By Aisha Tahir | Posted On : Dec 20,2023.
Aisha : You are a journalist, based in Karachi, a city that is extremely vulnerable to climate disasters. Can you speak to its reality?
Zoha : Cities are at the centre of the climate change conversation because the larger understanding is that they're impacted the most. And then they are also where you can find a lot of the climate change solutions.
But Karachi’s problems are urban planning and management problems. Whenever I'm looking at a climate disaster, I'm always thinking beyond climate change resulting in erratic weather patterns. I’m thinking about what it is in terms of management that's causing this, or exacerbating this issue. So one can’t divorce Karachi’s climate change reality from its infrastructural problems.
Because development has made the city vulnerable; caused the urban heat island effect due to rapid unplanned urbanisation. There are no green spaces; only concrete, causing deadly heat waves. If you want to look at an ill prepared city faced with climate change, you don’t have to look further. Karachi is a great example.
Aisha : And I think last year's floods really gave a sense of how ill prepared all of Pakistan is and how ill prepared Pakistan's disaster management institutions are. I want to know that when you think of climate change in relation to Pakistan, what worries you?
Zoha : Wow, I mean so much. Pakistan is very unique because we have so many different climatic zones. So any sort of climate change induced disaster that you can think of, Pakistan would have an example of that, whether it's sea level rise, drought, extreme flooding, glacial melt–– we have this very diverse topography. It also means that we're going to be experiencing all those different kinds of extreme weather patterns or those climate induced disasters. So in terms of what worries me is that naturally Pakistan's vulnerability to climate change. And it's unfortunate that it didn't have any part to play in it, or at least a major part.
But then what also worries me is the fact that of all the countries so vulnerable to climate change, Pakistan is also on the list of countries that are very, very ill prepared to deal with it. So whether it's the intersection of health and climate change, infrastructure management and climate change, or just like early warning systems and disaster management as disaster strikes, even our response is something that's just not up to mark.
Aisha : And that's a perfect transition into what I want to ask you next. It's been almost exactly a year since the historic 2022 floods which ravaged Pakistan. You covered them. Could you reflect on the floods, some insights into the challenges that communities faced and what the situation on the ground was like?
Zoha : We did not have a robust and coordinated disaster management plan, and the dangers of not evacuating weren't effectively communicated to the communities most at risk. We also don't have the kind of multi-hazard early warning systems that make use of technology for us to be better prepared for disasters of scale. So when you look at the 2022 floods in retrospect, you see that yes the destruction was unprecedented but the death toll is something that could have been avoided if we had better systems in place.
Bangladesh is a country in the region that we can learn a lot from, especially how they have been solidifying their early warning systems over the last few decades. In the 1970s they were hit by Cyclone Bhola that led to more than half a million deaths in the country. Compare that to Cyclone Amphan in 2020 where the death toll was 26. So clearly there were lessons learnt.
One of the ways in which Bangladesh has made itself better prepared for disasters is through the use of technology like radars, ground stations and balloon-borner systems that allow for accurate air pressure monitoring and provide more accurate and time data on the development of storms along the coast. They also have a robust communication method that leverages alerts, SMS, TV and radio announcements to inform communities in time and then what really ties this system together is the vast network of volunteers.
After the 1970 floods they developed the cyclone preparedness programme the aim of which was to minimise the number of deaths by making vulnerable communities more resilient. Currently I believe they have more than 70,000 volunteers on the ground. These are the kind of interventions that Bangladesh has implemented over the years that have made it a leader in disaster preparedness in not just the region but I would argue around the world as well. So there's lots that Pakistan too can do to better prepare itself for when the next climate induced disaster hits which it inevitably will.
Aisha : COP 27 (Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) happened about two months after the floods. You covered it. Officials around the world gathered for it, could you tell me a little bit about this gathering? Since when have these been happening and how? How do they work and what's the purpose of it all?
Zoha : The Rio Earth Summit in 1992 is what led to the establishment of three key conventions: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Since then, annual Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings have convened to address climate change and negotiate global plans. COP 1 occurred in 1995.
But not all meetings have held the same significance. The ones that have stood out include COP15 in Copenhagen where the Kyoto Protocol emerged as one of the most important documents at the time to regulate anthropogenic activities, then of course COP21 was historic in ever way as parties agreed to replace the Kyoto Protocol with the Paris Agreement, a legally binding treaty that introduced the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°. COP 26 in 2021 marked the official inclusion of Loss and Damage on the agenda, recognizing the impact of climate change on developing or climate vulnerable nations. COP 27 in 2022 marked the official inclusion of Loss and Damage on the agenda, recognizing the impact of climate change on nations. The COP decision-making process operates on consensus, involving negotiations among parties and regional blocs like the G77, European Union, and the African Group. All parties have veto powers, unlike other UN committees.
The importance of COP really lies in its role as a platform for global climate policy discussions and agreements. But it also has many limitations in addressing climate change.
