Climate Change — What would you do if you were made Pakistan’s Climate Change Minister?
It is often misunderstood and undervalued that Pakistan does not have any environmental laws or legislature in place. This does not hold true as the country is a signatory to a number of international treaties, holds an important position in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and has recently progressed when the 18th amendment in the constitution took place. However, a number of developmental projects, unsustainable in most of the cases, lack of capacity building at provincial level and monopoly of the federal government in areas of coal power, nuclear energy and maritime sources has led to an increased complexity.
Surprisingly environmental tribunals, environmental assessments, environmental impact assessments (EIA) do exist however, given the contemporary situation, their effectiveness and decision making power remains debatable.
Had I been made the climate change minister, I would have definitely brought forward how people statistically die more due to extreme weather patterns and natural disasters rather than terrorism . It surprises me how whenever I read news, the main highlights are always centered towards cases of terrorism and the so-called muzakaraat ‘talks’ between our government and the Taliban. We have to realize that people die more due to climate induced vulnerabilities as we have seen that through heat island formation in Karachi this year and severe flooding in Chitral.
Ensuring a separate line between federal and provincial decision making powers in environmental issues, I would have moved towards capacity building at provincial level which is missing in the legislative equation. In addition, mass media and especially social media would have been deployed to create awareness on a huge level. Inclusion of environmental issues in curriculum and voluntary activities would have been implemented to bring forth desirable environmental behavior among people.
Revision of the role of existing tribunals, EIAs and environmental standards would have taken place to ensure industries and all other polluting infrastructure pay for environmental loss. Moreover a considerable amount of the budget would have been spent on research to bring forth sustainable green products and architectural sites which would create the least carbon foot print on our planet. Through public-private partnerships, international and local non-government organizations working on environmental agenda would be brought forward on a common table to strengthen and bring about effective mitigation and adaptation channels at both rural and urban levels. All of this sounds rather idealistic but I would have definitely worked on these lines had I been a minister.
Zehra Shallwani is a Social Sciences student from SZABIST, Karachi campus. She submitted this blog post through a facebook competition.
*Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog post may not be those of WWF.
