The climate club

Dr Khalid Hameed Farooqi and Dr Irfan Aftab

While climate change sceptics like Professor Richard Lindzen label calls to reduce the man-made impacts upon our climate “climate alarmism”, climate change is an undeniable fact of life. Despite this, observations of both the Paris climate change conference, COP21, and of seminars at the UN Climate Talks at the Global Media Forum (GMF, Bonn) conclude that climate change continues to have a “north-south divide”.

In other words there is a sharp division between many poor and rich nations on how to deal with the problem, and more specifically on who should pay for it. What is clear, however, is that this is being hailed as an urgent global issue by many poorer countries, such as members of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, composed almost exclusively of African and Asian members, including Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

While not widely recognised as being to the same extent as Bangladesh, Pakistan is now undoubtedly also experiencing the adverse impacts of climate change. In the last decade Pakistan has faced extreme weather patterns, and consistently remained in the top 10 Global Climate Risk Index. Furthermore, research by Germanwatch reveals that between 1994 and 2013 Pakistan lost $3,988.92 million (annual-average), or approximately 0.77 percent of annual GDP, as a direct or indirect consequence of extreme weather.

Thus, Pakistan’s climate vulnerability has been evidenced by the significant costs, both financial and human, of recent extreme climate disasters in the country.

In the summer of 2015, over 1,300 people died when Karachi was struck by a devastating heatwave. Temperatures as high as 45 degrees Celsius impaired the lives of more than 23 million people and affected the health care system.

Pakistan’s vulnerability to climate change was highlighted again in late July 2015 when the Chitral district in Khyber Pakhtunkhuwa was badly hit by floods. According to the National Disaster Management Authority, the floods affected over 800,000 people across 2,200 villages in the five affected provinces.

In a report to promote the implementation of Pakistan’s National Climate Change Policy, author Dr Qamaruz Zaman Chaudhry explains in much detail the devastating climate threats to Pakistan:

Considerable increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, coupled with erratic monsoon rains causing frequent and intense floods and droughts; projected recession of the Hindu Kush-Karakoram-Himalayan glaciers due to global warming and carbon soot deposits from trans-boundary pollution sources, threatening water inflows into the Indus River System; rising temperatures resulting in enhanced heat and water-stressed conditions, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions, leading to reduced agricultural productivity; threats to coastal areas due to projected sea level rise and increased cyclonic activity due to higher sea surface temperatures.

In regard to all these current disasters and potential climate threats, Pakistan’s future seems undoubtedly scary, but as the old saying goes “where there’s a will, there’s a way”. Speaking with GEO NEWS, an adviser on Foreign Affairs to the Prime Minister said, “at the moment climate change is the world’s biggest issue and we need more financial resources, better policies and global cooperation”.

So has the Paris COP21 conference come to the rescue?

With current pledges of $100 billion annually by 2020, climate change is one of the 17 global goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In order to rise to this challenge, Paris COP21 saw countries try to thrash out a more effective climate agreement.

On December 9, Laurent Fabius, president of COP21, handed out the 29-page draft text for climate change agreement to the delegations. He stated that global negotiators and observers “must now be prepared to work overnight and tomorrow and be ready for the compromise”.

But despite this most recent draft text including the demand of more than 100 countries that warming must be limited to 1.5C above industrial levels, India, China, Brazil and South Africa are opposed to such a goal. Even less optimistically, the action plans submitted so far by 186 countries are still likely to result in a temperature rise of close to 3, with Pakistan’s action plans having been submitted late.

Yet, Emmanuel M de Guzman, secretary of the Philippines government’s Climate Change Commission, who is chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, argues that even a 2 degree threshold “has no validity anymore as a guardrail. We know that warming is already dangerous and we have to keep it to a minimum. The feasible minimum is 1.5C.”

Apart from the threshold level, three interlinked issues remain under scrutiny: a) differentiation of problems and responsibilities; b) a legally binding mechanism for the agreement; and c) financing – what rich countries should do to help poor countries reduce climate change.

In A Paris interview to The News/Jang, Zahid Hamid, Pakistan’s federal minster of climate change seemed more sceptical than optimistic about the Paris climate change conference, stating that “the contribution of rich and industrial countries in global warming is immensely huge and now they are putting burden on other countries to contribute towards mitigation of pollution”.

On December 9 US Secretary of State John Kerry announced, in Paris, that the US is doubling its finance to $861m to help developing countries deal with the effects of climate change, in addition to its pledge for $3bn to the Green Climate Fund to support countries to shift towards green energy and reduce carbon emissions. From an optimistic perspective, this signifies an increasing level of understanding between the world’s largest economy and carbon emitter and the Comité de Paris (Committee of COP21). However, is this level of financial support sufficient to provide the basis for a 1.5 goal? And will countries such as India agree?

There may have been some sense of optimism in Paris, but on a rational note, there is a long way to go. While December 11 was the end of the Paris climate change conference, this is only the beginning of a long and contentious road.

In the meantime, in Berlin, a United Nations report synthesising national climate plans from 146 countries has been publicly released. One of the key findings is that the intended nationally determined contribution (INDCs) will bring global average emissions per capita down by as much as eight percent in 2025 and nine percent by 2030.

However, due to approval reasons Pakistan failed to submit its INDCs till October 1; although the synthesised report was not the final word, it had surely laid the base of negotiations in Paris.

Pakistan’s political leadership has to understand that there is very little time left to collectively agree to manage the systematic threat of climate change at COP21 in Paris. Our government should not show itself to be politically neglectful of global issues like climate change; otherwise, we could be placed in an increasingly perilous club, alongside Richard Lindzen.

The writers are Geo News correspondent in Brussels and Berlin, respectively.

Email: khalid.farooqi@geo.tv