Pakistan needs the support of the international community to help it adopt a climate-resilient system for industrial development and repair the large-scale damage caused by recent floods and other catastrophic disasters.
This was one of the key recommendations of Delhi School of Economics Professor Emeritus Dr. Partha Sen, who spoke to India via live video link at the 23rd Hamza Alvi Distinguished Lecture.
Ertaka Institute of Social Sciences organized the function in Zebst on Monday. The title of the lecture was “Climate Change and Countries of the Global South in a Historical Context: Where Are the Equity Considerations?”.
A senior academic from India said that Pakistan needs extraordinary help from developed countries to offset its huge losses due to climate emergency as the country has a very small share of the global carbon footprint. .
He said that Pakistan has been severely affected by climate emergencies, including frequent catastrophic floods, erosion of its coastline and rapid melting of glaciers in the north, not because of its own carbon emissions, but because of developed countries. Economies are due to the problem of global warming.
Professor Sen told the audience that the recent conclusion of the annual United Nations Environment Summit (COP-29) in Baku, Azerbaijan was a disappointment for developing countries like Pakistan which were severely affected by the climate emergency. However, the UN Annual Conference has started to move in the right direction, he added.
He informed the audience that according to the latest scientific estimates, the international community should commit to giving 1 trillion US dollars to compensate the losses caused by the environmental disaster in the third world countries, but in the recent United Nations climate conference, its It was agreed to give only 300 billion dollars. The main cause, which was less than a third of the original requirement.
He added that limited funds from the international community would not be distributed immediately. He believed that financial assistance given by developed countries to the third world as compensation for climate damage should not be repaid in the form of interest-bearing loans, but rather by international lending agencies. go
A senior economics professor from India told the audience that the global trend of unequal distribution of wealth and income has a lot to do with the issue of climate change. He emphasized that the industrialized countries in the developed world should be fully accountable for the climate catastrophe in the less developed countries due to their massive carbon footprint.
Professor Sen said that the exploitative economic trends of industrialized countries since the colonial era are a major cause of the global problem of environmental destruction. He said that developed countries had started releasing unchecked amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution. He said that methane emission by developed countries is another major factor responsible for the rapid deterioration of the global environment. He said that by the middle of the 18th century, the release of harmful hydrocarbons by the colonial powers had reached alarming levels.
Professor Sen informed the audience that rapidly changing weather patterns and frequent severe floods in the Indian subcontinent are clear signs of the deadly trend of climate change which cannot be scientifically denied. He added that climate change has led to abnormal rainfall patterns in India and catastrophic floods in Pakistan in 2022.
In the opening of his lecture, the Indian academic emphasized the need to allow more people-to-people contacts between India and Pakistan for fruitful academic and intellectual exchanges on regional and common issues.
Dr. Tahira S. Khan, visiting faculty member of Columbia University in New York, chaired the session. In her remarks, she said that she wanted Prof. Sen to be allowed to visit Pakistan in person to deliver his useful lecture under a relaxed regime that would allow the exchange of scholars and academics between the two neighboring countries. Visits should be promoted.