ISLAMABAD:Dean Emeritus at Boston University, USA Dr. Adil Najam said the richer countries in the Global North should fulfill their commitment to carbon reduction, and poor countries like Pakistan needed to adapt to climate change and develop resilience to natural disasters.
He was delivering a lecture titled, ‘From Indus to Sharm El Sheikh: A Desi Perspective on Climate Change’ here at Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI).
He said the climate was no longer a future issue, and using the future tense for climate implied that we still had more time however extreme climate events had proven otherwise. He said the context of climate change for Pakistan was different from the rest of the world, particularly the global north.
For Pakistan, he maintained, the real barometer was the Indus basin. How climate change interacts with us is different from the rest of the world, therefore, we must be the providers of agenda on climate change and not receivers.
He said it’s time to go for adaptation, as the onset of climate change has fundamentally changed the climate policy and climate politics.
Dr Najam recalled that Paris Agreement had promised very low emissions, as it made climate action and commitments a voluntary action rather than a legal compulsion like Kyoto Protocol. Since the first COP held 27 years ago, financing commitments have been pledged but not made available.
No country ever demonstrated commitment to 1.50C temperature and there was no scientific way to achieve those commitments, he said and added that now even 20C was no longer achievable for climate change mitigation.
He said Pakistan was essentially the Indus Basin that sustained a thriving civilization from its source. “Indus tells us that we are facing a civilizational challenge,” he said, adding that the Indus had sustained the civilization and might not do so for the next 100 years.
He further said 90% of the country’s population lived in Indus Basin; every 9 out of 10 cities were within 50 kilometers range of Indus which was causing changes in Indus and its demography. He suggested improving the efficiency of the use of water for enhanced crop per drop.
Dr Adil said the notion of the lack of finances is a blatant lie; there is a lack of belief in climate change being an existential threat. “Cost of US war on Afghanistan was 2.6 trillion, cost of US financial crisis bailout was 4. trillion and the cost of US fight against COVID-19 was 6.2 trillion, these finances were mobilized in 8 days and spent in 5 days.” Rather than climate finance and sharing technical assistance he suggested exerting pressure on leading global emitters to meet their climate commitments.
He said that after every climate catastrophe, economic activity will continue as victims will spend their savings and pump into the economy for their survival which reiterates that money is not an issue.
He urged Pakistan’s climate diplomacy must move from “talk on loss and damage, or from mitigation outsourcing to climate adaptation as development and from climate assistance to climate justice.” The market for climate disaster expands and the margin for relief is shrinking, he concluded.
Earlier, in his opening remarks, SDPI Executive Director Dr Abid Qaiyum Suelri said Pakistan was chairing a group of 136 countries at COP 27 and with cooperation from these countries Pakistan will push the global north to fulfill their commitments to climate action.