Only One Earth and Pakistan’s initiatives

Earth is getting hotter and mountains- the water towers suffer glacier retreat by passing a
phase of global warming due to an increase in amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from 316
ppm in 1958 to 412 ppm in 2024 leading to worsening the issue of glacier melting. Pakistan
is the home of more than 7000 glaciers, especially in the northern regions of Gilgit-

Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Glaciers are melting rapidly in South Asia and this is
unlikely to slow. As a result, unprecedented heat waves recently melted the ice on the
Shisper Glacier, creating flooded lakes, destroying the Hasanabad Bridge, and damaging
nearby localities, buildings, and two power plants. It is one of the largest in a series of
catastrophic events in the region known as a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood. Such flooding has
not only posed damage to the local community but also continues to spell disaster for
Pakistan’s long-term issue of water scarcity.
Undoubtedly, Pakistan, Iran, India, Kyrgyzstan and central Asian countries are coming to
face the worst drought conditions because of too little water availability, dryness and
record low precipitation. Similarly, the Sindh government reported to IRSA that the severe
water crisis hit the province and demanded extra water supply to cut the shortage in the
province as per the water accord of 1991.
The unequal water distribution put the farmers in grave concern due to the lack of timely
irrigation of crops will give less yield, infuse food insecurity, starvation and disease
outbreaks in the country. On the other side, the extreme drought conditions prevailing in
the world brought some outstanding rediscoveries such as the ruins of 3,400 year old city
of the Mittani Empire in Iraq owing to falling water level in the Mosul Reservoir. This does
not mean that we should not focus on environmental issues, rather that our goal as a nation
should be to reduce the severity of environmental catastrophes by changing our behavioral
approaches regarding consumption of natural resources, adopting mitigation measures and
limiting carbon emissions that can be done while pledging to reach net-zero emission
targets in every sector of life.
Pakistan has laborious recovered from the covid-19 pandemic period and its cumbersome
toll on the health sector with economic effects, but the country remained in the mud of
environmental pollution as general public had remained dependent more on the utilization
of high-priced fuel products that lead to more carbon emissions even on the halting of
major industrial activities that have shown the deadly air quality venture for the locals of
mega cities in the country with Lahore topping the world in the ranking of most polluted
cities in this scenario, and now the heat waves striking the South Asian countries including
India and Pakistan again depicting the need of disseminating environmental awareness.
Thus, it is the necessity of time to focus on “Living Sustainably in Harmony with Nature” a
step that embraces all humanity to celebrate the “Only One Earth” theme of this year’s
World Environment Day on June 5, 2022, hosted by Sweden in which Federal Minister for
Climate change Sherry Rehman on behalf of G77 and China addressed on achieving a
healthy planet and prosperity for all in the Stockholm+50 plenary meeting.
Pakistan is currently making many efforts in this respect by conducting dialogues on
national and internal levels, awareness walks, celebration events, promoting sustainable
agriculture practices, creating massive olive production and its exports, constructing dams,
green infrastructure development, institutions and industries transferring to solar energy,
reforestation, check-up control methods for smoke emissions from brick kilns, factories,

green taxing, banned the use of plastic in all mega cities, suburban development with a
scalable solution of utilizing dumping plastic waste in the construction of roads with
plastic- first time evident in Islamabad on Ataturk Avenue, and scaling-up of Glacial Lake
Outburst Flood risk reduction in Northern Pakistan (GLOF II) project, for evaluating,
mitigating possible risks through early warning, community-based awareness, disaster
management and infrastructure enhancement.
According to the latest reports of Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources
(PCRWR) and UNDP, there is a huge possibility that country will soon reach absolute water
shortage by 2025 if no counter-measures opt since Pakistan is the fourth in the world in
terms of its largest water usage rate and an ongoing intense heat wave has recently caused
huge loss to the ecosystem diversity of the world’s largest Chilghoza forest in Koh-e-
Sulaiman region, Balochistan.
For this reason, the economy and human well-being are contingent on food, clean water,
flood protection, erosion control, water conservation, rain harvesting, and the drive for
innovation, and more will ensure when government and business leaders have recognized
the importance of green recovery, and their focus must be the path of climate action. As
part of the restoration and environmental protection system, many countries have taken
comprehensive measures to protect the environment in response to their covid-19 policies,
like Pakistan has been protecting human health through the provision of safe drinking
water by the installation of filtration plants in all cities even meeting the needs of
Cholistan, Thar inhabitants water supply, initiating employment programs in coordination
with provincial environment departments and international programmes that focused on
ecosystem restoration, sustainable forest management, the 10-billion-tree tsunami project
and control of threatened species hunting by allocating permits to locals by Foreign
ministry in previous government for organizing controlled hunting events only on a
condition of playing a justifiable role in the conservation of wild species which in turn
improves their lives and uplift the community development and concerned conservancy
aspect.
Also, the government has already taken the abovementioned various precautions to avoid
the impending effects of climate change with subsequent sustainable development goals
(goal- 13 Climate Action) and formulation of sustainable policies. Every religion also
emphasizes the importance of environmental education. Therefore, it is necessary to
advance awareness campaigns through communication that would help in transforming
the way how people demonstrate and sustainably work in most of the cities of Pakistan to
cope with severe environmental crises, encompassing key economic and social
establishment and green practices that solely depend on promoting multifaceted strategies
to warrant environmental protection, and only then Pakistan will be able to move on the
right path of ecosystem restoration.