The Unequal Impact of Climate Crisis

The global climate change governance regime must make a radical turn by embracing the call for climate justice in its true spirit. Developing nations and emerging economies need financial aid to help them reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, adapt to the multiple impacts of climate change, and most importantly, deal with huge losses caused by droughts and floods that climate change is making significantly more frequent and intense.

1,700 people were killed, 7.9 million were displaced, and livelihoods were destroyed after 1.2 million livestock died in the floods caused by climate change. Record temperatures melted glaciers in the Himalayas and Hindu Kush region and baked the ground meaning it was almost impossible to absorb the two months of continuous rain and flash floods.

Women in rural and suburban areas, who are often the poorest and most vulnerable members of society, have been particularly affected by the floods, which have intensified the burden of patriarchy, capitalism, feudalism, and religious fundamentalism while exacerbating climate change. Over 60% of Pakistan’s 225 million people live in rural settings, and the overwhelming majority of rural women and girls have no training in disaster mitigation and suffer more casualties than men when disasters strike.

Socially acceptable quick fixes post-disaster, such as child marriages, make girls further powerless in the face of already overwhelming odds. In addition, forced migration from rural areas into urban slums as a result of natural calamities and environmental degradation is a huge disrupter for girls and women, limiting their chances of education, mobility and economic autonomy.

The people of Pakistan, with only 0.5 per cent of the global share of CO2 emissions, and those living in mud houses in Sindh and Balochistan provinces have virtually no emissions at all but suffer the most due to the climate sins of the world-rich polluter nations.

The world’s most polluting economies and especially those with a historical precedent to increased emissions and carbon pollution, but also the history of colonialism and extraction of resources, must be held accountable.