Waking up to climate change

The writer is a freelance columnist.
The weather is changing. We have all noticed it. If you were born in Pakistan and have lived here all your life this drift towards extreme temperatures in summer months, contrasted with milder winters is sure to have puzzled you. This change is especially noticeable in Islamabad where summer, till the 1990s, only lasted from June to August, with September being the herald of Fall, bringing with it a steady decrease in humidity which would disappear altogether past the 15th of that month; winter then would arrive swiftly by October.
From November to February the air would grow decidedly chilly, drier, with snowfall on the Margalla hills. Roads to Murree would be blocked thereafter, owing to heavy snowfall and it was not uncommon to hear of tourists being trapped for days on end in the hill station.
From December to February, it was impossible to move outdoors in Islamabad without being covered with more than a few layers of clothing. The period from March to May, however, would be most pleasant with only a very gradual rise in temperature that would peak in June to announce the arrival of summer. Compare this with the summer months now, as they span the entire period from May to September, with the monsoon season arriving late, and Fall being pushed into late September. The winter air, except for some part of December and January, on the whole lacks the bite that was the custom till the 1990s. March remains the only Spring month and sudden freak peaks in temperature are witnessed as early as April.
As the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change worryingly reveals, climate change is unequivocal, irreversible and definitely a consequence of human activity across the globe. The post-industrialised world is a world of paradoxes. It is one where technological advances and scientific discovery have, on the one hand, reduced epidemics related to infectious diseases, increased food production, enabled rapid urbanisation, facilitated global movement, and increased access to natural resources that are the essential drivers of modern human life.
Yet, on the other hand, its consequences have included burgeoning populations, insatiable demands for consumption of food, energy, and water, the blatant disregard for the environmental fallout of industrial growth by corporations and nations, a steadily widening gap between rich and poor, and the creation of political, economic, social and environmental conditions that increase the vulnerabilities of the poorest of the poor to the caprices of nature.
It comes as no surprise then that the biggest contributors to climate change are the developed, industrialised nations of the world; and that the biggest risks in the short-term – should tangible measures fail to be taken across the globe to stem and reverse climate change and its disastrous impact – will be borne by developing countries such as Pakistan.
First, let us consider the scientific causes of climate change, in layman terms, to enable us to examine the impact it will have, and to consider the only available scientific solutions the world has. When the greenhouse gases we noted above are released in increasing quantities in the earth’s atmosphere, as a result of human activities, the capacity of the earth’s atmosphere to retain the heat from solar energy also increases. This greenhouse effect, the creation of an invisible canopy of heat in the atmosphere has gradually, yet steadily, caused a rise in the earth’s temperatures, above and beyond pre-industrial levels.
While the impact of the greenhouse effect and the continuing industrial activities – the oft-cited global warming or climate change – is manifold, some of the more obvious results may be considered here: the raised earth temperatures are causing the polar ice caps, and in Pakistan’s context, the ice reservoirs of the Hindukush Himalayan mountain ranges – the second largest ice reservoirs of the world – to melt at an accelerated pace. Sea and river levels are rising as a result of which flooding in the Subcontinent is more common. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is increasing the acidic content of rainfall, lowering the fertility of large tracts of land and raising the acid levels in the underground water table, which suffers also from direct pollutants such as artificial fertilizers and toxic waste. The result is a significant decrease in available agricultural land and natural potable water reservoirs.
Simultaneously, our grab for natural resources continues unabated, employing environmentally detrimental industrial techniques. The deforestation of mountain areas results in rapid erosion of mountainsides owing to increasing levels of snowmelt and the inability to stem the flow of water from rainfall, causing in turn the increased salinisation of downstream land and river beds and disturbances in the natural ecosystem of rivers leading to lowered crop and fish yields.
With rapidly increasing populations in South Asia, the demand for staple foods such as rice and wheat has also increased beyond available levels of production. As a result, the scarcity of irrigable and irrigated land, the heavy requirement of water for farming these crops, and energy-based techniques to obtain water from underground sources in the backdrop of chronic energy shortages, means that food production is declining in South Asia.
Finally, toxic waste dumping in rivers and in the earth’s topsoil is further polluting available freshwater sources, lowering soil fertility, destroying natural ecosystems, including the freshwater aquatic ecosystems that provide freshwater fish as a staple source of nutrition to riverbank communities particularly in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. The above is a mere snapshot of the energy-food-water nexus that lies at the heart of the dilemma faced by the Subcontinent and towards which climate change is one of the major contributors.
So what then is the available solution, considering that the level of global carbon dioxide emissions to date is measured at around 1900 giga-tonnes (GT) of carbon dioxide against an available carbon budget of 2900 GT? Should this budget be exhausted in the 21st century, it will surely spell disaster for mankind. In the 2010 Cancun Climate Conference, world leaders from over 90 countries recognised that, while some climate change is unavoidable, the world needs to work jointly to limit global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius in the 21st century relative to pre-industrial levels, to avoid the deleterious consequences of unchecked climate change. Since 2010, the United Nations Environmental Program through its emissions gap report has endeavoured to measure the gap between required carbon emissions that will ensure this 2 degree Celsius limit, and the emission levels expected as a result of global pledges by countries emanating from Cancun.
The gap is wide and will need sincere global effort to close – and time is running out. All global pledges to limit emissions will need to be implemented in full by 2020 if the world is to have a chance to remain within the 2 degrees Celsius limit. The world will have to act now rather than later to ensure that we achieve global carbon neutrality – carbon dioxide emissions becoming net zero on a global scale – by 2055 and 2070.
In tandem with global action to reduce emissions and move to green technologies, it has been recognised that the developing world will require financial assistance from the developed world to institute and implement strategies and actions that will enable them to proactively combat climate change. This funding will be provided via the Green Climate Fund that has received $10.2 billion as a worldwide equity contribution and which will fund the war against climate change globally.
In Pakistan’s context a welcome endeavour is the upcoming COP21 Lahore conference, being organised by the French Embassy in Pakistan, as a local prelude to the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 21), otherwise known as ‘Paris 2015’, that will be hosted by France from November 30th to December 11th in Paris. In line with the Paris conference, COP 21 Lahore, is an effort by the French Embassy in partnership with the Government of Pakistan, and with the collaboration of NGOs, think tanks and members of civil society, to create awareness in Pakistan on the issue of climate change and to develop national strategies for disaster risk reduction, climate change mitigation and adaptation.
The conference, to be held in October, will include governmental representatives of all provinces, and will debate climate change opportunities and incentives in a Pakistani context around the technical areas of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions, Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, Disaster Risk Reduction, the Social Sector and Gender, among others.
The importance of developing strategies to combat climate change, for Pakistan and other Less Developed Countries, cannot be overemphasised. In this century it will determine how effectively we alleviate and reduce poverty, execute programmes of social uplift, increase economic growth and guard against the rollback of economic progress caused by natural disasters.
Email: kmushir@hotmail.com
Twitter: @kmushir