Experts say the heavy rainfall was caused by higher-than-average warming of the Arabian Sea. In Sindh province, which produces half of the country’s food, 90% of crops are damaged. More than 75% of Balochistan, which covers half of Pakistan, has been partially or totally damaged. People’s houses and pieces of land are flooded. Of the 650,000 pregnant women directly affected in flood-hit areas, 73,000 will deliver their babies this month. The sheer scale of the destruction these children will be born into is unimaginable. The “third pole,” as it is often called, is a vast mountainous region that stretches from Myanmar to Afghanistan. This frozen ice wall separates China and seven South Asian countries, including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. The region is home to the world’s highest peaks and countless glaciers. Flights from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, to the northern cities of Gilgit and Skardu take just one hour. In the good old days, before Pakistan’s national carrier faced financial difficulties, it also used to operate a weekly flight called air safari. If you were lucky enough to get a window seat, the journey was a visual feast. The flight would give passengers a guided tour of the snow-capped “eight thousand” (mountaineer lingo for peaks over 8,000 meters) and glaciers from the comfort of their seats. Five of these peaks are located in Pakistan. Our country also has the largest number of glaciers outside the polar regions. The aerial safari was an impressive, comfortable alternative to months of training, weeks of trekking through treacherous terrain and freezing temperatures. They rarely grow at such a high altitude. But the third pole acts as a water reserve whose 10 major rivers flow downstream from these mountains and sustain more than 1.5 billion people. When you understand this, you begin to see the mountains, valleys, and ever-flowing streams and rivers in a different light. The prediction that this magnificent and awe-inspiring landscape will eventually transform into bare rocks is terrifying. By 2100, a third of the ice sheets in this region will be gone, even if the world is limited to its 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming target. Temperatures are rising higher than this, bringing doomsday closer. It’s a crisis that almost no one is talking about. The floods experienced by Pakistan are one of the first signs of this crisis. The climate disaster is now in plain sight for all to see. Despite this, major economies have not been able to reach a consensus on reducing emissions. There have been countless summits and international meetings, and yet we are still not on track to reach net zero by 2050. For countries like Pakistan, which falls into the unfortunate category of “most vulnerable to climate change,” any failed climate summit is bad NEWS. It is disappointing for us to see rich countries haggling with each other to reduce emissions, while we continue to pay the cost of living and living much more frequently than before. The results of the inaction and apathy of the Western economies are now glaringly obvious. Pakistan contributes less than 1% to global emissions and yet is one of the countries most at risk from climate change and global warming. We can only hope that Cop27, which will be held this year in Egypt, will not fall short of expectations. But we’ve been here before: at Cop26, the big polluters’ response failed to match the scale of the climate crisis. If this happens again, the message for countries like Pakistan will be clear: the biggest polluters, despite growing evidence of deadly climate events such as heatwaves, droughts and floods, are still unwilling to settle for a compromise between economic growth and development. saving the planet. If this is the case, countries like Pakistan, with other vulnerable nations responsible for a fraction of greenhouse gas emissions but most at risk from climate change, should consider forming their own coalition within the Cop to emphasize their plight and to pressure rich polluters to establish a fund to help them deal with the consequences of climate disasters. The global North has long resisted such calls for a fund to help poor countries deal with the effects of the climate emergency and pay for the damage. Perhaps this is because it would be interpreted as an admission of guilt. As a consequence of the recent climate disaster in Pakistan, millions of lives have been destroyed. It is likely that thousands will be pushed below the poverty line. Children will drop out of school and many mothers will die during childbirth. The effects of flooding will be long-term and devastating. We are now living through a crisis that was not ours.
Mustafa Nawaz Khokar is a senator in Pakistan. From 2009 to 2013, he served as Human Rights Advisor to the Prime Minister of Pakistan Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, please email it to [email protected]
