Meteorologists and environmental experts on Sunday termed the rapid increase of Green House gases (Chlorofluorocarbons) as the major cause of climatic variations and rising temperature in the federal capital.
Meteorologists and environmentalists said that Pakistan was already among the top ten countries where unusual weather patterns were making major environment impacts, and the situation might further deteriorate in the coming years if attention was not paid to issues related to climate change.
Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) environmentalist Kashif Salik said that Capital's environment was under rapid changes since last many decades and approximately each and every field of it's found under changing ie forest cover, urban lands and water bodies.
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are greenhouse gases. They were largely responsible for damaging the ozone layer, which is directly responsible for climatic variations, said Kashif Salik.
"Massive deforestation is also another main cause of rising temperature in the capital city" he added. The effect of climate change on regional and national economies was projected to be largely effected, he said. Salik further said that Loss of agricultural revenue and additional costs for managing water resources and disease and other health risks was subjected to economic activity.
Former Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency Director-General Asif Shuja said that due to widespread falling of trees and rapid urbanisation, temperature in the capital city has started to regularly cross 44 degrees in summer.
"It is because of new construction and uprooting of trees," he said, suggesting that there was a need to take satellite images of Islamabad to gauge the most heat-emitting areas. "Once the major heat-emitting areas are detected, it will help take preventive measures to control rising temperatures of the city," he said. Shuja said that one of the best possible options was to control emissions and global warming was planting more and more saplings and trees and build using heat-absorbing materials.
"After the devolution of the ministry of environment under the 18th Amendment, no project on protection of forests has been undertaken by any department in the country," he said.
Veteran research scholar of Comsats University in Environment studies, Dr Syed Faisal Hussain said that the government needed to invest more on environmental issues in the capital city to make it clean and green.