Category: Environment

Thatta, 22 December 2011: Policy planning and proper climate change adaptation is need of the hour to mitigate adverse effects of natural climate change factors.

This was said in the day-long Climate Change Conference held today in the coastal city of Thatta.

The SCOPE (Society for Conservation & Protection of Environment) organized the conference in collaboration with Drynet Pakistan, in order to help mobilize a partnership at the national scale for the implementation of a sustainable strategy on impacts of climate change.

The Conference was the first largest meeting of its kind in the coastal belt of Pakistan and it delivered a breakthrough on the response of stakeholders to climate change. The Climate Change Conference closed with the adoption of a number of demands that will strengthen global efforts to fight impacts of climate change.

More than 150 concerned participants highlighted continuous onslaughts of climate change in the form of recent cyclones, floods, heavy rains and flashfloods which have affected millions of people of Sindh Coastal belt region. They called on the Government to pursue ambitious agenda to tackle climate change impacts on country.

The conference was attended by a number of experts from civil society organizations, development professionals, donors/support organizations, Government departments, UN organizations, research institutes and media. Learned speakers of the conference concluded that grave challenges are faced by the vulnerable poor across Pakistan as a result of disasters caused by climate change (mountain areas, deserts, irrigated plains and coastal areas); and that a result based strategy for climate change adaptation and preparedness must be formed and followed.

Tanveer Arif, CEO of SCOPE, presented the Conference Theme paper on “Living with Climate Disaster: Impact of Climate Change Challenges and the Plight of the Poor, and adaptation strategies-with a Special Focus on coastal areas of Pakistan”. He concluded that Climate change is expected to lead to worsening extreme weathers (heavy rain fall and drought conditions) and greater heat extremes, increased threats of drought, floods, air pollution and myriad health problems; and that the adverse effects of natural climate change factors should be mitigated in order to reduce additional stress through climate change adaptation.

Dr. Ghulam Qadir of IUCN presented the impact of Climate Change and gave an account on worldwide impact perspective. He affirmed that climate change is mainly anthropogenic (mad-made) and is one of the most serious threats humanity and our environment have ever faced which if not addressed will cause catastrophic effects to Earth’s ecosystems, biodiversity and infrastructure.

Zulfiqar Halepoto, Senior Advisor of Thardeep Rural Development Programme (TRDP), said: “civil society organizations have great role to play in advocacy and research on climate change impacts and disaster management in order to understand climate change affects and help prepare institutions/communities with the realistic coping mechanisms”. According to him, preventive measures to reduce disaster risk are most effective when they involve participation at all levels, from the local community through the provincial government to the national, regional and international.

Other speakers including  Nisar Panhwar of WWF, Prof. Dr. Pervez A. Pathan of SDSC University-Jamshoro, and  Mustafa Sarwar Abbasi of Sindh Coastal Authority highlighted gaps in  policies and suggested practical approaches to tackle with the climate change menace.

Conference participants also took part in the discussion and the house issued a declaration of actions by the end in which they presented a set of demands from the Government to meet the desired results.

The “Thatto Declaration” demands the Government and all other relevant institutions stakeholders to pave way for adaptation of climate change strategy for the Sindh coastal areas. Environmentalists, human and civil rights activists, and concerned members of the civil society demanded for bold and timely actions from the Government. A few of the key demands are:

1. Government should place greater focus on the capacities of the institutions linked to climate change adaptation for mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change, and improve integrating their contributions into national and international climate strategies and policies,
2. Government should establish adequate legislative, administrative and institutional frameworks at national and/or Provincial level for Climate Change Adaptation, equip these with appropriate competences, and provide adequate funding and staff for the administration of related initiatives and their functions,
3. The Government should ensure “Mainstreaming of Disaster Risk Reduction”.
4. Role and Response of Stakeholders in the natural disasters should be made public and an accountability mechanism should be ensured.
5. In view of flood disaster, effectiveness of DDMA should be enhanced and compulsory training of line departments should be ensured at the district level.
6. System for information and communication on health, education and productive & basic infrastructure at the district level should be strengthened.
7. Community-based approaches to Disaster Risk Management should be addressed and strengthened.
8. Civil society organizations should integrate their programs regarding climate change and strategize collectively.
9. Concerned organizations and individuals should form a multi-sector electronic “Network on Climate Change and Disaster” to strengthen debate, bridge communication gape and combine efforts on climate change mitigation and adaptation.

