Climate Governance Major Issue Of Pakistan To Tackle Climate Change: Khan

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Jun, 2022 ) :Chairman Department of Environmental Sciences, Islamic International University Islamabad Dr Muhammad Irfan Khan has said that Pakistan is persistently among the top ten countries most vulnerable due to climate change and climate governance was a major issues of the country to tackle rising environmental degradation.

The Chairman Department of Environmental Sciences in an exclusive chat with APP in connection to World Environment Day 2022 said the country's major issue was of governance as their were policies but no instruments of implementation and if they existed in any case then the departments concerned lacked human, technical and financial capacity to implement those functions.

The theme for this year's world environment day was #OnlyOneEarth.

The geographical location of the country was naturally a disaster prone terrain as it possessed the world's largest ice reserves after the North and South Poles in its Northern areas that were the origin of our rivers, he said.

He said the global warming due to increasing emissions across the world were causing temperature rise driving glacial melting leading to floods. The country could not develop any proper reservoir in the past 50 years to conserve that floodwater which could help mitigate the flood disasters, he added.

He said the shift in rain pattern was also disturbing the hydrological cycle incurring impacts on the crop cultivation practices damaging the country's agriculture economy.

On the rising heatwaves impacts, he said it was mainly due to global warming which was also affecting the waves cycle at the sea level disturbing the temperature inversion.

The ratio of forests to contain carbon emission mainly carbon dioxide released due to vehicualkr emissions, industrial emissions could not be done through man made solutions rather trees can absorb it.

The population growth would generate more emissions, land clearing or tree felling could not make up with the void created by the replaced old trees, he said adding that this issues should be considered by the stakeholders for sustainable development.

"When we talk of national security then there has been a paradigm shift in the world where the water and energy security form the environmental security that is linked to our food and agriculture. A new term has been coined of environmental diplomacy. Unless the government improves the environment through public sensitisation and education then they will realise their actual rights and demands in conformity with environment and nature," he said.

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