21/12/2020

Climate Change Could Create 63 Million Migrants In South Asia By 2050

Reuters - Megan Rowling

Unless efforts are made to curb global warming, South Asia will see a three-fold surge in migration.

National flood emergency response in Pakistan. Asian Development Bank / Flickr

BARCELONA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The growing impacts of climate change have already pushed more than 18 million people to migrate within South Asian countries, but that could more than triple if global warming continues on its current path, researchers warned on Friday.

Nearly 63 million people could be forced from their homes by 2050 in the region as rising seas and rivers swallow villages, and drought-hit land no longer supports crops, said ActionAid International and Climate Action Network South Asia in a report.

The projection does not include those who will be forced to flee sudden disasters such as floods and cyclones and so is likely an under-estimate, noted Harjeet Singh, global climate lead at ActionAid.

He said the situation could become “catastrophic”.

Many will head from rural areas to towns and cities in their own countries, in search of work, he said.

There they often end up living in slum areas exposed to flooding and with very limited access to social services, doing precarious jobs such as rickshaw-pulling, construction or garment-making.

“Policy makers in the Global North and the Global South are not yet waking up to this reality,” Singh told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “They are not realising the scale of the problem, and how we are going to deal with (it).”

He urged rich nations with high planet-warming emissions to redouble efforts to reduce their carbon pollution and provide more funding for South Asian countries to develop cleanly and adapt to conditions on a warming planet.

If governments meet a globally agreed goal to limit warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, the number of people driven to move in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal could be cut almost by half by 2050, the report said.

It builds on research published in 2018 by the World Bank, which said unchecked climate change could cause more than 140 million people to move within their countries’ borders by 2050 in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America.

The new report, which used an updated version of the same methodology, raises the original 2050 projection for South Asian migration by about half, adding in new data on sea level rise, as well as the effects of ecosystem losses and droughts.

The new report also tracks expected migration on a finer scale.

Preparing for movement

The projections have financial implications for countries such as India and Bangladesh, where the poorest people often lack the means to move far from their original homes to safer places without state support.

The new figures show the largest number of people are expected to migrate by 2050 in India, at more than 45 million.

But the country with the sharpest projected rise in migration is Bangladesh, with a seven-fold increase from today.

The report included examples collected by aid workers of people who have already been hit by worsening climate pressures.

In Pakistan’s arid Tharparkar district, Rajo, 37, and her husband, both labourers, moved to three different places in their area in the last three years to escape hunger caused by severe drought.

She lost a baby because of heavy lifting in her job and had to borrow money from the landowner to cover medical bills for her family, she told the researchers.

Kabita Maity, from an island in the Sundarbans delta region of India, has had to move five times as previous homes were gobbled up by the sea.

“We will have to stay here until the sea forces us out, as we do not have resources to buy land and resettle inwards,” Maity was quoted as saying.

The report called on South Asian governments to do more to prepare for worsening displacement linked to climate change - and emphasised the importance of acting now to limit the number of people who will be forced to migrate in the future.

It recommended strengthening social protection systems to provide cash and work for those affected by climate extremes and improving essential services for migrant workers in cities - now hit doubly by the COVID-19 pandemic, with many left jobless.

Measures that can help prevent “distress migration” include promoting farming methods that keep soils in good condition, managing water more efficiently, improving access to markets or trying new crops and ways to earn money, the report noted.

Where people are relocated, authorities need to ensure the land is safe and fertile, tenure rights are secure and people have enough money to build new homes, it added.

Sanjay Vashist, director of Climate Action Network South Asia, said tackling poverty and inequality also needed to be part of regional responses to climate migration.

“South Asian leaders must join forces and prepare plans for the protection of displaced people,” he said in a statement.

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(AU) Power Play: MCG Goes Solar In Climate-Change Fight

The Age - Jon Pierik

The Melbourne Cricket Ground has stepped up its bid to go green by turning to solar power.

Having signed on to the United Nations Sports for Climate Change Action framework last year, ground operator Melbourne Cricket Club felt there was more it could do to promote greater environmental responsibility and reduce overall climate impact.

The MCG had already taken action by introducing the Yarra Park water recycling facility in 2012 and, more recently, updating its lighting. But the chance to utilise its significant roof space was a tantalising prospect.


Having already changed the lighting, large new solar panels have been installed on parts of the northern roof of the at the MCG, in a bid to go even greener.

Having already changed the lighting, large new solar panels have been installed on parts of the northern roof of the at the MCG, in a bid to go even greener.

A review found the Great Southern Stand roof would not have been able to handle the added weight of the solar panels but EnergyAustralia discovered that certain sections of the northern stand would work, not only easing weight fears but ensuring there would be enough generation capacity to make the project feasible.

