Environmental pollution & COP 26
THE entire world is currently facingn climate change. Many scenarios predicted to occur in future decades seem to be happening on Earth, if the right sustainable measures are not taken in time and the temperature continues to rise, the day is not far off when the planet will be affected by climate emergency and become extremely dangerous to humans and other living things.
According to a report of the United Nations, climate change is occurring rapidly around the world, with some destructive changes occurring that will not be eliminated in thousands of years.
Climate change experts say that if the toxic release of greenhouse gases is not cut-off by adopting a net-zero emissions target, one and a half-fold increase in global temperature and a 3°C rise in average air temperature in mid-latitudes would be inevitable. Rising global temperature is extremely harmful to life on Earth.
The Paris Agreement adopted in the aftermath of COP 21 in Paris in 2015 pledged to reduce global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius, but the international treaty was dealt a major blow by the United States in the form of secession.
The situation is so alarming for the inhabitants of the planet that the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had to say at the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 26) in Glasgow, “it’s time to say: enough. Enough of brutalizing biodiversity, killing ourselves with carbon, treating nature like a toilet, burning and drilling and mining our way deeper. We are digging our own graves.”
Despite limited resources, Pakistan is working to mitigate the effects of climate change. The government is planting 10 billion trees. One billion trees will be planted this year, while the first phase will be completed by 2023.
The plan is to plant billions of trees, increase the use of renewable energy in the country by 30% to mitigate the effects of climate change, use solar energy for irrigation, and measures to recycle plastic more than once by chemical recycling system.
Work is also underway at the government level on the development of electric vehicle policy and other projects.
The PTI government’s initiatives and efforts are in place, but on the other hand due to climate change in Pakistan over the past decade, severe weather events including floods, droughts, eruption of glacier melting lakes, cyclones and heatwaves caused not only loss of human lives but also severe damage to the national economy.
Environmental pollution in Pakistan is forging more havoc than the global climate change, from burning garbage across the country to factory emissions.
There is no viable system to prevent smoke. Clouds of smoke rising from factory chimneys, smoke exhaust from millions of vehicles and industrial waste have polluted the sea. Now, Lahore ranks 2nd in the air quality index with most polluted city in the world.
If the first world countries are not ready to change their ways, how will the third world countries take environmental pollution gravely when they already have limited resources. If the officials of the environmental departments in Pakistan ensure the rule of law will reduce its effects within a year, our ecosystem will return to its original state.
However, this environmental pollution is not a problem for anyone, it is a problem of the whole world and this problem can be solved only through joint efforts.
It is imperative to take measures to eradicate pollution from the world as soon as possible. If we cannot eradicate pollution, pollution will destroy us.
—The writer is a regular columnist, based in Lahore.
