Pollution & Environment

All this is taking a huge toll on the economy. According to a report by Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission, the annual monetary cost of environmental degradation alone is equivalent to around 4.3% of GDP. Hasan Abbas, an Islamabad-based expert, criticizes the authorities for  not paying proper attention to environmental problems . Saleem says that despite the fact that Pakistan ranks 142th on the environment performance indicator, the government has not taken concrete actions to deal with the challenges. Saleem believes the reason behind the country's negligence towards such existential crises is its fixation on economic growth. Abbas is of the opinion that Pakistan needs a green economic model. "Scrap all big hydro-power and coal-power projects. We need to switch to wind and  solar power , which are viable for countries like Pakistan," he suggested. Kishwar Zehra, a government official, said it is easier said than done. "Pakistan is already...

  Environment specialist Rahat Jabeen writes in a World Bank blog that every year Pakistan loses almost 27,000 hectares of natural forest area, explaining that almost three-quarters of the country's population use forest resources for a lack of alternative energy resources. Pakistan is among the top ten countries in the world that are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, according to Mome Saleem, an environmental activist. "The agriculture land is being used for housing projects, which has resulted in the loss of trees and extreme heat waves. No attention is being paid to depleting water, which is already scarce," she added. "Pakistan must have at least 25% of the forest cover, but we are also not doing well on this front. The government is not preventing the cutting down of trees, which is happening on a massive scale. A dilapidated public transport system and low-quality fuel cause a significant rise in carbon, but unfortunately the government is not taking...

  Researchers predict that Pakistan is on its way to becoming the most water-stressed country in the region by the year 2040. According to a 2018 report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Pakistan ranked third in the world among countries facing acute water shortage. Reports by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) also warn the authorities that the South Asian country will reach absolute water scarcity by 2025. In 2016, PCRWR reported that Pakistan touched the "water stress line" in 1990 and crossed the "water scarcity line" in 2005. If this situation persists, Pakistan is likely to face an acute water shortage or a drought-like situation in the near future, according to PCRWR, which is affiliated with the nation's Ministry of Science and Technology. Pakistan has the world's fourth-highest rate of water use. Its water intensity rate — the amount of water, in cubic meters, used pe...

  Pakistan is facing an acute water shortage, with experts saying the country could   run out of water by 2040   if authorities don't take long-term measures to deal with the problem. The recent  heat wave  has damaged crops and caused food shortages, and comes at a time when the Islamic nation has yet to fully recover from the  COVID pandemic  and its devastating toll on the public health sector and economy. Experts say that degradation of natural resources, soil erosion, deforestation, unbridled and unplanned urbanization, and contamination of ground water are some of the many serious issues that need immediate attention from the government. Tariq Banuri, a leading environmental expert, believes that 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. "Air pollution...

  :  Global warming occurs when carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and other air pollutants collect in the atmosphere and absorb sunlight and solar radiation that have bounced off the earth’s surface. Normally this radiation would escape into space, but these pollutants, which can last for years to centuries in the atmosphere, trap the heat and cause the planet to get hotter. These heat-trapping pollutants—specifically carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapor, and synthetic fluorinated gases—are known as greenhouse gases, and their impact is called  the greenhouse effect . Though  natural  cycles and fluctuations have caused the earth’s climate to change several times over the last 800,000 years, our current era of global warming is directly attributable to  human  activity—specifically to our burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, gasoline, and natural gas, which results in the greenhouse effect. In the United States, the largest source of greenhou...

  What is global warming? A:  Since the Industrial Revolution, the global annual temperature has increased in total by a little more than 1 degree Celsius, or about 2 degrees Fahrenheit. Between 1880—the year that accurate recordkeeping began—and 1980, it rose on average by 0.07 degrees Celsius (0.13 degrees Fahrenheit) every 10 years. Since 1981, however, the rate of increase has more than doubled: For the last 40 years, we’ve seen the global annual temperature rise by 0.18 degrees Celsius, or 0.32 degrees Fahrenheit, per decade. The result? A planet that has  never been hotter . Nine of the 10 warmest years since 1880 have occurred since 2005—and the 5 warmest years on record have all occurred since 2015. Climate change deniers have argued that there has been a “pause” or a “slowdown” in rising global temperatures, but numerous studies, including a  2018 paper  published in the journal  Environmental Research Letters , have disproved this claim. The impac...

The first wave of impacts can already be felt in our communities and seen on the nightly news. In the near future, between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause an additional  250,000 deaths per year  from things like malnutrition, insect-borne diseases, and heat stress. And the World Bank estimates that climate change could displace  more than 140 million people  within their home countries in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America by 2050. But the degree to which the climate crisis upends our lives depends on whether global leaders decide to chart a different course. If we fail to curb greenhouse gas emissions, scientists predict a  catastrophic 4.3 degrees Celsius , (or around 8 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming by the end of the century. What would a world that warm look like? Wars over water. Crowded hospitals to contend with spreading disease. Collapsed fisheries. Dead coral reefs. Even more lethal heat waves. These are just some of th...

  From the poles to the tropics, climate change is disrupting ecosystems. Even a seemingly slight shift in temperature can cause dramatic changes that ripple through food webs and the environment. The lake at Jökulsárlón, a glacial lagoon in Iceland, which has grown because of continued glacial melting Credit: Eskinder Debebe/UN Photo Melting sea ice The effects of climate change are most apparent in the world’s coldest regions—the poles. The Arctic is heating up  twice as fast  as anywhere else on earth, leading to the rapid melting of glaciers and polar ice sheets, where a massive amount of water is stored. As sea ice melts, darker ocean waters that absorb more sunlight become exposed, creating a positive feedback loop that speeds up the melting process. In just 15 years, the Arctic could be  entirely ice-free  in the summer. Sea level rise Scientists predict that melting sea ice and glaciers, as well as the fact that warmer water expands in volume, could caus...

  As global temperatures climb, widespread shifts in weather systems occur, making events like   droughts ,   hurricanes , and   floods   more intense and unpredictable. Extreme weather events that may have hit just once in our grandparents’ lifetimes are becoming more common in ours. However, not every place will experience the same effects: Climate change may cause severe drought in one region while making floods more likely in another. Already, the planet has warmed  1.1 degrees Celsius  (1.9 degrees Fahrenheit) since the preindustrial era began 250 years ago. And scientists warn it could reach a worst-case scenario of 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 if we fail to tackle the  causes of climate change —namely, the burning of  fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas) . Tokyo during a record-breaking heat wave, August 13, 2020 Credit: The  Yomiuri Shimbun  via AP Images Higher average temperatures This change in global a...

  Climate change is our planet’s greatest   existential threat . If we don’t limit greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, the consequences of rising global temperatures include massive crop and fishery collapse, the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of species, and entire communities becoming uninhabitable. While these outcomes may still be avoidable, climate change is already causing suffering and death. From raging wildfires and supercharged storms, its compounding effects can be felt today, outside our own windows. Understanding these impacts can help us prepare for what’s here, what’s avoidable, and what’s yet to come, and to better prepare and protect all communities. Even though everyone is or will be affected by climate change, those living in the world’s poorest countries—which have  contributed least  to the problem—are the most climate-vulnerable. They have the fewest financial resources to respond to crises or adapt, and they’re cl...