Is Pakistan Facing an Extreme Climate Crisis?

 

It’s not a natural disaster. It’s not a torment. It’s a climate emergency. It’s climate injustice. It’s a matter of accountability, power, and management.

 

What is happening in the country?

Pakistan is experiencing its worst monsoon floods in a decade, resulting in an escalated humanitarian clash, with one-third of the nation under water – a MAJOR Climate Crisis.

 The humanitarian conditions in Pakistan have further crumbled over the past few weeks as the country faced one of its worst rain spells, which lead to a substantial increase in flooding, followed by massive destruction of property, livestock, and crops, along with landslides in the northern areas, immense human deracination, and a great number of casualties.

 This has called for a climate emergency in the state as the communities and infrastructure are unable to subsist with the ongoing catastrophic floods and heavy rains.

 

Wasn’t Climate Chaos a future thing for Pakistan?

The scenarios for the future of climate change are often associated with the future, mostly involving first-world countries. “Temperature increases” is mostly considered a thing of 2050, implying the idea that we are several years behind from reaching a global climate breakdown.

Unfortunately, poor countries like Pakistan, with the least amount of CO2 emissions, are often neglected while analyzing the above climate crisis narrative by the elites and the first world countries. Taking Pakistan out of the equation, considering its fair share of the safe planetary boundary for emissions, the first world countries continue to dominate and profit from the fossil capital, contributing to over 90% of the redundant emissions leading to climate chaos – a reality check.

This marks climate crisis as this day and age’s occurrence, rather than some future possibility.

Global climate change is not a future stumbling block anymore, it’s happening right now, with the effects of global warming being a grim reality in the time frame of people alive today, and will aggravate in the decades to come.

 

Where Does the Problem Lie?

The floods in Pakistan are what the convoluted climate crisis, or more precisely,

what climate injustice looks like. It is a humanitarian crisis, a health crisis, an economic crisis, a food crisis, a human-displacement crisis, a supply-chain crisis, and so on.

But who’s responsible for the CRISIS?

The climate emergency in Pakistan is a direct consequence of colonial genealogy and first-world industrial activity over the last centuries, which has proved to unleash desolation on the planet. The rich nations’ contribution to carbon emissions and profit from the fossil fuel industry has made poor, colonized countries like Pakistan most vulnerable to extreme weather, due to lack of resources, funds, poor infrastructure, post-colonial debt trap, poor policies related to climate change, lack of literacy around climate justice, and gaslighting by the elites and people in power over the climate science.

For decades the international, billionaire media has played its part in concealing the voices of social scientists and those suffering from climate depression, to protect the elites and powerful institutions who continue to devote themselves to the world-eating business model. This has not only allowed the governments and people in power to hold back accountability and political will but also to scapegoat climate injustice (floods) as a “natural disaster”.

This is the reality – the government officials produce annihilation and then try to present themselves as the only reasonable solution to annihilation.

Disparity and prejudice are not only ecologically threatening, but they are also ethically scandalous.

Pakistan, being one of the colonized, developing countries with the most glaciers on the planet, outside of the polar regions, has fallen prey to capitalism and first-world industrial discharge. The melting of glaciers due to climate change is one of the major factors causing catastrophic floods in the country.

The only reason the west continues to pollute our planet dreadfully is because of oppression. Those whose ancestors enslaved people and areas by colonizing, today live lives of privilege and liberty – lives that persist in ill-treating others. The people who churn out the least proportion of greenhouse emissions are the ones who encounter the most significant aftermaths of climate injustice.  

Surprisingly, this oppression did not only occur in the past, it happens today. Climate injustice and capitalism were both backed up by colonialism - structural discrimination and apartheid.

The only reason the rich nations are masterly polluting the planet is because of us, because of our ignorance of where our money goes and how our cities are developed. So as the climate chaos further unfolds and the precipitation events become more excruciating, many will suffer and remain in the reticle of the climate annihilation while those who contributed most to this catastrophe can live their lives in harmony. That’s not ethical, that’s injustice.

Emissions imbalance is injustice.  

           

What Can Help Pakistan RIGHT NOW?

The flood situation in Pakistan is unfortunately no longer an inimitable episode. They are the new normal. This narrative calls for earnest aid from the ruling elite, the stakeholders, and the first-world countries to recompense their dependency on fossil fuels and their contribution to global warming. Affluent states like the US, UK, France, Russia, Germany, etc. should recognize their privilege and their part in climate injustice in the context of inequality and eradication.  

Since it originated in 1947, Pakistan has been battling post-colonial debt and economic and refugee crises, which have become a perennial part of its existence. With few resources to sustain its population for making a living, Pakistan has always remained under the influence of first-world countries to dictate its policies and the working of its social institutions. Foreign debt distress has taken a toll on Pakistan’s development and formation of its policies, which are expected to work in the favor of its natives. The resources which should be utilized in reparations for climate damage, solution strategies, and assisting ecosystems in Pakistan, are being used to benefit foreign capital.