Its consensus-based decision-making process often results in slow progress and compromises that are not really adequate to tackle the urgent climate concerns we are facing.
Enforcement and compliance issues come up because the agreements are non-binding and there aren’t robust mechanisms. Also the legal framework severely lacks the strength to enforce commitments.
There are also varying national interests, disparities in historical contributions, and inadequate financing for developing countries so effective global action is really difficult to obtain.
And then there is the risk of greenwashing, where symbolic gestures rarely translate into meaningful climate actions.
Aisha : Yeah. yeah. So what have been major themes that are on the table each year?
Zoha : The three big themes that have kind of always been there have been mitigation, adaptation and finance. And as years have gone by, we have seen capacity building, nature based solutions and Loss and Damage become an important part of the larger conversation. Fossil fuels is a contentious subject, debated every year, which falls in the mitigation category.
The goal is to capp emissions and ensure that we're kind of blocking fossil fuels out and transitioning towards renewable energy. But there are economic interests at play– fossil fuel industries are a huge source of economic revenue for several countries. So phasing out fossil fuels raises concerns about economic loss and short term profit. These conversations then also become very political. Because it’s important to think about the historical responsibility of nations that have played a major role in the climate crisis.
Aisha : I want to know what role Pakistan played in last year’s COP, right after we had suffered from a huge climate catastrophe.
Zoha : I think Pakistan floods were at the centre of practically every conversation, every address. Pakistan was the president of the G77 Block, a powerful position in the convention. And so I would say that the floods not just impacted, but they were driving the conversation last year. The attitude and the messaging that Pakistan was trying to convey was that we do not have the resources to combat this and it's not a problem that we caused. Historically, industrialised nations, like the US, UK, France etc have been responsible for the majority of historical greenhouse gas emissions. So Pakistan’s message was: we really need them to step up and take accountability.
That's where the idea of common but differentiated responsibility comes in. An idea, or rather a principle, which recognizes the shared global responsibility in addressing climate change but recognizing countries have different historical contributions and varied capacities to address them. This was brought up a lot in the negotiations and even in the public addresses as well. That developed countries not only need to take responsibility but that they need to pay up.
Aisha : I want to talk more about this: the intersection of climate change and colonialism, and the responsibility of Western nations. Also ask you about the language being used around financing and Loss and Damage. On the one hand, you see the philanthropic tone used by Western countries in offering assistance and on the other, there are the developing nations who are basically demanding reparations. I’m wondering if you can reflect on the conversations about climate responsibilities, historical roles, and the call for reparations vs charity language.
Zoha : The legacies of colonialism are alive and we see them all around us to date. One of the ways in which the injustices of colonialism manifests itself in the modern world is in the disproportionate impacts of climate change facing previously colonised nations. Resources were extracted from these parts of the world and invested in what we know as the global north, and that has directly impacted the developing world's ability to combat climate change impacts.
A recent study by Carbon Brief has revealed that after taking emissions during colonial rule into account, the UK's contribution to global historical emissions has gone from 3% to 5.1%. Nearly double. This goes on to show that nations with colonial history are the most responsible for getting the planet here and exacerbating the vulnerabilities of developing nations, whichever way you choose to look at it.
Reparations is the word that we need to go for and colonialism is what we need to talk about as Loss and damage takes shape into policy. But again, compromises have to be made and developing countries give into language as long as some financial responsibility is put in place for developed countries. But like there's a conversation going on right now in the transitional committee on Loss and Damage and there's a text that's been produced and nobody (as far as developing countries are concerned) is happy with it just because of how watered down they've made the language. It's unfortunate, though, that despite how blatant the impacts of climate change are on developing countries, the West gets to control the narrative.
Aisha : The Guardian reported during COP 27 that Pakistan's chief negotiator Nabeel Munir repeated the same message every day: Loss and Damage is not charity, it's about climate justice. So clearly Pakistan had this rhetoric that this is not like charity, it's climate justice.
I want to wrap up by talking about next steps for Loss and Damage. Where do we go from here?
Zoha : So last year’s COP was the first time that Loss and Damage made it to the official text. The idea essentially was key. Let's get it in the text, right? Let's have it in the official language. And then we'll take about a year to talk about how this fund is going to be operationalized and how it's going to be distributed and what the percentages are going to be, who's going to host it, and all of those things. So at COP 27, essentially the only thing that was decided was that we're establishing a Loss in Damage fund. How it's going to be established and how the money is going to be distributed was a conversation for later.
This year is also historic in that there is already an agreement on operationalising the Loss and Damage fund, but the commitments made so far are not nearly enough to address the issue. We have to see how much responsibility the highest emitting countries will take in not just pledging money for the Loss and Damage fund but in where they stand on the phasing out of fossil fuels and pulling money out of oil and gas.
Aisha : Well, thank you so much Zoha. Let’s see where this year’s COP takes us.