The floods in Pakistan were a reminder that the changing climate will bring more disasters in the near future, according to a UN report released on Wednesday.
According to the United Nations’ 2022 Year in Review report on Climate and Environment, in 2022, while some regions suffered from a lack of water, others were hit by severe floods.
“In Pakistan, a national emergency was declared in August, following heavy flooding and landslides caused by monsoon rains which, at the height of the crisis, saw around a third of the country underwater. Tens of millions were displaced,” the report read.
“The UN is hosting an international conference on Climate Resilient Pakistan in Geneva on January 9 to consider various options for supporting the country in dealing with the consequences of the changing climate,” according to The Dawn.
The UN report quotes various UN-sponsored studies. It underlines global warming as a major threat to the Earth and says that humanity has failed at lowering carbon emissions to control the carbon emergency.
The UN report talked about the urgent need to cut the usage of fossil fuels and support developing countries in dealing with man-made climate changes, causing droughts, floods, and extreme weather.
“The UN report also refers to a recent study by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), which shows that heat waves will occur more and more frequently, into the 2060s,” reported The Dawn.
According to World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a UN weather agency, the planet’s warming is caused by human activities.
The UN report says that climate change is a serious concern for the planet’s future.
Amid one of the most cataclysmic floods in the history of Pakistan, the country’s most crucial challenges include the impacts of climate change, writes Arshia Malik, a columnist and an educationist in South-South Research Initiative (SSRI).
The most crucial challenges for Pakistan include the impacts of climate change, floods, heat waves, drought, crop losses and diseases, whose frequency has increased rapidly over the past couple of decades.
Pakistan has serious environmental issues and the World Bank report in 2013 expressed serious concerns, stating that Pakistan’s top environmental problems include air pollution, inadequate supply of potable water, noise pollution and the health deterioration of urban and rural populations due to pollution, reported SSRI.
These environmental concerns not only harm Pakistani citizens but also seriously threaten the country’s economy, said Malik.
Source - https://theprint.in
