LAHORE, Nov 20: The outbreak of dengue fever that has claimed five lives and over 1,000 cases in Lahore is one of the multiple impacts of global climate change in South Asia, according to experts.

Speaking at a lecture on the ‘Changing Role of Asia in Global Climate Change’, Dr Toufiq Siddiqi, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, Hawaii, and co-author of the Nobel prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, and Rafay Alam, environmental lawyer and adjunct professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, summarised the regional impacts of global warming here on Thursday, calling the phenomenon “real and immediate”.

According to Prof Siddiqi, heat stresses on crops will lead to approximately 10 per cent loss as a result of global warming.

The Himalayan Glacier, which feeds the Indus River as well as most of the region’s rivers, is melting at an accelerated rate which will provide a greater flow of water for some decades before water supply begins to deplete.

So-called ‘mega-delta’ regions such as Karachi and other coastal cities will become at risk of flooding, Prof Siddiqi said. Even if flood breakers are built around the city, sewage lines may get backed-up and stop flowing out to sea.

Furthermore, the increased demands on fossil fuel energy from urbanisation and development will accelerate the global warming cycle even further in what will effectively become a positive feedback loop.

Alam added the monsoon had come two weeks earlier this year in Punjab and the shifting seasonal and rainfall patterns were already causing harm to birds as well as creating more favourable conditions for mosquitoes to thrive.

Prof Siddiqi said that, as a signatory to the Kyoto protocol (which was ratified only in 2005 – seven years after the first signatory put pen to paper), the developing world’s obligations to cut emissions had been fairly relaxed.

He argued that countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh, though contributing very little to world carbon emissions, suffered most greatly and therefore had a greater case to argue in international forums. He said that if sea-levels were to rise by just one meter as a consequence of global warming, 20 million citizens in Bangladesh would be displaced.

The brunt of cutting emissions must come from developed economies, such as the United States, which contributes 1.8 billion tons of carbon a year (as opposed to 38 million from Pakistan, which lies below Singapore in Asian emissions ranking). Any new agreement on carbon emissions should consider the carbon emissions per capita, whether the country in question is very hot or cold (and so should get some allowance for heating or cooling purposes) and whether the country is very large and should be given some transportation allowances.

Cutting carbon emissions also made economic sense, added Prof Siddiqi, citing the Nicholas Stern review which found that the cost of cutting emissions to a country may be 1 per cent of GDP per year whereas the cost of inaction may be anywhere between 5 – 20 per cent of GDP per year when disaster mitigation was factored.

AWARENESS CAMP: The United Students Federation (USF) of Punjab University organised an awareness camp for students at the Management Science Zone, Law College, SBS and Sociology department. Pamphlets relating to causes, symptoms and precautionary measures were distributed, and guidelines were issued verbally. President of USF Atif Naeem appealed to varsity administration to make arrangements for a weekly fumigation of campus.