Ahmed Mukhtar Naqshbandi
ISLAMABAD: Executive Director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G), Janos Pasztor has suggested that amid rising global temperatures and severe impacts of climate change, Pakistan needed to focus on solar radiation modification (SRM) measures to reduce the impacts of global warming.
The C2G Executive Director, while talking to APP on managing the risks from an increasingly likely surge of global temperature beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius, said that the planet was getting hotter and there was a need to work out solutions in case the global temperature exceeds this limit.
Governance is key to control global temperature: Pastzor
Executive Director C2G, Pastzor said, “Governance is the key” to achieving this goal which went much beyond its traditional concept. “It takes new techniques, diverse people and groups coming together to learn, discuss and inform decisions,” he underscored.
He said that the SRM was based on three major techniques: surface albedo modification, marine cloud brightening, and stratospheric aerosol injection.
He said surface albedo aims at diverting back sunlight in order to reduce emissions, adding that Switzerland was practicitising it to reduce glacial meltdown and Pakistan could also use it to avert the recurring phenomenon of glacial lake outburst floods which was causing massive life and property damages.
Country Initiatives for Environment Protection
He said marine cloud brightening was being practiced in Australia to protect green coral reefs and should be practiced at the regional level to manage the rising sea temperatures causing coral bleaches even in Pakistan. However, he added, the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) made it very clear that this technique could be supplemented but it was not the only solution to existing efforts and also not an alternative to climate change or global warming mitigation measures.
Commenting on unilateral steps by various states, Pastzor said it would have tremendous impacts on the environment but would also give rise to geopolitical tensions.
40 Vulnerable States
The C2G had identified 40 countries, including from G20 and other states vulnerable to climate change, and was engaging at the capital level to associate and encourage such conversations as there was no country with a clear strategy to move forward on the matter, Pastzor said.
He said Pakistan had done an enormous amount of work on Loss and Damage at the 27th meeting of the conference of the parties (COP-27) in Egypt, lauding Pakistan’s efforts at the global forums to garner support for developing countries facing severe impacts of climate change.
He stressed the need to have a stakeholder engagement on SRM, adding that there should be scientists working on it.
– APP