 

According to the findings of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Activities, 4.3 million people (84 per cent of the affected population) are food-insecure – 2.2 million people severely food-insecure and 2.1 million people moderately food-insecure in the flood-affected areas of Sindh and Balochistan. Data collected prior to the floods and recently released as part of the National Nutrition Survey results show that Sindh had the highest food insecurity rate at 72 per cent.

More than 3 million flood-affected, food-insecure people in Government-notified districts urgently require agricultural support to resume food production and income generation. Farmers require agricultural inputs to cultivate Zaid Rabi crops – such as pulses, sunflower and vegetables – where Rabi wheat planting may not have been possible. As for livestock, there is a need to urgently provide additional feed and veterinary support to ensure continued livestock survival, and plant multi-cut green fodder to sustain surviving livestock in the coming months.

Please click here to download the report.

NEW DELHI, Dec 10 — A recent U.S. prediction of a possibly devastating earthquake in the disputed Himalayan province of Kashmir has caused alarm here in India.

A study by Roger Bilham, professor of geology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, concludes that a magnitude-9 earthquake could strike in Kashmir, triggering massive landslides and plunging the picturesque valley under water.

Newspapers in Kashmir carried front-page stories on Bilham’s predictions Saturday, stirring public fears.

“People have been calling me all day since they read the news in the papers. They are frightened. I wish the newspapers had not run it on the front page. Why create a scare?” said Muhammad Ismail Bhat, former head of geology and geophysics at the University of Kashmir, who has worked with Bilham. He said he had known about the new findings for a while.

Until recently, most forecasts about the tectonically active Himalayan region have been based on historical data and information generated by GPS stations in neighboring Indian states and in Pakistan. But since 2007, as many as nine stations have been set up in the state of Jammu and Kashmir itself, providing new data to local and international analysts.

At the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco this week, Bilham said that new GPS data showed gradual movement of rocks in the Zanskar Mountains, north of the Kashmir valley, that he said could result in a Japan-level quake and kill about 300,000 people. The subsequent landslides would dam the Jhelum River, and when released, the backed-up water could cause flooding, he said.

In 2005, a 7.9-magnitude quake with its epicenter in Muzaffarabad, in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, caused widespread damage and killed more than 40,000 people. Seismologists recorded several tremors in the region in August this year.

“Extreme weather like the droughts in Russia, China and Brazil and the flooding in Pakistan and Australia [in 2010] have contributed to a level of food price volatility we haven’t seen since the oil crisis of 40 years ago. Unfortunately, this could be just a taste of things to come because in the next few decades the build-up of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere could greatly increase the risk of droughts, flooding, pest infestation and water scarcity for agriculture systems already under tremendous stress.” — John Beddington, UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser (March, 2011)

Already, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates 1 billion people are starving and another 2.5 billion are malnourished.

“Feeding some 9 billion people by mid-century in the face of a rapidly worsening climate may well be the greatest challenge the human race has ever faced,” as I argued in the journal Nature. Oxfam has been one of the leaders in making this case (see Oxfam Predicts Climate Change will Help Double Food Prices by 2030: “We Are Turning Abundance into Scarcity”).

On the eve of the international climate talks in Durban, Oxfam has released a new report that opens with Beddington’s quote and warns:

Climate change is likely to have a pernicious effect on food production in two main ways. Firstly, slow onset changes in mean temperatures and precipitation patterns are expected to put downward pressure on average yields. Added to this will be crop losses resulting from more frequent and intense extreme weather events.

Research to date has focused almost exclusively on the first impact, modeling the extent of long-run average price rises in the absence of volatility….

But this paints only a partial picture. More frequent and extreme weather events will compound things further, creating shortages, destabilizing markets and precipitating price spikes, which will be felt on top of the structural price rises predicted by the models. One need not rely on imagination to understand how this could play out for the world’s poorest people. Looking at the toll extreme weather events are taking on global food security since 2010 alone paints an alarming picture.

The whole report is worth reading, but here is their summary along with recommendations for Durban:

Durban climate talks must deliver action to prevent spiraling hunger

In the last year extreme weather events shocked global markets contributing to soaring wheat prices and imperiling food security in many parts of the world, according to research compiled by Oxfam at the start of the Durban climate talks.

This year could be a grim foretaste of what is to come as new warnings from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show extreme weather events are likely to increase in frequency and severity without action to tackle climate change.

