From red to green – Pakistan aims for climate resilient cities
Being acutely disaster prone, says the UN, Pakistan is among the top 10 countries most affected by climate change. This century alone, it has endured major climate-induced natural disasters that have included devastating floods, debilitating droughts, earthquakes of epic proportions, steep fall in food production and loss of environment-related jobs and internal migration by millions. Hundreds of thousands have died. The cost to the economy has been astronomical. The social cost is higher.
The often-blundering government of Imran Khan can be faulted for many of its shortcomings and governance policy and practise constraints but not for making the tackling of existentialist climate crisis one of its better priorities on which it has taken positive actions. It started off with its globally recognized, award-winning ‘billion tree tsunami’ program in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province which it has ruled since 2013.
The program launched with the aim of tripling Pakistan’s paltry four percent forest cover area in five years. The recommended minimum green cover for a country is 25% of its landmass. While the jury is still out on its full results – Khan insists one billion trees have been planted in KP – there is a discernible rise in green coverage in the province. One of the first things Khan did after becoming prime minister in 2018 was to upgrade the Federal Ministry of Climate Change, expand the ‘billion tree tsunami’ project to the rest of the country with the aim of attaining minimum green cover by the time his tenure ends in 2023, impose a ban on single-use plastic and a clampdown on the use of plastic bags for shopping.
The climate issue needs to be fused into everyday political and social narratives for Pakistan to slide out of the list of worst victims of global climate crisis.Adnan Rehmat
Known for being outdoorsy before he came to power and his green thumb, a few days ago the prime minister launched his most ambitious official environment initiative yet – the Clean, Green Pakistan Index (CGPI). It is a scheme aimed at fostering an open competition among some of Pakistan’s largest cities to improve their internal climate and make themselves more green and more livable. Pakistan has 10 cities with a population of a million or more.
CGPI has five pillars – improving liquid waste management, promoting tree plantation, improving and modernizing solid waste management, enhancing integrated sanitation capacities and providing safe drinking water to all residents. Performance on these deliverables will be measured based on 35 performance indicators. Baseline data on these pillars will first be collected in three months followed by a six-month pilot phase of performance enhancement using special urban environmental development resources and technical assistance, and then a total of 19 cities ranked based on their performance measurements.
On paper the initiative is brilliant not just in terms of basic needs – administrations of Pakistani cities are under-resourced and overwhelmed – but also in building a spirit of competition that will improve sustainability. The best performers will get additional resources. The management capacities of Pakistani cities have eroded over the past two decades catalyzed by not investing in modern technologies and professional competencies. The cities are exhausted under population explosion coupled with poor urban management. They have surrendered their green cover to an unplanned urban sprawl, increasing pollution and causing over 135,000 deaths annually on account of poor air quality alone. Water-borne diseases kill ten times as many.
As always, the catch will be how to manage the program itself. Pakistan is not known for its governance quality. The Khan government is especially gaffe prone and does not inspire confidence in managing complex governance challenges. It has fared poorly in managing infrastructure projects under its jurisdiction in Punjab and KP where it rules and where CGPI will be implemented. It has also struggled to stem the slide in national economic indicators under its brief federal rule so far.
The CGPI initiative is currently short of details in terms of which communities it will involve and how. When involving cities in a complex and ambitious plan like this, it will be imperative to engage homes (families), the market (merchants), educational institutions (youth), the pulpit (prayer leaders who run mosques in every locality), environmental groups and wholescale local communities. They will need to be educated about the program and provided basic literacy on changing their poor environmental habits and given targets to aspire to and meet.
Also, by keeping some of the significant regions like Sindh and Balochistan provinces as well as Gilgit-Baltistan and Islamabad out of its ambit, the program risks political alienation affecting its branding. Initially the program looks too bureaucratic and divorced of direct civic involvement of its end beneficiaries to optimize on its potential. With CGPI, Pakistan can either become greener or it can continue staying in the red with the climate crisis slowly devouring it. The climate issue needs to be fused into everyday political and social narratives for Pakistan to slide out of the list of worst victims of global climate crisis.
-Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science.
Twitter: @adnanrehmat1
