Pakistan on the ‘dark side of climate change
By: Shahid Husain
Karachi: Former Environment Minister for State and Regional Councilor of the IUCN Malik Amin Aslam said that Pakistan was in control of the situation surrounding the refugees of climate change.
He made the observation at the “Dialogue with Business on Resilience, Climate Change and the Private Sector in Sustainable Coastal Management” event, organised by the IUCN on Tuesday at a local hotel.
He pointed out that Pakistan was one of the first countries affected in the world and on the “dark side of climate change.”
“Water is the main culprit,” he said, adding that climate change does not recognise manmade boundaries.
He said the world’s biggest polluter was the United States of America and that is the reason Pakistan has been talking about $100 billion to cope with disasters. Aslam added that the coastal ecosystem was critically important as it provided a source of livelihood to the coastal community.
Senior Advisor Mangroves for The Future Programme and ecologist Don Macintosh said 23 percent of the world’s population resided in coastal areas. He added mangroves provided the livelihood of millions of people. Macintosh highlighted that one-third of the mangroves across the globe had already disappeared. He regretted the fact that unsustainable fishery was destroying the livelihood of fisherfolk.
The ecologist pointed out that the people most affected by climate change would be the impoverished ones and “millions of people were dependent on mangrove fishery.”
“Each hectare of mangrove destroyed means a loss of more than one ton of fish per year,” he said. Macintosh went on to say that corals were highly sensitive to temperature rise and acidification. He said the notion that mangroves could stop tsunamis were untrue, but added they could reduce the impact of the wave.
Former senator and the next vice-president of the IUCN, Javed Jabbar, said that the “private sector was not private. In fact, it is public domain.”
Jabbar who is also a former federal information minister, author and documentary filmmaker, elaborated by saying the private sector used resources in the public domain for everything it did. He stressed that “domestic investment” was important.
Director Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Asia Leena Wokeck said we need to look at business interests beyond profits.
She said CSR was about a company’s commitment to operating in an economically, socially and environmentally-friendly domain. Wokeck said climate change would disproportionately affect those people that were not responsible for causing it.
Chairman Standing Committee on Environment of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry Gulzar Firoz said mangroves were the source of life and the ultimate existence.
“To set-up a private treatment plant within the industry is not feasible.” He stressed that buyers were now asking for environmentally-friendly industrial plants.
He said four waste water treatment plants were designed 10 years ago at an estimated cost of one billion rupees, but they never materialised and now the cost of these was around eight billion rupees.
He said the industrial sector was responsible for the damage to mangroves and the coastal areas. The biggest damage was being done by industrial and municipal waste emanating from Karachi, he stressed.
He said local laws needed to be modified. Firoz pointed out that more than 10,000 tons of solid waste was generated in Karachi and 50 percent of it was lifted. He added that the Malir and Lyari rivers were taking in all the industrial waste.
“The responsibility lies with the private sector,” he said. “I am always hurt when I find environmental degradation anywhere in Pakistan,” he concluded.
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