Climate Change is a global issue and according to Germanwatch Global Climate Risk Index annual report 2020, Pakistan is ranked the 5th most affected countries of climate change; a few years ago, Pakistan was at number 8. Pakistan climate change issue is not only at national level but at international level also. Climate change is basically long-term weather condition where as weather is short term condition.
Different schools of thought support this phenomenon that climate change or global warming is nothing. They further add that it is natural phenomena because earth rotates around the Sun that’s why some area of earth has less temperature and some have higher temperature in earth. But, according to NASA report, when consideration of carbon dioxide increase in atmosphere at the same point average temperature of earth is also increased. It means this is not a natural phenomenon, after that different school of thoughts and some Climatologists agree that climate change is a cause of Greenhouse effect.
Greenhouse effect? There are certain gasses at earth atmosphere, they trapped heat on earth like carbon dioxide & methane gas, increase of gasses it can be a cause of increase in temperature on earth. It impactsthe whole ongoing process on earth. It starts more in 19th and 20th century when industrial revolution started. Climate change confronted today doesn’t mean that it is cause of coal which we have burned yesterday or 2 years ago but it is because of carbon dioxide and methane already in the earth. In our planet earth, everything is interconnecteddue to greenhouse effect that make oceans heat up and also effect wind. All these changes increase temperature in global scale all around the world.
Climate change impacts most on earth, melting of glaciers at a faster pace. Northern Areas of Pakistan have lot of glaciers. When the whole planet heats up due to greenhouse effect, it also effectsthe melting glaciers and due to melting glaciers the flow of Indus River increases 90% of water flow. In summer, three months are very crucial for us in this period little change can cause negative impact on our agricultural system because irrigation of our crops mostly rely on Indus River.
Now due to change in climate, summer starts earlier and in Northern Areas of Pakistan snow starts melting fast that also changes the flow of Indus River. It can be cause of disaster because our agriculture practices are based on old schedule of Indus River. If water comes before crops are not ready to be irrigated, it may destroy crops threatening the food supply of Pakistan. There are two options to tackled this climate change; one is Mitigation and the second is Adaptation.
Mitigation is that from now we have to cut down imitation of greenhouse. Adaptation is that we have to think or learn that how to live with climate change because climate change is making changes in the whether we like these changes or not. So, there are two best ways that Pakistan needs to invest in and educate the people as people can understand this crucial problem in depth. There is dearth of climatologists in Pakistan and we also have little research available about climate change in the context of Pakistan along with that we have to change our irrigate of crops schedule.
Climate change is a challenge in this planet. It is also civic responsibility of everyone on this planet to better educate yourself about the issue and help spread awareness.