And to do nothing seems to be our response
Warning once again about the possible catastrophes emanating from climate change in case the country doesn’t take the issue seriously, Asian Development Bank presented a sad fatalistic picture the other day. The same day Prof Thomas Stocker, Co-Chairman of a working group of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said that Pakistan was on the brink of high-level vulnerability to effects of climate change and a national strategy should top the government agenda. In January the issue cropped up at a talk at National Defence University (NDU) where serving Pakistani military officers were told climate change would exacerbate global instability, posing an immediate threat to national security. The discussion noted that peace means not just the absence of war but the maintenance of stable conditions that provide, at minimum, for people’s basic needs which will become all the more difficult due to climate change impacts.
The previous government had got prepared a fairly comprehensive national climate change policy (NCCP) which discussed in detail the four major concerns Pakistan needed to address: water security, food security, energy security and national security. While noting that global climate change is the most difficult and dangerous environmental problem humans have ever created and faced, the NCCP laid down certain benchmarks. There was subsequently a need to prepare a national action plan to implement the policy. The PML-N government is, however, so much engrossed in day to day matters that it seems to have no time for major national issues that look pressing to those who have a modicum of vision.
Early this year the Department of Climate Change was upgraded to a full ministry and Mushahidullah Khan was appointed its minister. It was pointed out by a critic that the budget of the ministry was less than the cost of a Toyota Hilux which showed how much importance the PML-N government gave to issues related to climate change. There is a need to appoint a new minister after the resignation of Mushahidullah Khan last month.
