Essay: Flooding and Climate change in Pakistan
(By: Khawaja Umer Rashid)
Flooding in Pakistan has become a normalized devastator. Annually, devastations caused by ravine and urban flooding are remarkably dangerous. Recently, flooding swept through metropolitan cities in Pakistan including Lahore and Karachi. It is worth noting that these floods cause extraordinary damage. The cost of flooding is both economic as well as personal. People lose their lives as well as their property gets damaged. In fact, this rise in flooding is directly caused by environmental changes which are happening across the world. Knox, J. C. (2000) has described that floods in today’s world are largely caused by changes in climate patterns induced by human activities. Climate changes have resulted in the melting of glacial at more rapid rates. As a result of rising temperatures water evaporates more rapidly which results both in droughts as well as extreme amounts of precipitation. The damages which are caused are extravagant. As, people associated with agriculture face the most terrible consequences. People have to move their cattle and property during floods. This leads to loss of properties as well as many psychological and social problems caused by instability. Moreover, diseases which instigate at the inception of flooding also prove fatal. In a larger sense, the catastrophe of flooding now not only hits the vicinities of the river. Rather, cloud bursts which result in Urban flooding also hit larger commercial centres which result in massive scales of unprecedented damages. Thus, the security of people and property remains at large. This is why the need to have more elaborate measures regarding public awareness regarding climate change has become immense. SEGERBERG, A. et al. (2011) have described that role of social media in order to cope with political issues like climate change is growing in their significance now more than ever before. As a matter of fact, policymakers and decision-makers have to recognize the scope of impending danger and actions shall be immediately taken to cope with the issue. Moreover, in the digital age, the role of social media becomes even more immense for mobilizing public opinion in favors of taking measures to mitigate climate change as well as acting as a tool of soft power to pressurize policymakers to make a call to action. What is significant to understand is that major economies like the USA, UK, China, Russia and India etc. are the greatest contributors to greenhouse gasses. However, countries like Pakistan, which have less than a 1 % share in greenhouse gas emissions are the most volatile when it comes to the consequences of climate change. Thus, the onus goes to major economies to step up in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, smaller economies like Pakistan must also make their contribution in the lion’s share.
The severity of the problem demands a solution which is more relevant to remodelling public behaviour. At, one step there is a need to build banks in order to store water. And, on the other end, there is also an impertinent need for developing awareness among the people. 21st-century governance is largely controlled by public perception. Fernandez, M. et al. (2016) has described that social media usage can influence public behaviour. And, developing public narratives regarding climate change becomes essential in order to develop proper awareness among the people. Moreover, public opinion can be used to exert soft power. As, presented by Mavrodieva, A. V. (2019) that social media trends can be used to exert a kind of soft power over policymakers to persuade them to conduct certain actions which ensure a change. Moreover, developmental challenges not only demand mass mobilization and campaigns. Rather, it requires the public community to make significant changes in their attitude. Like: consumer centrism has to be reduced. It requires a change in public choices like less consumption of commercial products as well as less carbon emission. Unless the carbon footprint would not be reduced, the idea of mitigating climate change would largely remain absurd.
The major challenge in this regard has remained to get major economies onboard regarding setting fixed rates of emission which could halt greenhouse gas emissions. Although commitments were made on various occasions like the Copenhagen accord and Paris Agreement etc. If these agreements are called to effect and Co2 emissions might be restricted, then major breakthroughs can be achieved especially in halting climate change.
The benefits of adopting social media to mitigate the consequences of climate change are quite large. As in the digital world excess to social media has grown rampant and people consume more and more information on social media. Baum, M. A. et al (2019) have described that the use of social media plays a very significant role in shaping public perception. Thus, Social media can be used to shape public perception in favour of adopting changes for the betterment of humanity. This will resultantly mitigate the flood-related issues faced by our country. But, on the flip side of mobilizing the public towards such changes is that: the economy will face a backlash. Because the world economy is largely based on consumer-centricity. And, if people are asked to consume less to mitigate the catastrophe, the economy will face a major backlash. And, many people might lose their source of income. This is the very reason that it has become a two-edged sword, whether, policymakers and governance have to ponder and look for the solution, that whether they want survival of this generation and its consumer centric habits, or to think about the generations to come. In past, US has disagreed to comply with COP agreements vis. a vis. limiting CO2 emission over the pretext of economic disturbance. Thus, more devoted commitments become desired.
As a case study, SEGERBERG, A. et al. (2011) can be seen. Segeberg has analyzed the impact of social media especially “Twitter”. He had identified that using Twitter trends was a great source of mobilizing a mass campaign for awareness among the masses. Thus new social media like “Twitter’ in playing an active role in politics. As these platforms provide a venue for protests. These media platforms use hashtags to record protests. In the case of the UN Climate Change Summit conducted in Copenhagen, the hashtags around climate change played a great role in mobilizing public opinion in favor of a political cause.
In conclusion, it goes beyond denial that climate change is a global issue and countries like Pakistan remain the victims of this global issue in the shape of flooding and heat waves etc. As global temperatures are changing to unprecedented levels. Various solutions have been proposed in this regard at COP summits. As, the Paris agreement, which tried to limit CO2 emissions. These solutions could never be implemented for economic reasons. However, if countries show more deep commitments. Like: Imposing taxes on excessive CO2 emission, shifting towards renewable energy, Limiting commercial product manufacturing, mobilizing public society towards plantation drives, sensitizing the masses about the severity of the issue, Banning the industry which uses excessive CO2 and seeking them to shift towards renewable energy etc. Then this monster can be controlled. But, in order for that to happen both international and local commitments need to go deep and a change in the status quo has to be accepted. Which in itself would be a really great challenge. However, if proper strategies like effective use of social media to engender awareness among the digital generation, developing trends etc. would be done. Then, steps can be taken to mitigate the catastrophe of climate change.
References:
1- Knox, J. C. (2000). Sensitivity of modern and Holocene floods to climate change. Quaternary Science Reviews, 19(1-5), 439-457.
2- Segerberg, A., & Bennett, W. L. (2011). Social media and the organization of collective action: Using Twitter to explore the ecologies of two climate change protests. The Communication Review, 14(3), 197-215.
3- Fernandez, M., Piccolo, L. S., Maynard, D., Wippoo, M., Meili, C., & Alani, H. (2016, May). Talking climate change via social media: communication, engagement and behaviour. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Web Science (pp. 85-94).
4- Mavrodieva, A. V., Rachman, O. K., Harahap, V. B., & Shaw, R. (2019). Role of social media as a soft power tool in raising public awareness and engagement in addressing climate change. Climate, 7(10), 122.
5- Baum, M. A., & Potter, P. B. (2019). Media, public opinion, and foreign policy in the age of social media. The Journal of Politics, 81(2), 747-756.