LAHORE : Coordinator to Federal Tax Ombudsman Meher Kashif Younis Thursday expressed grave concern that Pakistan was facing a massive humanitarian crisis in the wake of huge floods, but response of the world’s big emitters (countries) of pollution was very poor.
Sharing his views with Prof Dr Syed Habib Ali Bokhari, Vice Chancellor of Kohsar University Murree, here he added that big carbon emitters/countries of the world did not give proportional response to floods in Pakistan, which was bearing the brunt of huge loss of over US$30 billion for none of its fault. He said Pakistan was home to 2.6 per cent of the total world population, yet it had contributed only 0.4 per cent of global carbon emission since 1959, well below its fair share of safe emission compared to all big emitters.
Meher Kashif Younis said that the major carbon emitters, who were responsible for global warming and climatic change, should have provided immediate aid as well as climate finance to the South Asian country responsible for less than one per cent of the global emissions. He mentioned that Pakistan also faced its hottest months in 61 years. Earlier this year, forest fires destroyed 45 acres of Margalla Hills national park.
He cautioned that Pakistan was being hit with another source of flash flooding, extreme heat was sweeping up the melting of Himalayan glaciers, sending floodwater from burst glacial lakes cascading into the country.
He said NASA’s recent study predicted that some areas in Pakistan would soon become uninhabitable. He said global warming was making rainfall more intense as warmer air holds more moisture, overburdening mighty rivers like the Indus.
Meher Kashif said extreme weather patterns were clearly becoming more frequent in the region making Pakistan the eighth most vulnerable country to climate change worldwide. Though global warming was a real phenomenon, poor countries should not be made scapegoat for the acts of big emitters, he added.
Dr Syed Habib Ali Bokhari said that a couple of days ago the Punjab governor, while opening a three-day VCs conference in Murree, constituted a high-level consortium on “climate change” that had started to work out a viable plan to avert climate change induced disasters. He said consortium would submit its recommendations to the governor within two months.
