Terror of Pakistan’s Coming Era Will Be Born of Heat and Fire and Ice
By Fatima Bhutto
Sept. 27,
2020
Karachi is
home. My bustling, chaotic city of about 20 million people on the Arabian Sea
is an ethnically and religiously diverse metropolis and the commercial capital
of Pakistan, generating more than half of the country’s revenue.
Photo:
New York Times
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Over the
decades, Karachi has survived violent sectarian strife, political violence
between warring groups claiming the city and terrorism. Karachi has survived
its gangsters sparring with rocket launchers; its police force, more feared
than common criminals; its rulers and bureaucrats committed to rapacious,
bottomless corruption. Now Karachi faces its most terrifying adversary: climate
change.
In August,
Karachi’s stifling summer heat was heavy and pregnant. The sapodilla trees and
frangipani leaves were lush and green; the Arabian Sea, quiet and distant, had
grown muddy. When the palm fronds started to sway, slowly, the city knew the
winds had picked up and rain would follow. Every year the monsoons come —
angrier and wilder — lashing the unprepared city. Studies show that climate
change is causing monsoons to be more intense and less predictable, and cover
larger areas of land for longer periods of time.
On Aug. 27,
Karachi received nearly nine inches of monsoon rain, the highest amount of
rainfall ever in a single day. Nineteen inches of rain fell in August,
according to the meteorological officials. It is enough to drown a city that
has no functioning drainage, no emergency systems and no reliable health care
(except for those who can pay). Thousands of homes and settlements of the poor
were subsumed and destroyed, and more than 100 people were killed.
A traders
association estimated that the submerging of markets and warehouses damaged
goods worth 25 billion Pakistani rupees, or about $150 million. Local papers
estimated that with Karachi at a standstill for a week, in some congested areas
for longer, Pakistan’s gross domestic product suffered daily losses of $449
million — a number that didn’t include the enormous informal economy. The World
Bank estimates that 15 percent of gross domestic product of the Sindh province
(Karachi is its capital) is lost every year to environmental damage and climate
change.
Pakistan is
the fifth most climate vulnerable nation in the world. Between 1998 and 2018,
according to the Global Climate Risk Index, the country is estimated to have
lost nearly 10,000 lives to climate-related disasters and suffered losses amounting
to about $4 billion from 152 extreme weather events in that period. Analysts
have estimated Pakistan’s climate migrants over the past decade at around 30
million people.
There is no
end to the catalogue of climate disasters affecting my country. The glaciers in
the Hindu Kush, the Himalayas and the Karakoram in northern Pakistan are
melting at an accelerated pace. If the emission trends and temperature rises
continue unabated, these mountains could lose between a third to two-thirds of
their ice fields by 2100. The result will be catastrophic: By 2050, the
increased melting will result in landslides, heavy flooding, dam bursts and
soil erosion. After the glaciers have melted away, drought and famine will
follow.
The terror
of our coming era will be born of heat and fire and ice. Some years ago, I was
in a village in Sindh after a massive flood had devastated it. Thousands were
displaced overnight. The blistering heat soaked the faces of displaced young
women in sweat thick like glycerin. I was unsure what would be more lethal —
the drowning or the heat.
Not far
from that drowned village in Sindh is the city of Jacobabad, where temperatures
in the summer run as high as 124 degrees Fahrenheit. It is the hottest city in
Asia, if not the world. Jacobabad has long electricity blackouts. Its poor die
as they toil in the fields.
Temperature
increases have brought plague after plague in rural areas. This year has
brought Pakistan the most devastating locust infestations in nearly 30 years.
The insects destroyed entire harvests, causing the government to call a
national emergency as winter crops were decimated, resulting in losses of $2.5
billion. The locusts descend like a haze, so thick that from a distance it
looked like a soft pink fog. Because of heavy rains and cyclones, there has
been unprecedented breeding of locusts in the United Arab Emirates. They
traveled to us from the Arabian Peninsula.
This is a
climate war between the large industrial superpowers, financial predators that
have polluted and poisoned our planet for profit, and the poor, who have done
the least damage but will pay all of the consequences. Pakistan is responsible
for less than 1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but its people will
bear the burden of the world’s deadliest polluters. If nothing is done to
mitigate global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Bank, 800
million people in South Asia will be at risk of amplified poverty, homelessness
and hunger.
The World
Bank has identified Karachi as one the planet’s climate hot spots. Temperatures
across South Asia are estimated to rise by 3.9 degrees Fahrenheit in the next
30 years. Karachi is already struggling with poor road connectivity, dire
educational facilities and limited market access. Its already pathetic public
health system will plummet. The rich might buy generators for electricity, pay
for water tanks and rely on expensive hospitals, but the poor will continue to
be devastated.
Pakistan’s
current government is speaking about climate change, but it is a conversation
that has come too late, unaccompanied by serious action. In 1947, Pakistan was
33 percent forest. Today, we have tree cover of just about 4 percent, all
because of deforestation. This destruction, largely caused by the illegal
logging by timber mafias, has silted up our waterways and left us undefended
against floods and storms.
The country
can easily be whipped into hysteria over supposed religious infractions
committed by minorities and can debate women’s modesty and honour
inexhaustibly, but it has little attention for the ferocious and imminent
dangers of climate change.
Karachi’s
rainfall, like the rising temperatures, is a consequence of the raging climate
war. We have sat by and watched how cities die: slowly. We didn’t watch closely
enough when the villages sank and struggled. But it is clear now that this is
how a planet burns, one fire at a time, one degree hotter until eventually all
that remains will be the chalky bones of Karachi’s ancient saints, buried on
disappeared cliffs.
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Fatima Bhutto, an essayist and novelist from
Pakistan, is the author, most recently, of the novel “The Runaways.”
Original Headline: Pakistan’s Most Terrifying
Adversary Is Climate Change
Source: The New York Times
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-environment/terror-pakistan’s-coming-era-be/d/122968
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