KARACHI: Pakistan is among the top 10 most vulnerable countries even though its contribution to global warming is less than one percent. The country suffered huge weather-related losses and damages over the last two decades in the form of severe floods, heat waves, and storms.
These views were expressed by an environmental expert Dr Zafar Iqbal Shams while addressing the Muhammad Ajmal Khan Memorial Lecture series, organized by the Dr Muhammad Ajmal Khan Institute of Sustainable Halophyte Utilization of the University of Karachi here on Tuesday.
During the one-day event held at the KU MAK-ISHU seminar hall, he cited the Global Climate Risk Index 2021, prepared by the German watch group with the query “Who suffers most from extreme weather events”.
He mentioned that among 180 countries studied by the group, Pakistan is the eighth most affected country, scoring 29 CRI (Climate Risk Index), Puerto Rico, the worst affected, scored 7.17, while Qatar, the least affected, scored 173.67 CRI.
According to him, the Index was calculated based on the human deaths and losses in GDP of the countries due to extreme weather events caused by climate change. According to the index, extreme weather events kill 502.45 inhabitants and cost US$ 3771.91 million in losses in GDP every year in Pakistan.
“According to World Bank estimates, the recent flood cost US$ 10 billion in losses and damages, washed away two million homes, and affected 33 million inhabitants of the country.”
Dr Shams, while delivering his lecture on “Global warming, its causes, implications, and control”, said that the greenhouse gases, viz., carbon dioxide, methane, dinitrogen oxide, and some halogens, emitted by human activities, are raising the global temperature that disturbed entire hydrological cycle of the earth.
He said that this triggers early and rapid melting of snow on the mountains that spill over the rivers, inundates the human settlements and the croplands and costs human lives, properties, livestock, and agriculture.
He added that global warming also causes the water expansion of oceans and seas, rise in sea levels, increase in humidity and human diseases and loss of biodiversity. Many semi-deserts are converted into deserts due to water losses from their surface because of the rising temperatures.
Dr Shams informed the audience that for the first time, 154 countries signed an international treaty in June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil under United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to reduce greenhouse gases to prevent climate change. Later, a few other countries also signed the treaty.
It was ratified in March 1994. Under the framework, member states meet every year in different cities to assess the progress to reduce greenhouse gases, which is generally called a conference of the parties (COP).
He recalled that the conference of the parties in its third session (COP3), held in December 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, pledged to establish legal binding for developed countries to reduce six greenhouse gas emissions, namely, carbon dioxide, methane, dinitrogen oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride. Due to the legal binding, many developed countries reduced their emissions over the last three decades.
