C O L U M N S

BLESSED are we 180 million souls who inhabit Pakistan. We have towering over our land five mountain peaks exceeding 8,000 metres in height – Mount Goodwin Austin (K2) 8,611m; Mount Nanga Parbat 8,126m; Mount Gasherbrum(I) 8,068m; Mount Broad Peak 8,047m; and Mount Gasherbrum (II) 8,035m.

Enough water flows down our rivers to enable us to dam and electrify entire regions, but this has not happened. We have a coastline of 1,000km opening up on one of the world’s wide seaways, but we only have two deepwater ports (and no private sector-owned ships fly the Pakistan flag). The country has survived for 62 years and all governments have deliberately ensured that some 40 per cent of the population remains illiterate.

Now nature is impeding where mankind has failed and we are doing more than our bit for the global environmental collapse that is slowly but surely advancing. Thousands of years of increasing indulgence has brought mankind to the brink – and it may well be that ‘…tomorrow we die’.

Emerging some 10,000 years ago from the limitations of a hunter-gatherer existence, humankind has steadily but surely escalated two critical factors in its existence: population and per-capita impact on the planet. Our increasing personal impacts can be gauged by comparing our resource consumptions and lifestyles with those of our parents and grandparents (food, travel, communications, air-conditioning, etc).

The point is starkly brought out in a recent article, ‘Beyond the Hockey Stick: Infinite Growth is Impossible’, based on a special report in last year’s US New Scientist’s ‘How our economy is killing us’.

A graph tracks the variations in 12 significant indicators (population, water use, paper consumption, motor vehicles, GDP, CO2 concentration, ozone depletion, foreign investment, fishery exploitation, species extinction, loss of tropical forest/woodland, northern hemisphere average surface temperature) linking global economic activity with environmental conditions since the beginning of the industrial revolution in 1750

The lines rise steeply after 1950, and by 2000 they have aligned into a nearly vertical ascent, assuming the shape of a hockey stick. Projected into the future, this graph seems to foretell an inevitable finale. The underlying concern is the seemingly unstoppable momentum of over-utilisation of this planet’s resources, a form of ecological suicide involving exploding populations and rising standards of lifestyles – an unsustainable assault on the environment.

In 2006, the World Bank reported in Pakistan: Strategic Country Environmental Assessment that ecological degradation cost us Rs365bn a year, equivalent to six per cent of GDP. With the then economic growth also around six per cent (now reduced) this was equivalent to ‘one step forward, one step backward’.

Environmental degradation falls disproportionately on the poor, while economic growth benefits the richer classes. Consequently, environmental degradation widens the gulf between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, exacerbating crime and terrorism.

Most governments, international bodies, public-welfare organisations and do-gooders work on the symptoms of the problem, not the basic causes. Take terrorism. If one is curious about why the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to environmentalists (Al Gore and the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change) download ‘National Security & the Threat of Climate Change’.

The Military Advisory Board, a think-tank of retired US generals – the furthest thing you could have from tree-hugging environmentalists – warned the Bush administration that climate change and a deteriorating environment act as a ‘threat multiplier’ in volatile regions of the world (read Pakistan) for instability and terrorism. The army’s suppression of the Taliban in the NWFP merely tackles the symptoms, not the root cause – which is increasing inequity in resource distribution.

‘Our foot is stuck on the accelerator and we are heading towards an abyss,’ warned UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon when recently addressing the World Climate Conference in Geneva after his visit to the Arctic to witness the havoc caused by climate change.

This ‘accelerator’ is the unparalleled escalation in exploitation of resources, and the generation of increasing amounts of green-house gases (GHG) that are warming the planet, leading to extreme weather changes, melting ice-caps and glaciers, sea-level rise, increasing pollution, water shortages, reduced agricultural outputs, food scarcity, escalating health problems, migrations in search of food, etc.

A recent survey in the UK showed that people are reluctant to reduce meat consumption and airline travel even though they know that these are key contributors to GHG. Not reducing activities that generate GHG adversely affects everyone in the world. And here is where the ‘tragedy of the commons’ comes in: despite understanding the long-run implications of his actions, each man exploits to the maximum a limited common resource.

The 180 million souls of Pakistan, and especially their governments need swiftly to do something about these issues purely from a cold-blooded perception of Pakistan’s self-interest.

The ‘something’ includes (a) educating the administration, policymakers, judiciary and citizens on the critical role of the environment; integrating environmental emphasis into strategies/polices/activities; ensuring control and reduction of population; promoting environmental accountability (Environmental Impact Assessment hearings, functioning of environmental magistrates and tribunals, environmental public interest litigation); backing the election of political parties that set and implement proper practical environmental policies; and, above all, modifying personal lifestyles to reduce over-consumption, i.e. leading from the front, not patting our leaders on the back at the expense of the poor.

Further recommended reading for those who care: New Green History of the World by Clive Ponting, Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond and WWF’s Living Planet Report 2008, which estimates that today’s over-exploitation of the planet’s resources (which started around 1986) is 30 per cent.

I must acknowledge the assistance of Roland deSouza, environmentalist and engineer, in providing the research material cited in this column.

By Ardeshir Cowasjee