Pakistan pays the price for our greed 

By Claudia Webbe MP 

Pakistan should not have to pay the price for climate change. It is the global North and the big polluters that are responsible and which should pay reparations for the eco-destruction they have caused, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE MP

PAKISTAN is in the midst of a climate catastrophe and experiencing the worst floods in the country’s history.

One third of the country is under water, an area that according to some estimates is the size of Britain.

Between March and April this year, Pakistan experienced a record-breaking heat wave that saw several cities in Sindh province reach unprecedented high temperatures of up to 50°C. It had the hottest city on the planet, Jacobabad at 51°C in May 2022.

Months of record-breaking temperatures, including forest fires and melting glaciers have been followed by equally unprecedented levels of rainfall which brought an average of 190 per cent more rain than usual, leading to what Shehbaz Sharif, the country’s prime minister, has described as “the worst floods in Pakistan’s history.”

Although Pakistan had witnessed more than 20 major floods between 1950 and 2012, the scale of the floods the country is currently enduring is unprecedented.

All four provinces of the country have been affected, with Sindh and Balochistan, which are normally arid or semi-arid, bearing the brunt of the worst effects of the floods.

South Punjab and Sindh, which usually receive an average of 30 to 40mm rain a year, have experienced between 1,000mm and 1,500mm of rain over the past two months.

Whole towns and cities have been submerged, and roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and other key infrastructure have been destroyed, cutting off communities and making it difficult for them to evacuate or receive aid.

Approximately 33 million people, including three million children, have been affected, and over 1,500 people have died, among them, close to 500 children.

The floods have destroyed livelihoods, up to a million homes, and millions of acres of farmland, crops and livestock, leading to shortages of essential commodities, food insecurity and soaring food prices.

In the worst-affected parts of the country, people have been left stranded for weeks with little or no access to food, safe drinking water, shelter, medicine and sanitation.

The risk of waterborne diseases, and of infections like Covid-19 is rising as people crowd into what safe spaces they can find or in relief shelters.

The government of Pakistan estimates that the floods have caused more than £8.9 billion worth of damage, a figure that is likely to rise as the rains, the flooding and the mud and landslides continue.

Much more will be needed to reconstruct, support climate refugees, address unemployment, provide relief and tackle hyper-inflation.

Pakistan has 7,253 glaciers, the largest mass of glacial ice anywhere in the world apart from the North and South Poles.

The glaciers are melting, rising temperatures mean that by the year 2100, 36 per cent of glaciers along the Hindu Kush and Himalayan range that stretches from central and western Afghanistan into north-western Pakistan and far south-eastern Tajikistan, will have melted, which will have catastrophic consequences for Pakistan.

Pakistan is among the top 10 countries most vulnerable to extreme weather conditions brought about by climate change, yet it contributes less than 1 per cent to global greenhouse emissions.

The future of climate change is already in the here and now, in the global South. We are seeing the real-world impact of climate change play out with unbearable tragic consequences.

Pakistan should not have to pay the price for climate change. It is barely culpable for this crisis.

The global North and big polluters are responsible yet have been reluctant to end their reliance on fossil fuels and equally reluctant to finance the loss and damage suffered by global South countries.

Pakistan is carrying the full weight of countries and companies in the global North that are wreaking havoc on the planet through their reckless carbon consumption and unfettered greed.

The pledges and support packages that countries in the global North have announced in the wake of the disaster, are inadequate and do not go anywhere near the levels of support that Pakistan needs.

Some of the support, like the £3.47bn coming from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over the coming year, will have to be repaid and adds to the heavy debt burden the country is currently struggling under which, at present, stands at around £215.98bn.

Pakistan’s suffering cannot be separated from centuries of extractive colonialism and imperialism.

Areas where the floods have hit the worst such as South Punjab, Balochistan and rural Sindh have been starved, exploited and poverty-stricken for years as the legacy of empire continued unabated.

Pakistan is forced to spend more on paying its international creditors than on the needs of its population. There can be no climate justice without debt justice.

The IMF loans that have a stranglehold over Pakistan have conditions which restrict Pakistan’s ability to prioritise support to its people.

Instead, plunging Pakistan into a punishing programme of austerity, privatisation and higher taxation on its working-class communities.

Before the floods struck, the Pakistan government was already trying to appease and provide the IMF with assurances that it would impose enough hardship on the country’s population in return for release of loan payments.

It is wrong under the current circumstances where Pakistan needs to rebuild, reconstruct and rehabilitate for the IMF, the World Bank and other international players to demand the servicing of Pakistan’s debt. Pakistan is in no position to repay any debt obligations.

We should all join the call for climate reparations for Pakistan as loss and damage compensation for the global North-induced climate crisis. The movement for climate justice and debt relief must be supported.

We need a global climate tax so that the global rich can be made to pay for the climate and ecological damage they have been causing since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Fossil fuel companies, aided and abetted by rich countries in the global North, are making trillions in profit every year from the extraction, sale and consumption of fossil fuels which are driving global warming. These obscene profits must end.

Pakistan should not have to bear the brunt of climate change. Countries in the global North must take ownership of the ecological crisis they have caused.

Long promised investments by richer nations to enable global South countries to develop adaptions to climate change have been too little and too slow, and for too many countries they have been practically non-existent.

In comparison since 2015, the G20 nations have spent £2.9 trillion on subsidising fossil fuel industries. Shamelessly, the same rich countries significantly increased their spend every year to keep out the climate refugees they created, from entering their shores and borders.

The international community must unite to ensure the Pakistani people have the maximum resources possible to survive and thrive out of the catastrophe they were not even remotely responsible for.

We can no longer accept a society predicated on “climate apartheid,” where as Philip Alston, the then UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, warned in 2019, “the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer.”

Claudia Webbe MP is the member of Parliament for Leicester East. You can follow her at www.facebook.com/claudiaforLE and twitter.com/ClaudiaWebbe