EDITORIAL: Climate and weather-related changes continue to bring bad news across the world, but it turns out that Asia has been hardest hit over the last year, with the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) warning that increasingly severe heatwaves and melting glaciers seriously threaten the continent’s future water security. Asia is now warming faster than the global average, with temperatures in 2023 nearly two degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average.

Pakistanis would understand the contents of the WMO report very well, no doubt, since it mentions that many countries in the region experienced their hottest year on record in 2023, “along with a barrage of extreme conditions, from droughts and heatwaves to floods and storms”.

This is indeed “sobering”, as the WMO chief pointed out in a statement, adding that climate change exacerbated the frequency and severity of such events, profoundly impacting societies, economies and, most importantly, human lives and the environment.

Yet considering how climate change has been worsening over the last few years, and how this region now regularly suffers from climate disasters like floods, storms and droughts, sometimes at different places in the same country, such developments were inevitable.

Countries like Pakistan have now got used to all such events every year, and factor in losses to the exchequer and human lives ahead of time. But going forward, as glaciers continue to melt and rain patterns become more erratic, there’s a growing fear that some countries, like Pakistan, do not have the resources to face such challenges as they continue to mount.

Climate change is, therefore, not only responsible for thousands of lives every year, but also for crippling economies that are already struggling to stand on their own feet. Pakistan, once again, provides the best example. With the economy already struggling to achieve some sort of growth trajectory, another rain-and-flood season that shaves a couple of percentage points off GDP – which has been known to happen – could well push it over the cliff.

Last year alone, 79 disasters associated with water-related weather hazards were reported in Asia. And more than 80 percent of these were floods and storms, accounting for more than 2,000 deaths and about nine million people directly affected. It is, no doubt, “imperative that our actions and strategies mirror the urgency of these times”, as WMO noted, and that “reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to evolving climate is not merely an option, but a fundamental necessity”.

But that only brings us full circle to the problem that is at the heart of the worsening climate crisis. Most countries do not have the resources to meet this challenge, especially those that contribute the least carbon to the atmosphere but suffer the most from its effects.

That is why rich countries are going to have to take the lead. They have the know-how and the money to make this problem less painful for everybody. And since it was broadly their industrial progress that poisoned the climate for the whole world, it’s only fair that they foot the bill for most of it.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024