ISLAMABAD: Recent torrential rains and hailstorms have slammed many parts of Pakistan, especially Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and caused serious damage to crops, business and tourism sectors.
A few years back, environmental experts predicted that mainstream media would have no other option but to cover news related to climate change as it is emerging as a new challenge for the entire world, especially for the countries like Pakistan.
The last couple of years had witnessed a severe change in the climate where South Asia and Southeast Asia were the most affected parts of the world. The Global Climax Index 2019 revealed that Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India and Nepal were the most affected nations in the world, where the disastrous storms, extreme weather, severe cold, heat, and flooding caused huge human and infrastructure losses worth millions of dollars.
Among South Asian countries, Pakistan is one of the major victims; where the country suffered a massive flooding in 2010, followed by another catastrophic flood last year (2022), resulting over 1700 human losses while about 33 million people were affected across the country.
The catastrophic monsoon flood not only damaged the infrastructure but also affected the standing crops in the southern parts and the tourism industry in the northern parts.
Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture and Tourism
According to the UN Service provider ReleifWeb the Sindh province (that accounts 42 % of the rice production, 23 percent cotton and 31 percent sugarcane production) in Pakistan but the last year flood caused unprecedented damage to agricultural crops, livestock and infrastructure in the province including storage facilities with millions of tons of grains.
On the other hand, the floods and heavy rain hit Malakand Division and Gilgit Baltistan and caused huge loss to the tourism industry of Pakistan. In Malakand Division, Swat and Upper Dir were heavily affected by rain and floods.
Journalist Daud Khan, who covers climate change and environmental issues, reported that the recent rains in Swat have damaged the hotel and tourism industry in the region. He shared the pain and damage by the recent floods via his twitter account. He was of the view that the authorities and the local should join hand to create awareness over climate change. His recent tweets on the issue elaborated the same challenging issue.
Pakistan's Tourism sector is once again reeling from the impact of rain-… https://t.co/oacNGrZ9aj via @YouTube @TheNewsonSunday #climatechange pic.twitter.com/32faqwlmSA
— Muhammad Daud Khan (@daudpasaney) May 7, 2023
Meanwhile, environmental experts predict same kind of severe weather this year.
During the last couple of days, Malakand Division witnessed unprecedented rain, and hailstorm, particularly in Dir Lower and Swat followed by another spill in the area last night. Most of the fields were laden with white blankets due to hailstorms.
Jilted because of climate crisis. “The loss of tourism-related amounted to Rs 9.5 billion after last year’s floods,” estimates Zahid Khan, president of Swat Hotels Association. Two decades have passed since we started experiencing the adverse impacts of climate change in Pakistan pic.twitter.com/ak1mwo8aL1
— Muhammad Daud Khan (@daudpasaney) May 7, 2023
Pakistan has repeatedly requested the world to assist the country as Pakistan is the least contributor to Carbon emissions. The donors pledged over $9 billion to Pakistan in the International Conference on Climate Resilient Pakistan, held in January 2023 in Geneva, however, the fate of the donation is still unknown due to recent political turmoil in Pakistan and prolonged talks with the IMF.
On May 04, Federal Minister for Climate Change Shery Rehman tweeted that Pakistan required $348b till 2030 to meet its climate needs.
For #Pakistan to meet its climate needs, "$348bn required till 2030, representing 10.7% of our cumulative GDP," Minister @sherryrehman at #PetersbergClimateDialogue, adding that 78 developing countries require $6tn until 2030 to honor the #ParisAgreement – https://t.co/SaeEzpqlWy pic.twitter.com/kJYT03yr7v
— SherryRehman’sTeam (@SRehmanOffice) May 4, 2023
Environmental experts were of the view that the country needs immediate measures to cope with the severe weather conditions resulting in human, business, tourism and property losses in the near future. They believed that Pakistan cannot be able to address the issue alone and the world especially developed countries must support Islamabad to resolve this issue of major concern.
