The Real Enemy

With over 60 people dead in Karachi, when a heat wave swept across the city, we should know that the greatest enemy of our survival is none other than climate change. The sooner we acknowledge this unequivocal reality the better it would be for us to combat this enemy. We’ve witnessed the world’s hottest April temperature in Nawabshah this year, which touched 50.2 degree Celsius. Pakistan’s rapidly depleting forests and diminishing water reservoirs would compound the problems of negotiating with the climate change in times to come. Some of us may question, like Trump, the authenticity of the phenomenon. Let’s first see what ‘climate change’ actually is. Climate change generally refers to a ‘change in average weather conditions or an enduring change in regional or global weather patterns, which may last for a significantly extended period of time, from a decade to millions of years’. Climate has been changing since the beginning of time, but now we more often refer to this term to the change in weather patterns commencing from the 1850s, when temperature records began. We need to know that the average temperature of the Earth has been gradually increasing since the 1900s due to extensive CO2 emissions. NASA’s Global Climate Change notes that the CO2 level has sharply increased from 300 PPM in 1950 to 400 PPM by 2018. Whereas it remained below 300 PPM for millions of years! 

The current warming trend, as NASA observes, is largely (95%) because of human-induced warming. This has caused the Earth’s temperature to rise by about 1.1 degree Celsius from the 1950s. Since 2001, every year has been warmer than the previous one and should this trend continue, many places around the world would become unlivable, and Karachi would be one of them. Oceans are warming, polar ice sheets are melting, glaciers are retreating, mountain snow cover is disappearing, sea level is rising – nearly 8-inch rise has been recorded in the last century – thickness and expanse of the Arctic sea ice has significantly declined and cumulatively it is resulting into extreme weathers. The Industrial Revolution (time period from 1760) added 30% acidity to oceans; because oceans are the natural absorbers of CO2 and absorb a staggering 12 billion tons of CO2 every year!

We, the humans, have the sole responsibility for such an ominous warming of our planet. We’ve been burning fossil fuel since the Industrial Revolution and producing huge amounts of CO2, which is the major greenhouse gas besides methane and nitrous oxide, entrapping the solar heat inside the Earth’s atmosphere. While the forests are lessening, therefore, it is extremely hard for the plants to turn the CO2 into oxygen. The amount of CO2 keeps building every single day and it continues to trap more heat on Earth consequently making it warmer than the previous year. We, in Pakistan, may not be one of the biggest contributors to global climate change, but we, definitely, are in the process of destroying our country’s resistance to such a change. Pakistan’s current forest cover is merely 1.91% of its total landmass, which is being reduced at a rapid pace – 42000 hectares or 2.1% every year – and if it continues, we’d have no forests by 2070. The United Nations suggests a country must have at least 25% of its area covered with forests. 

Seeing this recommendation juxtaposed Pakistan’s negligible forests, one wonders we really are at the crossroads of a climatic destruction! Scott Moore, at the National Interest magazine, paints a disturbing picture of Pakistan’s looming water crisis – something we have not considered even a problem. Pakistan’s urbanization is occurring at a very high rate of 3% per year, which asks for provision of clean drinking water, which the provincial and city management are unable to do. Only in Sindh, 83% water supplies are contaminated with sewage and industrial waste; whereas 90% water in Karachi is unsuitable for human consumption. Pakistan has done little to construct water storage facilities or dams. In recent times, people in Karachi besides enduring unbearable heat are also wandering in the cities like zombies to look for water. Karachi, now ranks as the 5th most polluted city in the world, which releases 472 million gallons of untreated sewage into the sea gravely impacting the ocean ecology. Pakistan ranks 3rd among the countries facing serious water shortages, yet we see no emergency within the halls of the Government or other institutions. In absence of a policy-implementation mechanism to manage water, it’s being wasted in huge amounts every day. People are free to dig wells or bores and use the subsoil water with complete impunity. Pakistan’s subsoil water is likely to completely dry up by 2030. Reasonable river flows and even having a good monsoon season, we are just unable to conserve a lot of water, which according to IRSA is worth US $ 21 Billion, is dumped into the Arabian Sea every year. Despite an issuance of National Water Policy in March 2018, its implementation is not even visible! 

Explosive population growth, unchecked urbanization and mushroom development of housing schemes is another form of a threat, which in my view, should not be taken as anything less than a national security risk. In times to come, Pakistan would not find it easy to manage its hugely over-populated cities, where the criminal gangs might rule the streets in absence of law and order. Losing agricultural lands due to absolutely unmonitored and unsupervised housing societies is a worrying sign that the Government is not prepared to tackle. NOCs are issued for conversion of superior agricultural land into housing schemes without due regard to stresses it would put on basic facilities, the environmental impact and the management problems. It is, perhaps, time to truly recognize who the real enemy is. It’s not the ballistic missiles or the nuclear triad of the next door neighbor or not even the terrorism but the climate change and our inept, inadequate and inappropriate response to it. Our inability to consider the depleting forests, vanishing water reservoirs and disappearing agricultural land as national security threats would cost us a great deal in the not too distant future. Our lack of planning & strategy to check the massive population growth, high urbanization and increasing pollution would bring us closer to an enemy – the climate change – whom we may never be braced to embattle. What can we do then? At the individual level, plant trees, save water and stop pollution. 

Educate our children, friends and family members the value of forests and the pricelessness of water and a life without these treasures of Nature. In our homes, we can try and make our home as a ‘plastic free home’, the proposition of doing such things would not be easy. Not because it cannot be done, but because our brains have been hardwired into wasting water, using plastic and abusing trees. It’s the mindset we must target and then the rest would follow. At an organizational level, tree plantation, anti-pollution and save-water campaigns can be launched. Creation of awareness about the ‘real enemy’ would be necessary, and this can be done through regular lectures, informative movies or seminars. At the Government level, the implementation of National Water Policy must be done forcefully. Policy to save forests, a strategy to revive forests and a campaign to plant more trees must be orchestrated meaningfully and not just through speeches on environment days. The Government needs to build more dams to store the precious water, which is wasted every year. Workable strategy is needed to reduce the population growth rate and reverse the urbanization trend. Focus on renewable energy needs to be paid to avoid producing more CO2 gas, which is speedily eroding our environment. Stringent measures are essential to curb unbridled housing schemes and a swift conversion of agricultural land into non-agricultural uses. What I have seen is that there are people living among the trees and in the forests who have scant regard for these invaluable gifts of the Earth. 

And there are illiterate and low educated lot, who are ready to cut down the trees for petty gains not realizing the impact of their acts. These people need to be educated. But it doesn’t stop here; because if one visits a public park, for instance, the Japanese Park in Islamabad, the lack of education, civility and culture is highly visible. We are not destroying but collectively murdering our environment and aiding our enemy – the climate change – to win a war we have no idea is upon us!