EDITORIAL: A group of 39 island nations has called on the world to save “our very future”. The call comes as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its latest report has warned that catastrophic warming is occurring far more quickly than previously forecast. The panel expects the world governments to take a “critical action” to cap warming to 1.5C temperature goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement. But the world is on course to reach that level around 2030, a decade earlier than contemplated by the Paris Agreement. This unforeseen rapid warming tends to produce extreme weather events like wildfires, heatwaves, typhoons and floods. And, among victims of rapid climate warming the island states are feared to be the prime victims. Not only are they concerned about what has already happened, they are also extremely worried about global warming’s likely conduct in decades to come. “We have to turn this around. If we keep warming to 1.5C we are still facing half a meter of sea level rise. But if we stop warming from reaching 2C, we can avoid a long-term three meters of sea level rise. That is our very future, right there,” said Dian Black-Layne who led negotiations for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) at the IPCC forum. The concern expressed by the island states echoes the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ perception that the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are “chocking our planet and putting billons of people at immediate risk”. He has called for “combined forces” to avert the crisis, a call that remains unheard so far.

Further global warming can be avoided by drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions in next 10 years, and to end global anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions would have to be balanced by its removals. This requires transitions in energy, land, infrastructures and industrial systems at an unprecedented scale. But given the reluctance of the major producers of greenhouse gases to implement recommendations of the Paris Agreement, the IPCC’s call would predictably make no difference. And the obvious victims of that non-compliance would be countries like Pakistan and the island states. Over some years now, the rapidly rising climate warming has triggered a host of weather-related problems like floods, heatwaves and early melting of glaciers in Pakistan. The ‘10-billion trees’ initiative of Prime Minister Imran Khan will surely help combat the negative fallout of climate warming, but not as quickly as predicted by the IPCC. Twenty years back was the best time to undertake tree plantations in a big way but it is the second best now, and that is precisely the prime minister’s take. The curse of global warming has now arrived at its tipping point. Let nobody say the battle against global warming has already been lost. The IPCC report is cautiously optimistic that major producers of the greenhouse gases would heed to it that they would transit from greenhouse gases emitting energy sources to renewable sources, or at least move in that direction. Of course they would make promises but proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021