“From the Horn of Africa and South East Asia to Russia and Afghanistan, a year of floods, droughts, and extreme heat has helped push tens of millions of people into hunger and poverty,” said Kelly Dent, Oxfam. “This will only get worse as climate change gathers pace and agriculture feels the heat. Governments must act now in Durban to protect our food supply and save millions from slipping into hunger and poverty.”

Oxfam’s briefing Extreme weather endangers food security 2010-11: A grim foretaste of future suffering and hunger? shows how several extreme weather events have contributed to food insecurity at global, regional and local levels since 2010. Oxfam warns that increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events will compound the projected impacts of climate change on crop yields and food prices, creating food shortages, destabilizing markets and precipitating price spikes.

• In an area of chronic vulnerability and political conflict, severe drought in the Horn and East Africa has pushed over 13 million people into crisis. In July, sorghum prices in Somalia were up to 393% higher and maize prices in Ethiopia and Kenya up to 191% and 161% higher respectively versus the five-year average prices.
• Drought and fires following a massive heat wave in Russia and Ukraine destroyed much of the 2010 harvest and triggered a 60% to 80% increase in global wheat prices in just three months. By April 2011, wheat prices were 85% higher on international markets than the year before.
• Heavy monsoon rainfall and multiple typhoons in Southeast Asia have killed more than 1,100 people and helped send the price of rice up about 25% and 30% in Thailand and Vietnam respectively versus the previous year.
• In Afghanistan serious drought helped send prices of wheat and wheat flour in July 2011 up to 79% higher in affected areas over their levels a year before.

While it is difficult to attribute a specific weather-related disaster to climate change, the frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as those seen this year is set to increase due to climate change. For the poorest and most vulnerable who spend up to 75 percent of their income on food, this could have catastrophic consequences as families are forced into impossible trade-offs in a desperate bid to feed themselves.

“When a weather event drives local or regional price spikes poor people often face a double shock,” said Dent. “They have to cope with higher food prices at a time when extreme weather may have also killed their livestock, destroyed their home or farm, or stripped them of their livelihood. This toxic mix of higher prices and lower purchasing power has driven many people into crisis this year. If we don’t act in Durban, this pattern could become even worse.”

KARACHI — It was a brutal kidnap that turned him into an eco-warrior, and 27 years later Pakistan’s “Father of the Mangroves” still lets nothing get in the way of fighting against timber “mafia” and deforestation.

“This is my life. I am very happy with it. The cause is worth living such a life,” Tahir Qureshi told AFP, walking around the sanctuary that he set up in his spare time when he still worked full-time with the forestry commission.

He was captured by a kidnap-for-ransom gang in 1984 while working in the southern district of Dadu, now devastated by floods for two consecutive years.

“They kept me for a couple of days in captivity. But when they knew I was a forest officer they released me without further argument. That inspired me to dedicate my whole life for the rehabilitation of our ecosystem,” he said.

“The robbers released me as they respect those who respect forests. Trees provide them best hideouts.

“Besides, they are among many people who consider chopping trees as a sin because trees provide us livelihood and help better the environment.”

For years, it was a lonely if mighty cause, for apart from Afghanistan, in the grip of a 10-year war between Taliban insurgents and American troops, no other country in Asia suffers from a faster rate of deforestation than Pakistan.

In 2010, it was declared a forest-deficient country because just 2.2 percent or about 1.7 million hectares (4.2 million acres) of its land mass is forested.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Pakistan lost an average of 42,000 hectares of forest a year between 1990 and 2010.

At the current rate, Pakistan could lose half its remaining forest cover over the next decade or so, says the FAO. The trend has been exacerbated by recent floods, the worst in the country’s history in 2010 and a repeated bout this monsoon season.

Qureshi has helped rehabilitate 30,000 hectares of mangrove along the southern coast on the Arabian Sea, including in Baluchistan, one of Pakistan’s most violent and inhospitable areas, home to Taliban militants and a separatist uprising.

Today he is a senior advisor on coastal ecosystems with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

He starts almost every day with a visit to the mangroves, which he calls his kids, on Karachi’s Sandspit Beach. Wearing a khaki shirt and trousers, he wades into the swamp up to his waist to see how they’re getting on.

“We are historically a forestry-deficient country, but with the course of time the ratio has reduced alarmingly,” said the 65-year-old Qureshi.

So who is to blame? There are the timber “mafia” who hack away at mangroves and trees, trucking wood off to market by donkey and vehicle to sell as fuel, while the military and government officials are also accused of involvement.

