The geographical location of Pakistan is ardently celebrated by many ‘patriotic’ historians. This perspective had many proponents until the recent past, which is certainty a very sluggish realisation. Volumes of unenviable circumstances had been faced by our state due to its geographical location, sometimes due to the natural inducement in shape of floods and heatwaves by the global warming, but most of the times these horrible events, concerning our geography, in the history of Pakistan were fostered by our very own decisions by the leadership. Let’s dig into both.
First, the natural complications related to our geography. Besides a number of natural resources that we are bestowed with, this often overlooks the snags of our terrain. Global warming and a consequent flooding and heatwaves tops the list. Flooding in Pakistan is not a today’s phenomenon, rather it longs back to the very inception of the country. Before expounding on the floods and its miseries, and how Pakistan’s location can be a nightmare in the years to follow, we should first know that floods and Pakistan are inexorably intertwined having an elaborate history.
According to Federal Flood Commission (CFC), Pakistan has been hit by twenty major floods, exempting the small scale flooding. Majority of our population is unaware of the number as they have only been told about one flood, if not two, and that of 2010 and 1995. Whether it is a ploy of the government to not highlight our floods history in order to avoid criticism from the citizens for this bad governance causing lack of infrastructure and hence, more ravage, or is it a general lack of awareness among the masses, we don’t know! But what we certainly know is that this is a huge number, 20, for a country with limited resources and developing infrastructure having a brief history of seventy five years. In regard to casualties, the floods in 1950 claimed the highest number of lives i.e over two thousand(2000), making the 2010 floods the second deadliest, and the floods of 2022 the third with a stretching death toll of over fifteen hundred(1500). This reflects a brief idea about the history of floods in Pakistan, and its intensity vis-à-vis lives-lost as parameter.
According to the statistics, for the past 20 years, Pakistan has consistently ranked among the top 10 most vulnerable countries on the Climate Risk Index, with 10,000 fatalities due to climate-related disasters from 173 extreme weather events. According to a World Bank report, Pakistan loses a staggering amount of 1 billion dollars annually due to climate change implications. The sad tale is yet to follow i.e. Pakistan is one of the very few countries having a very low carbon footprint rate.
Against this backdrop, many of our political leaders and influencers called upon the stake holders to cancel the international debts. Even a British MP, Claudia Webbe, insisted upon easing the international debts and also contributes through reparations. This is a logical ask too because the growing industries, a prime source of carbon emission, of the developed countries are capitalising on our miseries.
Agony prevails as no indemnity has been assured by the responsible states. Under a 2050 climate scenario developed by NASA, continuing growth of the greenhouse emission at today’s rate could lead to additional global warming of about 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050. This can impact our country to an extremely catastrophic extent keeping in view its vulnerability to the climate change, the glimpses of which we seen in the recent flooding of 2022.
These events have turned the minds of the masses of Pakistan to the state of paranoia, so much so that a top American columnist called Pakistan as ‘Paranoidistan’
Second are the self-inflicted adverse decisions which assisted the foreign states to exploit our geography. Hitching its wagons to the US bloc in the cold war to contain communism, and not remaining neutral in the very beginning of our journey as a nation proved futile, in fact attributed to our development as a security state. From then on to comply with the US wishes, Pakistan has signed treaties like SEATO and CENTO and also provided its territory for the military operations of NATO against the Russian led communist bloc.
Albeit it proved profitable for some while in a sense that Pakistan received economic support, worth billions of dollars, but it had such elements, which were complementary to be received, that threaten our sovereignty from within until today. Too many of you would have guessed those threats i.e. the menace of terrorism, insurgency, hostile relationships with Afghanistan and Russia, which only recently improved courtesy the arms deal in 2010 and recent visit our ex-PM Imran Khan.
These atrocious players can engulf the development of any nation, let alone Pakistan. These events have turned the minds of the masses of Pakistan to the state of paranoia, so much so that a top American columnist called Pakistan as ‘Paranoidistan’—‘a state that suspects every US move as designed to weaken Pakistan.’ Rightly so, our history has nurtured us in this way. Reflecting upon such an enigmatic past, it’s inevitable to contemplate the otherwise. Our leadership in the past has never turned down any opportunity to be a party to a conflict expecting servicing results, but receiving the contrary.
The unenviable facets of our geographical location should not be blamed on nature alone, but instead circumvented through specific measures. It is high time for our leadership to devise foreign policy in such a way that it can no longer be operated as a scapegoat. Islamabad should acknowledge that we cannot afford to be a party to the next emerging and well anticipated cold war between China and the US, which would alleviate our miseries in future. This will stamp out one of the two causes of geographic agony of Pakistan to some extent.
The stakeholders of the respective departments concerning climate and environment should also engage the citizens in the process and educate them on the subject of climate change. Highlighting climate change in the UN and pressurising for immediate measures can be impactful because we cannot afford more dents at the cost of foreign developments. A certain amount should be fixed to be paid by the highest carbon emitter states to the most vulnerable countries as an indemnity. This can be a remedy for the nature-caused origin of our geographic bugbear. In the ‘sandwiched’ causes of the geographical issues- the natural and the self-inflicted- we should eradicate the self-made at minimum.