Under the watchful eye of Peter Wearne, the MCC's general manager of facilities, installation of the panels began last month, and will soon be used to help run the water recycling facility, with excess electricity then transferred to lighting and power in other areas of the venue.

"We want to ensure we use all the power that's generated from the solar panels. As we have such a massive base load ourselves, we don't want to push any excess electricity generated back into the grid," Wearne said.

"Over the past 10 years, the MCG has been on a journey of marked sustainability improvements, from water consumption and waste management, to energy efficiency and carbon emissions."

Solar panels have been installed on the outside of the MCG.
The venue's operations team can track energy usage in real time, meaning it will be able to check on what is being generated by the solar panels, thereby managing the load during peak times. The MCC also revealed it had formed a working party with fellow signatories Richmond Football Club and Tennis Australia – each based around the MCG – to help forge a more united stand. On a world scale, the NBA, International Olympic Committee, the New York Yankees and FIFA are also among the climate-action signatories.

The MCG will be able to monitor energy use in real time.
Wearne has taken great pride in the venue's environmental shift, including reducing electricity consumption by 30 per cent in part through swapping 25,000 light globes to LED fittings. Single-use plastics are being phased out and food waste is dehydrated and turned into soil food for Yarra Park.

This latest development comes as the replacement of flammable cladding dotted across the venue is set to begin early next year and finish in time for the start of the 2021 AFL home-and-away season. The Victorian Building Authority deemed the MCG safe after inspecting it in 2017.

"The MCG has high-level safety measures in place with 24/7 security, smoking bans, permanent sprinkler systems, fire safety plans and numerous access and exit points which is why the stadium continues to be safe for occupancy," a MCC spokeswoman said.

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Huge Antarctic Iceberg Headed Towards South Georgia Breaks In Two

The Guardian - Reuters

Researchers fear iceberg may disrupt underwater ecosystems and block penguins looking for food

Scientists have been watching for weeks as the massive iceberg, last measured at 4,200 sq km, rode a fast-track current towards South Georgia island. Photograph: Cpl Phil Dye RAF/Ministry of Defence/EPA
Strong currents have taken hold of a massive Antarctic iceberg that is on a collision course with South Georgia island, causing it to shift direction and lose a major chunk of mass, a scientist tracking its journey said on Friday.

As the iceberg, dubbed A68A, approached the western shelf edge of the south Atlantic island this week, it encountered strong currents, causing it to pivot nearly 180 degrees, according to Geraint Tarling, a biological oceanographer with the British Antarctic Survey.

“You can almost imagine it as a handbrake turn for the iceberg because the currents were so strong,” Tarling said.

That was when the iceberg appeared to clip the shelf edge, and caused a large piece to break apart. That new piece is an iceberg in its own right and already has a name: A68D.

Scientists have been watching for weeks as the massive iceberg, last measured at 4,200 sq km, rode a fast-track current towards the island.

Researchers feared that, as the iceberg closed in on the wildlife-rich island, it could grind into the seabed, disrupting underwater ecosystems. They were also worried that it might block penguins making their way into the sea for food.

As of Friday, the original A68A iceberg was about 50km (31 miles) from the island’s west coast. It appeared, however, to be heading south-east towards another current that would probably carry it away from the shelf edge before sweeping it back around toward the island’s eastern shelf area.

That means it could still cause an environmental disaster for local wildlife, but along the island’s eastern coast rather than the south-west.

“All of those things can still happen, nothing has changed in that regard,” Tarling said.

The new smaller iceberg, A68D, is moving further away from the original. Scientists don’t yet know if it will follow the same path, or become lodged somewhere else on the shelf. An estimate of A68D’s size was unavailable.

Scientists had predicted some chunks could break away from A68A as it approached the island, and more breakage is possible.

A68A broke off from the Antarctic peninsula in 2017.

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20/12/2020

(AU) 'Zero Return': Government Savaged Over Taxpayer Grants To Open Up New Gas Basin In Australia

The Guardian -  |

Coalition funding for gas exploration in Northern Territory labelled a costly plan ‘for a climate catastrophe’

Resources minister, Keith Pitt, has repeated claims the Beetaloo basin is hot property but critics say grants to help explore gas deposits will return nothing to taxpayers.
The Morrison government has been accused of embarking on an “expensive plan for a climate catastrophe” after it announced it would pay the gas industry up to $50m to speed up exploration in the Northern Territory.
The commitment, revealed on Thursday, also prompted warnings that taxpayers’ money could flow offshore to companies linked to tax havens and a Russian oligarch.

