EDITORIAL: With this year’s floods having already destroyed more lives, property and livelihoods, and also likely removed more points from annual GDP, than the supposedly once-in-a-lifetime 2010 floods, and more water is yet to fall from the sky and melt from glaciers, it’s important to understand a number of very important details to put this phenomenon in proper perspective.
One, as everybody that’s been following the headlines knows by now, Pakistan is one of the smallest contributors to global carbon dioxide emissions, yet it counts among the 10 or so countries most vulnerable to the downside of climate change. And though it’s true that we could, and should, have done a lot more to prepare for it, the fact remains that we’re made to pay in blood, sweat, tears and coin for something that is not even remotely our fault. True, less illegal construction around river beds would have cut down the number of dead and money gone waste, but it still wouldn’t have prevented frequent droughts and floods that damage crops a lot more often than they used to.
Two, it’s very big of the international community to extend emergency help in such times. But it’s also a bit rich of them to think that their responsibility ends there. It was the breakneck growth of the biggest and wealthiest of them that gave the whole world this problem, after all, and even now they continue to poison the earth a lot more than poor developing countries that bear the brunt of it. Throwing rations around as the death toll breaks records is a very good, and much appreciated, gesture. But where will the money to relocate the displaced and rebuild their homes come from once the water recedes? And who’s to say how long it will take for crops and people that raise them to get back to business as usual?
Three, the worst is fast coming true and there’s a good chance that this year’s floods will cut GDP by at least three percentage points. So the 5pc target is no longer a reality and all the government will have to show for all its sacrifices, especially everything that had to be done to revive the IMF bailout programme, is going to be a paltry 2pc growth just when the economy is fighting for its life. This is worse than 2010, when GDP was squeezed by 2pc, and had to settle at 2.4pc instead of 4.4pc.
And four, Pakistan is not the only country facing these existential problems but it is a classic case that puts a very serious question to the world’s leading countries: what are they going to do about it? Nobody takes suggestions of cancelling their foreign debt seriously, though that is by far the best solution, but they must still be made to chip in. If a lot of poor countries keep burying their dead and begging for reconstruction money every few years, because of climate change, then much of the so-called economic south will be forced into a very vicious circle that will eventually prove bad for everybody. That is why there is a very urgent need to stop this hemorrhaging now; before it gets too late.
The UN has made an appeal for emergency funds, but that, despite being very welcome, is not part of the ultimate solution. That the world’s climate is changing far faster than anybody expected is as undeniable a fact as the so-called first world’s central role in it. They made the whole world suffer for their own progress. Now they must also take responsibility for some of that damage and make meaningful contributions to serious efforts to mitigate some of the harm.
It would have been much better, and easier, if they had agreed to approach this problem from the foreign debt point of view; and reduced, if not cancelled, it. But since most international help, even emergency relief, is about money, the sooner they spend significant amounts on reconstruction and preparedness of countries like Pakistan, the better for those countries and the rest of the world.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022