A step away from the chasm

We can all see that humanity is facing possibly the worst crisis in its history. According to NASA scientists, global temperatures in the last 20 years have been the hottest on record. In our cities, we have experienced these climate changes and the growing heat wave, as a result of which there are also chaotic climate patterns bringing storms and rains at unexpected times. This changes what should be the norm for farmers and leaves many facing the destruction of crops even as they watch due to an unexpected climatic event.

But there is more to this than appears on the surface. In the first place, climate change is very real, despite the denials by US President Donald Trump and his team. We now have experience in parts of the globe, from the forest fires of California and Australia to dramatic events such as unexpected storms and heavy rainfall, leaving people in a disaster situation in our own country. But the reasons for this are not climate change alone. They are also linked to humans stepping back from nature, and the result of this phenomenon across the world.

Essentially, people who live in cities have lost contact with nature or the ability to admire all that it brings. In Pakistan, for example, we see tourists destroying sites of beauty by throwing trash in pristine areas or polluting waterways. The once beautiful Lake Saiful Malook is an example of this. Its turquoise waters are now a murky grey and kiosks selling junk food of every kind have been permitted around its rim, even as wrappers are thrown into the lake's waters. The same is true in other places around the country. We can see it in many areas of KP and in Gilgit-Baltistan as well as other sites.

There is no respect for nature, for all that it represents or for places which should have been carefully developed to enshrine their beauty for future generations but instead have been damaged beyond repair by thoughtless ‘development’ and the greed of people to build wherever they can, combined with the corruption within agencies which allows this.

There have been movements intended to try and stop this. The 3,900 national parks around the world are an example. Many of these, forming part of the movement which began with the setting up of the Yellowstone National Park in the Rocky Mountains in the US in 1872, tried to link humans back with nature. These parks exist on every continent and, in many cases, have acted to preserve endangered species that are virtually disappearing from the earth's surface. In some cases, species that had not been seen for years reappeared within these open spaces after they became protected from development and other activity damaging to nature in many ways.

But we also have other kinds of damage to nature. Some of this is seen in projects carried out in Pakistan, such as the Cholistan Canal Project, which the federal and Sindh governments have now agreed to discuss and which has now been opposed by President Zardari and the PPP government in Sindh. But the protesters in Sindh who have been campaigning against the project for months still suspect that the party could go back on its word and that the project, perhaps in a slightly altered form, could still take place and continue to protest.

The anger of people is very real and has led to some violence. To add to the problem is the fact that people in other places such as Punjab fail to recognise how important it is to stop the canal project for the sake of Sindh and its people. The project would effectively further diminish the water supply in the Indus River and thereby harm the delta, which acts to prevent the sea from eroding lands in Sindh's coastal areas and reducing the yield of farmers.

Yet in Punjab and other places, so-called experts say that water is wasted by falling into the sea. Nothing could be further from the truth. The waters of the rivers which flow into the Indus delta are vital for holding back damage to farmland and also act as a place where mangroves and other places harbouring all kinds of wildlife, central to the ecological system, can flourish. The wastage of water, even when the government has declared that there's not enough water left for drinking purposes in the country's reservoirs, and the Tarbela and Mangla dams stand virtually empty, is in many ways astounding.

We need to educate people, especially those in the Punjab, about the need to preserve water and avoid wasting it. The lack of rainfall and limited snowfall this year in the mountains in northern parts of the country have already led to an acute water shortage in places across the KP and also in other parts of the country.

As is the case with the rest of the world, we in Pakistan need to link our people back with nature and with the need to keep a watch on how we are harming our land and our planet. This is a process that should begin at the primary school level. It does not. Instead, we consider exams for five-year-olds, teaching them material of questionable value, far more important than teaching them about the earth they live on and the need to hold on to its resources.

We, as a generation that has acted to cause so much damage, should at least be doing as much as possible to save what is still left for generations to come. We are failing in this. We, on our own part, are doing very little to develop wildlife or to educate people about the ecological system central to our lives. The same is true of our school textbooks and curricula at colleges and elsewhere. The media too needs to step in and remind people everywhere in the country that once something is lost, it is extremely difficult to bring it back. This applies to acts such as the cutting down of timber to the building of housing projects intended for the country's elite in mountainous regions. It should be protected from these concrete jungles.

There is a great deal to be done. Unless we do it now, we will lose much of what we have. The planet needs to act collectively and we as a country need to join this movement and join people by raising a voice for preventing climate change, halting it and restoring nature as far as is possible after years of destructive actions by human beings everywhere.

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor. She can be reached at: kamilahyat@hotmail.com