The Environment Minister Samina Ghurki responding to a query informed the National Assembly recently that the average annual temperature in Pakistan has risen by 0.6 C°. As per a February 2010 report prepared by the Planning Commission's Task Force on Climate Change. She also told the House, the average temperature is projected to increase in the range of 1.3-1.5 C° by 2020, 2.5-2.8 by 2050, and 3.9-4.4 C° by 2080. That is a scary forecast.
Throughout the world, the environment, in view of the rapid change in the climate has been given priority whereas in Pakistan nothing concrete has so far been done. The Sindh Secretary Environment Mir Hussain Ali had admitted in public, in the past, that the industrialists of Karachi were violating the environmental laws and government was helpless in this regard.
It is sad that our rulers are not well-conversant with the importance of the environment in the country. In Islamabad, an international 2-day conference on climate change was held on January 12-13, 2009. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani attended the conference on the last day, in which international experts, including chairman of the Conference Dr R K Pachauri (Nobel Peace prize winner), categorically warned about the unprecedented destruction from floods in Pakistan 18 months ahead but our visionless Prime Minister Gilani miserably failed to take precautionary measures, despite the fact that he was personally present in the conference.
Nonetheless, after the floods, he issued a highly controversial statement that "had the Kalabagh dam were in place, the devastating floods could have been averted" whereas ex-IRSA chairman Fatehullah Gandapur rightly contradicted the PM's claim stating that "designwise KBD was not capable of storing flood water."
The Indus Delta is on the verge of an unnatural sad demise due to the non-release of 10 MAF water as envisaged in the "Water Accord-1991" after 20 years passed after signing the Accord, but our PM Gilani had totally neglected this aspect. There have been formidable repercussions on almost the whole of Sindh due to the sad demise of the Indus Delta. Prime Minister Gilani, who after the 18th Amendment had become a powerful PM, has no concern for the environmental destruction in Sindh as well as in Pakistan. What a tragedy!
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