Keith Pitt, the federal minister for resources, water and northern Australia, said the government would offer grants to accelerate exploration and development in the NT’s Beetaloo basin, which lies south of Katherine and has been estimated to hold more than 200,000 petajoules of gas.

He said Beetaloo had been described as “the hottest play on the planet” with the potential to be a world-class gas resource that could transform the NT economy and create 6,000 jobs over 20 years.

The basin’s potential as a gas source has attracted the attention of investors from around the globe, including a company that has Viktor Vekselberg – a Russian oligarch who collects jewel-encrusted Faberge eggs and has been sanctioned by the US – as a major shareholder, and another company, whose ownership is unclear and is registered in the US tax haven state of Delaware.

Pitt said the funding was “a key, early step” in the government’s promised “gas-fired recovery” which received $28.9m in the budget. The grants would apply only to work that occurred before June 2022 and could cover up to 25% of a company’s exploration costs, capped at $7.5m per gas well.

The minister’s statement on Thursday did not mention the government’s climate commitments, which have been repeatedly criticised for their lack of ambition compared with other countries.

Gas is often described as having half the emissions of coal but studies have suggested it could be significantly more than that due to methane – a potent but short-lived greenhouse gas – leaking during extraction and transportation.

Climate campaigners at 350 Australia said the grants for the gas industry were a “shameful waste of public funds”. The group released an analysis that suggested the potential emissions from five gas basins the Morrison government would like to open up could cancel out the government’s climate policies five times over.

Lucy Manne, the group’s chief executive, said the government’s strategic gas basin plans were “an expensive plan for climate catastrophe”. “They should be investing in creating secure jobs in renewable energy, green manufacturing, and planning for an economic recovery that invests in climate solutions,” she said.

Bruce Robertson, a gas analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said the grants would bring “zero return” for taxpayers.

He said there was at least $11bn in gas assets for sale in Australia, with companies including ExxonMobil and Origin Energy struggling to find buyers, and the NT was a remote market unlikely to produce cheap product unless it was heavily subsidised.

“The gas industry is not even investing itself so why would the federal government?” he said.

Rod Campbell, research director with the Australia Institute, said subsidising oil and gas made little sense from either an economic or climate perspective. He said the gas industry employed fewer than one person for every $1m spent, while investment in health and education employed more than 10.

The Russian investor Vekselberg is, through an investment company, the biggest shareholder in Falcon Oil & Gas, a Canadian company headquartered in Ireland that holds a gas tenement in the basin.

The billionaire was among oligarchs sanctioned by the US Treasury in April 2018 when it froze their US assets and prohibited Americans from doing business with them over a number of matters including the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Falcon’s second biggest shareholder, Australian company Sweetpea Petroleum, owns 6.28% of the group. It is owned by Longview Petroleum in the US state of Delaware, which is regarded a tax and secrecy haven. Its ultimate owners are unclear.

Last week, the Australian Financial Review reported that Sweetpea is to be sold to another Beetaloo basin player, Tamboran Resources, in a deal that will give Longview almost 30% of Tamboran’s shares and a seat on the board.

Clancy Moore, the national director of the Publish What You Pay coalition, said the government “must rule out subsidies going to companies in the Beetaloo basin using secrecy or low-tax jurisdictions including Delaware and Ireland”.

“The Australian public should be alarmed that precious government money could be flowing to a Russian oligarch and anonymous company owners,” Moore said. “Any company that receives public subsidies must adhere to the highest levels of transparency and these companies are simply hiding in the shadows.”

Concern last week about Australia’s failure to live up to the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement led to Scott Morrison being refused a speaking slot at a global climate ambition summit hosted by Britain, France and the UN.

In addition to the gas exploration grants, government MPs including the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, this week flagged they may set up an inquiry to grill financial regulators and banks over plans to reduce lending to, or insuring of, projects considered an investment risk as the world moves to cut emissions.

The government also announced $2.5bn in support for struggling oil refineries. A leaked draft electric vehicle strategy showed it was not proposing policies to reduce the cost of buying a clean car or to ban the sale of fossil-fuel cars, as planned in other countries including Britain, Japan and Norway.

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(NZ) Climate Change Refugees: The Landmark Case Of Teitiota V New Zealand

Environment Journal - Melanie Desert

Climate change causes immeasurable damage world-wide; however, its effects are not felt evenly throughout the world and small Pacific island populations are some of the most vulnerable. 

Photo Credit – MartyNZ (Pixabay)
Economically developed nations continue to cause environmental degradation yet are often able to remain comfortably removed from the consequences of their actions and decisions. It is within this paradox that the case of Teitiota v New Zealand has occurred.

In this landmark case, the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) ruled, for the first time, that expelling an individual to a place where they may be exposed to life threatening risks due to the adverse effects of climate change could violate the right to life.

