"The glaciers of three mountains, which feed Pakistani rivers, have been predicted to melt faster due to global warming." — File Photo

LAST summer, as torrential rains flooded Pakistan, a veteran intelligence analyst watched closely from his desk at CIA headquarters just outside Washington. For the analyst, who heads the agency’s year-old Centre on Climate Change and National Security, the worst natural disaster in Pakistan’s history was a warning. “It has the exact same symptoms you would see for future climate change events, and we’re expecting to see more of them,” he said, according to a report in “Vancouver Sun.” He refused to identify himself. “We wanted to know the conditions that lead to a situation like the Pakistan flooding. What are the important things for water flows, food security .... radicalisation, disease and displaced people?”

What Pakistan experienced last summer in terms of extreme weather and economic cost is currently being faced by four countries – Australia, Brazil, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Floods have hit four Australian states since December and they look set to be the costliest natural disaster ever in the country’s history. And the damage bill is still rising fast as record flooding continues to rage.

On January 12, Pakistan was warned at a seminar in Islamabad, organised by Pakistan Water Partnership in collaboration with the Planning Commission, that the country, especially its Indus Basin, will face severe and frequent extreme weather events of both floods and draught in the near future. The problem is that Pakistan is not prepared enough, nor trying to prepare itself, to combat such events. In fact, it was also caught unaware in July last.

The Global Change Impact Studies Centre (GCISC) and Pakistan’s Meteorological Department have predicted more floods in the coming years as average temperature over the country is expected to increase in the range of 1.3-1.5 degrees Celsius by 2020.

Besides, the glaciers of three mountains, which feed Pakistani rivers, have been predicted to melt faster due to global warming, causing abnormal increase in rivers’ water outflow.

In last year’s floods, the Indus River inundated an area of 100,000 square kilometres while another 60,000 square kilometres was flooded by other rivers such as the Kabul and the Swat, according to National Disaster Management Authority. Pakistan’s greenhouse gas emissions were estimated to be at 309 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2008.

The country contributes 0.8 per cent of the total global emissions, ranking 135 in per capita emissions.

On January 15, a meeting of officials of environment department of Punjab and federal environment ministry and various stakeholders was called to discuss Pakistan’s first national climate change policy draft, recently developed by the ministry.

It is a major step forward at a time when the country is already on the frontline facing severe climate challenges. How long it takes to finalise the policy and implement its major objectives is anybody’s guess.

The goal of the policy is to ensure that climate change is mainstreamed in the economically important and vulnerable sectors of the economy and, in fact, take the country towards low carbon economy. The main objectives are to integrate climate change policy with other interrelated national policies, place equal emphasis on both mitigation and adaptation, as these are integral parts of the strategy to cope with climate change;  minimise the risks to the population and national economy, arising from expected increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.

The floods in Australia have been blamed on the strongest ever-recorded La Nina weather phenomenon in the Pacific, which saw Australia record its third rainy year on record in 2010.

La Nina is a periodic climate pattern that results in the cooling of the sea temperatures of the tropical Pacific Ocean, which brings about more rainfall in the western Pacific, and less on the eastern Pacific side of South America.

It is the opposite of El Nino, which brings about more rainfall in the eastern Pacific and less in the western Pacific.

Not all the floods around the world are linked to La Nina. The British Meteorological Office says the floods in Australia and the Philippines are linked to La Nina, but not the extreme weather in Brazil and Sri Lanka. The heavy rainfall associated with La Nina is likely to last for about five years but it can also happen earlier. However, the floods in Sri Lanka have destroyed 21 per cent of its rice crop and there are fears of food inflation.

On January 5, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said global food prices have reached their highest levels since their records began in 1990 and grains prices could climb further due to adverse weather patterns around the world.

Food inflation is now the main worry of many countries with memories still fresh of the 2008 food crisis, when soaring prices sparked riots in several countries.

On January14, British economist Nicholas Stern, known worldwide for his great work on global warming, said that the price of fighting climate change is now higher than what he estimated in a 2006 study that earned him a 400,000-euro BBVA Foundation award for measuring the economic cost of climate change.

His advanced economic analysis quantified the impacts of climate change and provided “a unique basis” for decision-making, said the jury in the Frontiers of Science Award. It fundamentally changed the international climate change debate and stimulated action. The Stern Review, as his work is called, found world economic growth would contract by at least 20 per cent if no action is taken, while a switch to a low-emissions economy would cost about one per cent of global output a year.

Stern said he would revise the figures. He said: “The cost of cutting back emissions is more than what we estimated, but that is because the consequences of climate change are already here. Emissions are rising rapidly, and the capacity of the ocean to absorb carbon is less than what we thought. Also, other effects, particularly the melting of the polar ice, seem to be happening much faster. We need to take more drastic steps, so the costs will inevitably be higher.”

Stern says, climate change economics is the next industrial revolution. The countries who invest now in this new growth market will gain the advantage of a first mover. Those who don’t, risk being left behind.