Pakistan pushes ahead on climate policy but action still lags

Rina Saeed Khan in AlertNet: Pakistan faces a range of threatening climate change impacts: changing monsoon patterns, melting glaciers, seasonal flooding, rising sea levels, desertification and increasing water scarcity.

How bad are things? For the past two years, Pakistan has topped the list of the Global Climate Risk Index produced by Germanwatch, a non-governmental organisation that works on global equity issues. In 2010, Pakistan was listed as the number one country in the world affected by climate related disasters; in 2011 it was ranked as number three.

But concrete action to address climate threats has been relatively slow, critics say, and a convoluted process of devolution of power to Pakistan’s provinces and then the reorganisation of federal ministries hasn’t helped speed up the process – though a new federal Ministry of Climate Change may help change that.

“The time for talking is long past,” said Shafqat Kakakhel, a former U.N. Environment Programme official and a member of Pakistan’s original task force on climate change set up by the government in 2008. “What we need to see are projects on the ground. Pakistan is lagging far behind other countries in the South Asian region that are already addressing climate change through concrete actions.”

Pakistan’s federal Ministry of Environment, already struggling to address growing climate-related disasters, ran into problems in June 2011, when an amendment to the country’s constitution suddenly devolved increased power to provincial governments, despite fears that provincial-level officials might lack the capacity and competency to deal with pressing environmental issues....

The Indus River, shot by Guilhem Vellut, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Climate likely to hit Pakistan and region severely

Oman Daily Observer: As the Bay of Bengal is cooling down and the North Arabian Sea is warming up, the number of tropical cyclones has increased owing to the temperature shifting trend. Data collected from 56 meteorological stations in Pakistan shows a sharp rise in temperature during the first decade of the 21st century, except the year 2005, while a rise of four degrees centigrade is expected to occur within the century in the Indus delta region.

Impacts included loss of vegetation, deforestation and irregular precipitation, says a study, part of the Synthesis Report 2012, which was released on Sunday. The report provides a summary of results of 11 studies carried out over the past two years (2011, 2012) under the Building Capacity on Climate Change Adaptation in the Coastal Areas of Pakistan, a Worldwide Fund for Nature-Pakistan project jointly administered with partners LEAD-Pakistan and WWF-UK with the financial support of European Union.

Conducted by Pakistan’s chief meteorologist Dr Ghulam Rasul, the study titled Climate Data Modeling Analysis presents eye-opening climatic trends that have been observed in the country in a decade….

Himalayan glaciers will shrink by almost 10 percent, even if temperatures hold steady

Science Daily: Come rain or shine, or even snow, some glaciers of the Himalayas will continue shrinking for many years to come.

The forecast by Brigham Young University geology professor Summer Rupper comes after her research on Bhutan, a region in the bull's-eye of the monsoonal Himalayas. Published in Geophysical Research Letters, Rupper's most conservative findings indicate that even if climate remained steady, almost 10 percent of Bhutan's glaciers would vanish within the next few decades. What's more, the amount of melt water coming off these glaciers could drop by 30 percent.

Rupper says increasing temperatures are just one culprit behind glacier retreat. A number of climate factors such as wind, humidity, precipitation and evaporation can affect how glaciers behave. With some Bhutanese glaciers as long as 13 miles, an imbalance in any of these areas can take them decades to completely respond. "These particular glaciers have seen so much warming in the past few decades that they're currently playing lots of catch up," Rupper explains.

In fact, snowfall rates in Bhutan would need to almost double to avoid glacier retreat, but it's not a likely scenario because warmer temperatures lead to rainfall instead of snow. If glaciers continue to lose more water than they gain, the combination of more rain and more glacial melt will increase the probability of flooding -- which can be devastating to neighboring villages.

"Much of the world's population is just downstream of the Himalayas," Rupper points out. "A lot of culture and history could be lost, not just for Bhutan but for neighboring nations facing the same risks."...

The glacial lakes of Bhutan, NASA image

Water storage efforts reverse migration in Pakistan

Saleem Shaikh and Sughra Tunio in AlertNet: A year ago, Aslam Bibi and her family left their village and moved to a nearby town, desperate to find a way to eke out a living in the face of failing rainfall that made subsistence impossible. But after a few months, Bibi returned, drawn back home by news of newly constructed reservoirs that have begun soaking the parched farmlands in her area and replenishing underground aquifers.

Water is now supplied to Bibi’s village of Ghool from a nearby reservoir and mini dam. Stored rainwater is funnelled through a 4 km-long (2.5-mile) pipeline. The dam, completed in July of this year, is part of a project to mitigate the effects of climate change in rural areas hard hit by declining rainfall.

“My husband has resumed cultivation of groundnuts on our four acres,” Bibi said happily while sewing clothes in the courtyard of her home. “I no longer leave home in the morning to fetch water for drinking, sanitation and other domestic needs,” she added. Instead, the 39-year-old spends the first half of each day as a tailor to support the family’s income – time she had previously needed to fetch water from a natural pond some 4 km (2.5 miles) from her home.

Bibi’s village is in Chakwal district, at the beginning of the Potohar plateau and the Salt Range of hills, about 90 km (56 miles) south-east of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. The district stretches over 6,500 square km (2,500 square miles) of arid terrain, and its population of nearly 1.5 million rely on rainfall for their water supply. The region has seem worrisome reductions in recent years in the rainfall it receives, a change experts say may be the result of climate change....

Sacred pool around which the Katas Raj is built. Katas Raj temple is a Hindu temple situated in Katas village in the Chakwal district of Punjab in Pakistan. Dedicated to Shiva. Shot by Gorkan, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Indigenous people direct victims of climate change

The Nation (Pakistan): Speakers at a seminar on ‘Climate change: Impacts on Livelihood, Marine and Coastal Resources’ said on Saturday that indigenous people were direct victims of climate change and the state had failed to provide required protection to the people during calamities.

The seminar was jointly organised by Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler) and National Council for Environment Journalists, which attracted a large number of fisherwomen and civil society activists. The event was the part of activities related to a Week of Action for Climate Justice.

....Nadia Bajwa of WWF Pakistan, focal person on climate change adaptation programme, which is working in 1050-km-long coastal areas from Indus Delta, Keti Bunder, Kharo Chan in Sindh to Jewani, Balochistan province said they are conducting ‘coastal community vulnerability assessment’.  “We are working to have scientific and sociological feedback from various sectors, including indigenous people living in the target areas. We are also working on trans boundary issues related to Pakistan and India,” she said while sharing experiences related to climate change impacts.  Sharing findings of the study, she said they have designed strategy to initiate community level adaptation in two union councils of Thatta district coastal areas.

“We are learning from community experiences regarding visible changes related to climate.” She said Pakistan is on the number 16 of the world index of the impacts of climate change mapping.”...

Childen fishing in Khuth Lake, Pakistan, shot by Snjiskani, public domain