In these circumstances, the only vital option to address climate injustice in Pakistan is to counterbalance the country’s international deficits and to spring the elite or wealthier states into action so that they retrieve traditional injustices and fund low-emitting nations, like Pakistan, after climate damage. However, callings these funds “charity” is an overstatement. The high-emitting nations should pay the price of international domination, colonialism, and white supremacy in the form of climate reparations – to bring about climate justice.

In Pakistan, climate justice is not just about using paper straws, using reusable shopping bags, recycling, planting trees, or reducing our carbon footprint. climate justice is about recognizing the constructive connection between climate change and human rights through law-abiding politicians and the international community, reinforcing a system of accountability in terms of disaster management, formation of productive climate policies, and incorporating climate change curricula in education programs to build awareness about the possible climate threats our country faces, to call forth a wider structural change.

Other preferable approaches for the international community to catalyze climate justice in Pakistan include the deconstruction of all systems of oppression and enslavement, recognizing the disempowered communities and the impacts of climate change on their lives, and creating a safe space for those communities.

Instead of perceiving the environment as a source of profit, the north-global should consider it as a source of survival and welfare.

 

Is there more to the climate crisis in Pakistan?   

While planning out climate solutions in policy for countries most vulnerable to extreme weather, like Pakistan, it is important to recognize the root causes of climate injustice and around where the climate policies are centered.

It is now evident that climate change cannot be adequately dealt with, without addressing capitalism. Pakistan has a long record of capitalism, resolutely penetrated in the state apparatus. Policies and bills are drafted and implemented in such a manner as to maximize the sociopolitical and economic authority of the individuals who are in accord. Capitalism under the colonialism dynasty has been incompetent to address issues surrounding inequality and has resulted in several challenges for the system and unguarded communities, with climate change being one. For decades to come, capitalism and complex politics in Pakistan – if not taken into account - could serve as a setback for the system with the more frequent intervention of north-global supremacy, patriarchy, and powerful systems of oppression that could continue to corrupt our socio-political and economical structure. There’s no even consumption under capitalism.

 

\Climate injustice is just the beginning.

 Climate injustice is more than just an environmental issue in Pakistan. It is the recognition of privileges and embedded injustices in our social system, influencing people of diverse age groups, classes, races, genders, and geography inequitably.

In Pakistan, climate change presumably affects economically challenged sects of the population which precedes the decimation of infrastructure in rural areas, threat to agriculture and food production leading to food insecurity and malnutrition, refugee crisis in the country, poor jurisprudence, and an impediment to development. Lack of literacy built around climate justice, poor access to information relating to the climate crisis, labeling protests related to climate justice as disempowering, and intense levels of political polarization, could further contribute to decelerating Pakistan’s fight against climate injustice.

In the longer run, climate change in Pakistan can result in various physical and mental health impacts – mainly including communicable or mosquito-borne health diseases, due to poor sanitation in undeveloped areas, which can call for a major health crisis in the state. Considering the current inflation rate in the country, combating such a health crisis could serve as a crucial challenge for the government and social institutions. Witnessing such a cataclysmic climate crisis can lead to building the trauma of extreme climate episodes, especially among minors and the elderly.

Climate-related stress and anxiety are also contemplated to be the primary cause of widespread displacements in Pakistan, which can be an ascertainable challenge to the state’s national security, persecution, and inter-provincial conflict. This can serve more as a threat to the welfare and sanctuary of civilians, and can also lead to resource meagerness even in urban areas.

While contemplating the social structure of our Pakistani society and how deeply ingrained patriarchal values determine the squelched position of women in it, it is crucial to analyze the interrelatedness between gender equity and climate change. Climate change has primarily been a women’s issue. The implied social norms, particularly in the Global South, have inflicted discriminated powers, roles, and responsibilities on women and men in all aspects of life – which has positioned the women and the oppressed groups at an increased risk of confronting adverse climate aftermaths. Women are observed to be bridled by equitable participation in the global climate justice movement. They are coerced to face gender-based violence and molestation as a consequence of their climate advocacy, due to which they remain marginalized in the global climate movements and the solutions to their issues are considerably underfunded.

(Read more about gender equality and climate: Explainer: How gender inequality and climate change are interconnected )    

 

  

To constructively address climate change, it is vital to reexamine the manner we contemplate ourselves in connection with the environment. Our independent measures may not save the planet, but the cultural evolution we are generating will.

The tribulation in Pakistan is an evident indication of climate injustice. It is high time to direct the focus exclusively on refashioning the overall system that privatizes profits for a few interests and materializes the damage expenditure onto everyone else – vulnerable communities. It’s time for a new market economy, one that does not regard capitalism as a solution to the climate crisis and is neither dependent on the interminable eradication of nature nor the oppression of human beings.