“The current rate of deforestation is very alarming. We could lose our timber completely in two to three decades if not effectively checked,” an environment ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Hussain Bux Bhagat, a conservationist associated with the Sindh provincial wildlife department, says wildlife in the riverine forest, including birds, reptiles and mammals, also suffered severely because of deforestation.

“Particularly high numbers of grey partridge, which nest on trees and don’t leave its habitat have died because of continuing deforestation and last year’s floods,” Bhagat told AFP.

In 1947, when Pakistan was created from the ashes of British colonialism, riverine forests lined the banks of the Indus River.

They were the first line of defence against floods that have deluged the plains annually for thousands of years, as well as against shoreline erosion. Instead, the deforested areas are prone to flooding and landslides.

But riverine and mangrove forest represent only 20 percent of the forest cover in Pakistan — the rest is concentrated in the mountains of the northern provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit and Baltistan and Kashmir.

There, officials, aid workers and residents accuse the authorities and the Taliban of being hand in glove with mafias cutting down trees.

The Swat valley was once the most popular tourist destination of the country before a Taliban insurgency began in 2007. After a major operation, the army declared the area back under control in July 2009.

But conservationists say tens of thousands of pine trees have been cut down, both during the Taliban years and under the military.

A former Forest Development Corporation (FDC) official, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, said timber felling was one of the main causes of the devastation witnessed in Swat during the floods of 2010.

“Three kinds of actors participated in that: the FDC working for timber mafia, local people and the Taliban, who cut a lot to buy weapons,” he said.

“There are two kinds of timber mafias: the big ones, with a licence, and the local ones, people with no licence who bribe guards.

Numerous local residents said army trucks are seen transporting timber, but army spokesman Colonel Arif Mehmood in Swat told AFP he was “not aware” of the practice.

Others say the rate of deforestation has improved since the army restored control over the valley in July 2009. No department can provide statistics.

The Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy, a think tank, has also pointed to links between the timber mafia and Islamist militancy.

“Being shrewd investors, the timber mafia is believed to have spent part of its dividends to sponsor militancy. Huge sums are involved in the business, which has expanded to the hills bordering Afghanistan,” it said in a 2009 report.

“They invest money and energy in Talibanisation, that is how they protect their illegal businesses at the expense of the state’s writ.”

Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved

The United Nations has warned that humanitarian agencies are running out of resources to assist those affected by floods in Sindh, even as the need for basic items, shelter and health services increases among more than five million affected people.

“Urgent relief is critical as families continue to suffer in the aftermath of the floods. Unless we receive new pledges to the Floods Rapid Response Plan, millions of people will be left in need of food, clean water and essential medicines for months to come,” UN Coordinator for Pakistan Timo Pakkala said.

“We are grateful that donors have started to give to the Rapid Response Plan. But to ensure that we can help save lives now as well as tomorrow, we call on the international community to urgently step up their support for the people of Pakistan through this plan,” he added.

Humanitarian agencies have food stocks that will last a month, while drinking water and emergency shelter materials are likely to run out in weeks if not replenished, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs.

UN agencies estimate that 2.5 million people desperately need safe drinking water and sanitation facilities. Food is required for 2.75 million people, while 2.96 million people are in urgent need of medical care. At least 1.75 million people require emergency shelter.

The UN and its humanitarian partners have so far provided emergency shelter for 314,500 households. More than 1.6 million people have received medicines and medical consultations, and 413,000 people have received food. Safe drinking water has been delivered to approximately 200,000 people and the UN aims to provide in coming weeks safe water to more than 400,000 people.

If the needed funding does not arrive, the UN and aid agencies will run out of food stocks some time next month. Drinking water supplies and stocks of emergency shelter will last only a few more weeks and a third of the flood-affected population could be without medical care in a month’s time.

The WFP has prepared its one-month ration packet in the light of a recent national nutritional survey which has highlighted alarming levels of malnutrition in Sindh. The ration, alongside the general family food basket, includes high-energy biscuits and ready-to-use supplementary food to address nutritional decline among the vulnerable groups.

A WFP-Unicef programme on community management of acute malnutrition is being expanded to include the disaster-hit districts of Sindh in an effort to provide treatment to young children and lactating mothers.

A joint rapid initial assessment has been conducted in 11 flood-stricken districts of Balochistan. Preliminary data suggests that food is the most urgent need there.