By Dr Markus Daechsel, Department of History.
Relevant United Nations’ SDG goals:
The devastating
summer floods in Pakistan reignited demands for rich nations to pay climate
compensation to their counterparts in the global South. The flooding was extraordinarily damaging with
torrential monsoon rains and huge flood-events affecting over 30 million people. Sherry Rehman, the country’s climate change minister argued that it was a moral outrage that a country with a small carbon footprint like hers should have to pay for the large-scale environmental destruction and stunted economic development. She pointed the finger at the far higher carbon emissions of the rich North and promised to push the “
loss and damage” agenda. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, as a Vice-Chair of COP 27, has put the flood bill at around US$ 30-40 billion.
Pakistan is often framed as a ‘failed state’ in media reporting. Freely elected Prime Ministers have never completed their regular turns of office. Public life has been marred by assassinations. Despite efforts by successive governments to demonstrate state capacity through highway-building, the opening of hundreds of local university campuses or mass tree planting campaigns, the state has largely been unable to successfully raise direct taxes, maintain a monopoly of public violence or administer justice. The only part of the state that has functioned well is Pakistan’s military, which frequently assists in internal humanitarian operations.
The ongoing impact of climate change will challenge Pakistan in fundamental ways. An externally funded expansion of essential state services could renew the social contract between the Pakistani state and its citizens. Or it could further expose the apparent weakness of state institutions, with external aid fueling inequality, authoritarian control, clientelism or corruption. Notable non-state networks and organizations like the Edhi Foundation continue to “fill the gap” and provide much more than their original ambulance service across the nation.
Royal Holloway academics continue to track and trace how Pakistan became a major recipient of substantial Western development aid for the first time in the early 1960s. Despite improved state capacity, governmental institutions often left their citizens in the lurch after initiating short-term development initiatives. The military dictator General Ayub Khan ordered the creation of an entirely new satellite town in the then-capital Karachi to house several hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees who had trickled into Pakistan since the bloody Partition from India in 1947. The project appeared to be a spectacular success and cemented the reputation of the military dictatorship amongst Western backers. But the new satellite city was not connected the drains or provided adequate transport links. Local non-state actors, spearheaded by religious organizations like the Jamaat-e Islami or various Shia groups filled the infrastructural gaps. Post-colonial Pakistan’s civil society remains deeply entangled with the activities of such non-governmental organizations, and there is a long history of such groups providing essential social and communal services.
Pakistan is, unquestionably, one of the most vulnerable countries to intensifying climate change, with implications for flooding, drought, heatwaves, and accompanying water shortages. Pakistan’s current population of 225 million is likely to increase by 2050 to 366 million people with profound implications for both state and civil society. Burgeoning network of private Muslim charities and solidarity organizations around the world will be essential to ensure the human security of the country. But will it be sufficient? Pakistan’s representatives at COP27 including Minister Rehman have been very clear that “The gap lies in the undertaking of responsibility by the rich countries to not only fulfil their pledges but also provide compensations for the carbon-intensive lifestyles and investments that continue to increase emissions.” Pakistan and others will continue to demand that “loss and damage” has to be on the formal climate agenda now as parts of the flood-devastated country confront the realities of devastating losses of food production and infrastructure.