Sherry calls for taking climate crisis seriously

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Climate Change in Pakistan Sherry Rehman called for taking the climate crisis seriously and said Pakistan is right now bracing for a heat wave, with unprecedented high temperatures creating climate emergencies from north to south of the country.

“Because of our northern mountain ranges and glaciers, we anticipate Global Lake Outburst Floods, where glacial lakes first form due to snow melt on the glaciers,” she said while calling to take the climate change seriously.

Sherry Rehman said the catastrophe arises when the melting snow unleashes these lakes as a racing flood that rips out everything in its way. “These pose serious risks and vulnerability for the local and downstream population as Pakistan right now has over 3044 such lakes identified in the mountains,” she said.

She said the mountains are also exposed to forest fires and sudden bush combustion events, which we struggle to cope with. “So far, our response teams are vigilant, but of course one cannot predict what will happen with a higher scale of sudden and extreme weather events,” she said.

For the south, she said hugely reduced rainfall, sizzling temperatures will expose people who work in the field or on urban sites in the open sun to dangerous dehydration, while crops will yield reduced harvests as the water reservoirs dry up. “Our big dams are at dead level right now, and sources of water are scarce as well as contested between riparians among the Indus and its canals,” she said.

She said this is an all-encompassing existential crisis, and must be taken seriously. She said while Pakistan strives to reduce its Green House Gas (GHG) emissions it is really the victim of other big polluters.

She said it is in fact a contributor of only 0.81 % of GHG emissions globally and our number is 132nd in the list out of 190 countries while Pakistan’s per capita GHG emissions are less than 1%.

She said there is clearly an urgent need for better public service communication and crisis preparedness from the NDMA and provincial governments. “Learning from our past experiences we must remember that the heat wave in 2015 took more than a thousand lives in Karachi, and in 2015 it happened during Ramazan when people couldn’t keep themselves sufficiently hydrated,” he said.

She said the climate and weather events are here to stay and will in fact only accelerate in their scale and intensity of global leaders don’t act now.”