KARACHI:Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) MPA Sharmila Farooqui on Sunday urged the federal government and its Climate Change Ministry to immediately implement decisions of Climate Change Conference (COP26) held in UK so as to avert expected climate change hazards in Pakistan, particularly possible sinking of Thatta district belt in 2030 and Karachi in 2060.
Karachi, which is economic hub of Pakistan is feared to sink in 2060 if COP26 climate change adaptation measures are not implemented forthwith. The COP26 has urged member countries, including Pakistan, to ensure huge financial investment to tackle climate implications, she said in a statement.
Sharmila said that the federal government being cognizant of the situation is not taking required measures at policy, management and operational levels to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change in the country, therefore, it is the need of the hour to make huge investment to tackle climate change effects in Karachi, Lahore and other parts of the country. She said that there is no clue to Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Programme as very low number of trees have yet been planted in the country. The federal government needs to plant promised number of trees to reduce the warming.
She said adaptation measure are the object of particular emphasis during the deliberations at COP26 and added that Pakistan needs to use efficient use of water resources, reducing manmade temperatures, adapting building codes to future climate conditions and extreme weather events, building flood defences in cities and coastlines, raising the levels of dykes of rivers, developing drought-tolerant crops, planting better tree species everywhere, raising forests and fruit gardens.
Sharmila said the rapidly emerging climatic change is one of the biggest threats to the sustainability of life in arid areas and major cities of Pakistan. The phenomenon of global warming is a major cause of environmental degradation. The enhanced discharge of greenhouse gas emissions in our outer atmosphere due to fossil fuel combustion leads to a rise in Earth’s average temperature besides polluting the air, she added.
Sharmila said that Pakistan is vulnerable to the effects of climate change which has occurred due to rapid industrialization with substantial geopolitical consequences. As things stand, the country is at a crossroads for a much warmer world. According to German Watch, Pakistan has been ranked in top ten of the countries most affected by climate change in the past 20 years. The reasons behind include the impact of back-to-back floods since 2010, the worst drought episode (1998-2002) as well as more recent droughts in Tharparkar and Cholistan, the intense heat wave in Karachi (in Southern Pakistan generally) in July 2015, severe windstorms in Islamabad in June 2016, increased cyclonic activity and increased incidences of landslides and Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) in the northern parts of the country.
Sharmila said the federal government should take solid steps with huge investment to tackle Pakistan’s climate change concerns that include increased variability of monsoons, likely impact of receding Hindu Kush-Karakoram-Himalayan (HKH) glaciers due to global warming and carbon soot deposits from trans-boundary pollution sources, threatening water inflows into Indus River System (IRS), severe water-stressed conditions particularly in arid and semi-arid regions impacting agriculture and livestock production negatively, decreasing forest cover and increased level of saline water in the Indus delta and loss to mangroves.
She said that from April 1961 to June 2021, Karachi’s mean temperature of January rose by one degrees Celsius, February by 5.9 degrees Celsius, March by 2.1 degrees Celsius, April by 4.4 degrees Celsius, May 3.6 degrees Celsius and June by 1.2 degrees Celsius, which is harming and if such trend continues, there could be more heatwaves like the one that hit Karachi in 2015 as a result, over 1200 people were killed.