Environmental experts say climate change adversely impacting on Pakistan’s economy, health

KARACHI: Environmental expert Ashiq Ahmad Khan said on Thursday that climate change is adversely impacting the country’s economy and health, and developing countries are contributing to environmental degradation because of a different set of reasons as compared to the developed countries.

He expressed his views during the 10th ZU Dialogues, titled “Global Warming: From Climate Change to Climate Crisis”, organised by Ziauddin University to ascertain the opinion and analysis of experts about the climate change which affects the world and the challenges, risk factors, and initiatives if global temperatures rise by 2050.

While talking about climate change and what it means to the world, Ashiq Ahmad Khan said that climate change is something that is evident to all. “As you can see this unbearable winter in Pakistan this year. The places where we saw temperatures in low degrees have reached below zero degrees. I no longer see the beauty of nature due to climate change. Nature is dead now. One good example is that of Misgar in Hunza, which had really excellent pastures, that pasture is watered by a neighboring glacier that is melting away, animal life is now disappearing, and a lot has changed as a result of climate change,” he remarked.

Khan said that if the state of Pakistan combines ecosystem restoration with research and business knowledge, we can save what’s left”.

Read more: Pakistan ranked fifth among countries most vulnerable to climate change

Speaker Ahmad Rafay Alam said that the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change signed in 1992 is a major international legal document that regulates how we deal with the challenges of climate crises.

“The UNFCCC’s objectives were to stabilize greenhouse gas submissions. Greenhouse gasses, things that we take from the ground to burn for our energy, are responsible for increasing temperatures in the climate crisis. The UNFCCC stabilizes greenhouse gas submissions so that there wouldn’t be any dangerous damage to the global ecosystem. We are now at a 420-part carbon concentration in the atmosphere, a level was never seen for the last 20 to 25 million years, which is longer than human beings have been on earth. We are approximately 1 to 1.1 degrees warmer than we were before the industrial revolution, we are already witnessing this year floods in Europe; forest fires in the United States; heatwaves in Canada that have killed hundreds of people.”

“Heat wave in Pakistan last year was declared a national emergency. l so, due to climate change we see forest fire in the Arctic for the first time in recorded history and human beings have plastics in their bodies and only at 1 degree of warming, there is no safe place. There have been approximately 150 million of deaths in Asian and African cities due to air pollution including smoggy Lahore experiencing air pollution caused by the greenhouse gas.”

Rina Saeed Khan said climate change is not adequately reported in our media. She said that in 2010 we had something called super floods that hit Pakistan. “There was unprecedented rainfall up in the high mountain Karakorum, water came rushing down because Pakistan is at an incline from 0 meters to 8600 level meters which is the top of K2. This topic of climate change used to be in some backstories of the newspaper but now it’s on the front pages.”

“As you can see, air pollution in Pakistan’s crowded cities is putting people’s health and the environment in jeopardy. As you could see, during COVID peak, when there were no automobiles on the roads, the sky began to appear blue and clear. The study found that due to COVID, all factories were stopped, machinery was not used as much, automobiles were less on the road, and airplanes were not flying, and the world air was pure and clear. It’s a painful process that UNFCCC doesn’t produce results overnight but there is no actual alternative system or way of getting all the countries to come together. If you count the figures given by the group called climate action tracker the world is still on track.  Imagine if there was no UNFCCC process, we would be heading towards 4 or 5 degrees of a certain catastrophe. Even 2.4 was too much but at least we are bending the curves”, she commemorated.

Talking about the health threats caused because of climate change Prof. Dr. Abbas Zafar explains “this is a very important topic to look at the effects of climate change on population health, and we all agree that the people who cause the problems are wealthy and rich while the people who suffer are the poor countries, particularly Asians. Look at COVID and the type of healthcare provision in this part of the world, we just had a peak of not so much less than neighboring countries, and that exposed our poor healthcare system and we are really exhausted. According to the WHO, in 2030 or 2050 climate change is expected to cause 250000 additional deaths per year from malaria, diarrhea, and heat stress because of climate”.