pakistan functions today requires such unpalatable steps as an absolute freeze on funds given to members of the federal and provincial legislatures. Anecdotal evidence in the past has suggested vast pilferage in such spending.
Similarly, tight curbs must be placed on wasteful expenditures across Pakistan’s institutions. Instead, the resources so saved must then be devoted to tackling the fallout from climate change, as a national emergency in need of an immediate response.
The writer is an Islamabad-based journalist who writes on political and economic affairs. He can be reached at: farhanbokhari@gmail.com
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