- Growing dangers of global warming
Karachi last month again experienced a by now familiar, deadly weather phenomenon, a prolonged spell of high temperature, low air pressure which blocks the assuaging sea breezes, and high humidity, a fatal combination that claimed at least sixty five lives. Now an unwelcome new weather pattern is being experienced in Islamabad and Lahore, to the torment of the fasting public and sinners alike, an intense heat wave, with temperatures usually in excess of 40 degrees Celsius, but dragging on and on without the previous relieving occurrence of a windstorm, accompanied by lashing rain, which surely and cyclically broke an arid spell. The Met office cautioned that soaring Islamabad temperatures will likely last another week, with the additional depressing predictions that summers in Pakistan would lengthen to nine months by the next decade, bringing in their wake critical water, food, and energy insecurity, and no doubt ugly political, social and economic fallout.
There exists a cabinet-level Ministry of Climate Change in Pakistan, and there are UN-sponsored Kyoto Protocol (1992) and Paris Agreement (2016) to reduce greenhouse gases and limit rising global temperatures, but the desperate urgency is still lacking, both at national and international levels, evidenced by President Trump’s withdrawal from Paris Agreement in June 2017. Pakistan is ranked high among Global Climate Risk Index, countries most vulnerable to climate change, but this crucial statistic and its sinister implications rarely figure prominently in priorities of governments, political parties, bureaucrats, and the otherwise vibrant and strident media. Grim, hard facts of global warming confronting the country need combating on a war-footing in a variety of ways, including rainwater harvesting and water conservation, investing in high-yield seeds that can withstand drought conditions, sprinkler or drip irrigation, modern equipment for predicting rainfall patterns and floods, massive forestation and technical disaster management, among numerous other measures. The grim alternate is a frightening decline in water and food sustainability, shortages in wheat yields (up to 3.4-14.5 percent), rice (12-22 percent),cotton, sugar cane, maize, pulses as well as in livestock, milk, meat, poultry and inland fisheries, and that with a fast galloping population to feed. This nightmare cannot be wished away, it must be faced swiftly, head-on.
