The United Nations said the devastating floods faced by Pakistan this summer were a stark warning that the world could witness more disasters in the near future.
The United Nations’ 2022 Year in Review report on Climate and Environment states, “Whilst some regions suffered from a lack of water, others were hit by catastrophic floods”. “In Pakistan, a national emergency was declared in August, following heavy flooding and landslides caused by monsoon rains which, at the height of the crisis, saw around a third of the country underwater. Tens of millions were displaced,” the report reads.
Pakistan and the UN are set to co-host the International Conference on Climate Resilient on Jan 9, 2023. The conference will bring together Governments, leaders from the public and private sectors and civil society to support the people and the Government of Pakistan after the devastating floods of 2022. It has two main objectives, with first is as: “Present the Resilient Recovery, Rehabilitation, and Reconstruction Framework (4RF), which lays out a multisectoral strategy for rehabilitation and reconstruction in a climate-resilient and inclusive manner”.
The second objective is to “secure international support and forge long-term partnerships for building Pakistan’s climate resilience and adaptation”. The floods in 2022 were the worst natural disaster in Pakistan’s history. They left one third of the country submerged, about 15,000 dead or injured and 8 million displaced. Over 2 million homes, 13,000 kilometres of highways, 439 bridges and more than 4 million acres of agricultural land were destroyed or damaged. An estimated 9 million people could be forced into poverty as a direct consequence of these floods. In its October Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, WMO detailed record levels of the three main gases – carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane, which saw the biggest year-on-year jump in concentrations in 40 years, identifying human activity as a principal factor in the changing climate. Yet, despite all the evidence that a shift to a low-carbon economy is urgently needed, the world’s major economies responded to the energy crisis precipitated by the war in Ukraine by reopening old power plants and searching for new oil and gas suppliers.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres decried their reaction, calling it delusional, at an Austrian climate summit in June, and arguing that if they had invested in renewable energy in the past, these countries would have avoided the price instability of the fossil fuel markets.
At an energy event held in Washington DC the same month, Mr Guterres compared the behaviour of the fossil fuel industry to the activities of major tobacco companies in the mid-twentieth century: “like tobacco interests, fossil fuel interests and their financial accomplices must not escape responsibility”, he said “The argument of putting climate action aside to deal with domestic problems also rings hollow”.
