Given the nature and magnitude
of the challenge, national action alone is insufficient. No nation can address
this challenge on its own. No region can insulate itself from these climate
changes. That is why we need to confront climate change within a global
framework, one that guarantees the highest level of international cooperation,
said by Secretary General of the United Nations, opening address of the
High-Level Event on Climate Change, 24 September, 2007.
Asian countries including Pakistan face the greatest risk from severe climate
change, which could force millions of people to flee their homes and trigger
environmental migration, according to an Asian Development Bank report. The
report titled “Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific” says
Bangladesh, India, Maldives and Pakistan face the greatest risk, but Indonesia,
the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, China and South Korea are also
especially vulnerable.
Publics of the Pakistan in recent years have largely disapproved of how the
Government of Pakistan totally ignored the grave climate change issue. China,
the U.S. and India seem to be most reluctant to sign up to the EU’s “road map”
pointing towards the next climate treaty that expires the next year, have
refused to commit to legal targets. This has raised the prospect that no country
will have the right targets to cut emissions after 2012.said Artur Runge-Metzger,
the EU’s lead envoy on the environment.
From the World Bank commissioned report in 2009: “Public attitudes toward
climate change: findings from a multi-country poll”,comes this interesting look
at country wide attitudes to climate change.
Another study, conducted by the NOAA and colleagues at the Cooperative Institute
for Research on Environmental Sciences (CIRES), was published in the Journal of
Climate and says that climate change from greenhouse gases explains close to
half the increased dryness in the region. Observations and model simulations
show a shift to drier conditions in the Mediterranean beginning in the 1970s. It
might be pertinent to mention here that Asia was the worst hit area due to most
severe change in climate. Pakistan is one of the countries that have been
severely hit in the recent years by disastrous effects of climate change
including flash floods and devastating earthquakes.
“Developed nations are not guilty of causing the climate change that developing
nations claim to suffer”, said Tom Harris, executive director of ICSC which is
headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. “Climate changes all the time—both warming and
cooling—due to natural causes and there is nothing that we can do to stop it.
However, to the degree possible, and considering our economic circumstances,
developed nations still have a moral obligation to devote a proportion of their
foreign aid to helping the world’s most vulnerable people adapt to natural
climate events.”
Human activities have caused the extinction of plants and animals at some
hundreds or thousands of times faster than what the natural rate would have been
as Mr. Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public
Information, in the Japanese city of Kanazawa said.
“We cannot reverse extinction. We can, however, prevent future extinction of
other species right now. For the next 10 years our commitment to protecting more
than eight million species, and our wisdom in contributing to a balance of life,
will be put to a test,” Mr. Kiyo Akasaka said.
Species can adapt to gradual changes in their environment through evolution, but
climate change often moves too quickly for them to do so. It’s not the absolute
temperature, then, but the rate of change that matters. Put simply, if climate
change is large enough, quick enough, and on a global scale, it can be the
perfect ingredient for a mass extinction.
We can’t tell the future of evolution, but we can look at the past for reference
points.