In 2013, Ioane Teitiota (the claimant) and his family left their home on the small atoll of Tarawa, part of the Pacific nation of Kiribati, for New Zealand, where they applied for refugee status on the basis that climate change had devastated Kiribati so much so that remaining there posed a risk to their lives.

The Pacific ocean has experienced a great degree of sea level rise, double the global average, which has meant low lying islands like Kiribati (only 2-3 metres above sea level) face complete inundation.

With increasing sudden on-set environmental events such as storm surges and tropical storms, which now occur 3-4 times a month, much of the land is becoming uninhabitable.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that within the next decade Kiribati will be wiped off the map if global temperatures and sea level continue to rise.

In the meantime, extensive flooding continues to cause salination of arable land and fresh water, as well as overcrowding in the only areas of Kiribati that remain habitable, causing violent land disputes and allowing disease to spread more quickly than usual.

The contamination of fresh water supplies has left approximately 60% of Kiribati’s population to have to obtain drinking water from national rations. And, because many Kiribatian families, including Teitota’s, rely on subsistence agriculture and fishing, the population’s health has been deteriorating, with deficiencies in vitamin A, malnutrition and fish poisoning.

Climate change had exacerbated the ability for Teitiota and his family to live with dignity in Kiribati; they were thus forced to migrate to New Zealand and seek protection, cutting loose their deep cultural ties with Pacific island life.

 Claiming to be a climate change refugee

At first instance, the Immigration and Protection Tribunal in New Zealand rejected Teitiota’s asylum claim as a climate change refugee. The Tribunal decided that Teitiota did not objectively face a real risk of being persecuted if he and his family were returned to Kiribati, the necessary proof to qualify for asylum.

This decision was upheld by the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court. And so Teitiota and his family were deported to Kiribati.

Teitiota then took his case to the HRC, claiming that by forcibly returning him to Kiribati, New Zealand had violated his right to life under Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Covenant).

The HRC had to determine whether New Zealand, which is party to the Covenant, had breached its duty not to expel Teitiota if there was sufficient evidence that there was ‘a risk of imminent, or likely, risk of arbitrary deprivation of life upon return to Kiribati’. So being, a loss of life did not have to occur to breach Article 6.

To determine whether the duty had been breached, the HRC considered 3 points.
  1. Had the New Zealand courts given proper consideration to climate change when deciding whether Teitiota could remain? – it concluded, yes.
  2. Was Kiribati taking steps to reduce the impact of climate change? – again it said yes, as the 2007 National Adaptive Programme of Action set policies and goals to address the water crisis.
  3. Finally, was the threat to life ‘imminent’ (the minimum threshold required to establish a breach of Article 6)? Whilst the HRC accepted Teitiota’s evidence that ‘sea level rise is likely to render Kiribati uninhabitable’, it decided that because this could take 10-15 years, there was still enough time for action to be taken by Kiribati and other nations to mitigate the crisis.
The ruling and its impact

Overall, Teitiota was unable to establish that his right to life had been violated by New Zealand.

However, two judges disagreed with majority of the HRC, urging that protecting the right to life meant upholding the sanctity of life and human dignity. They argued the HRC had placed an unreasonable burden of proof on Teitiota to show he had no access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

One of the dissenting judges, Duncan Laki Muhumuza, felt the difficulty in accessing fresh water and the fact that some deaths were occurring in Kiribati should be enough to reach the burden of proof. Teitiota’s child was already suffering from blood poisoning caused by the water.

‘It would indeed be counterintuitive to the protection of life’ to wait for a complete lack of water and for deaths to be frequent before the burden of proof is met.

The other dissenting, Vasilka Sancin, said: it should be Kiribati’s responsibility to demonstrate it takes ‘positive action to protect life from risks arising from known natural hazards’.

The HRC has determined outside this case that action would include providing access to food, water, sanitation, housing and electricity, along with disaster management plans which prepare the nation for climate change disasters affecting the right to life. Yet in fact, water and sanitation policies in Kiribati are yet to be implemented.

By creating these human rights obligations against the backdrop of climate change, the HRC reiterates the interdependence between states fulfilling social and economic rights, as well as civil and political rights, such as the right to life.

Yet it is perplexing that such obligations are placed on small, island nations which are still developing, particularly given that the main contributors to climate change are the developed nations. In response to this reality, the HRC ruling provided some unprecedented observations.

It established: ‘environmental degradation, climate change and unsustainable development constitute some of the most pressing and serious threats to life’, and if concrete national and international action is not taken, then individuals may be exposed to a violation of their rights to life in certain places, triggering the obligation of states like New Zealand not to forcibly return them.

In other words, by verifying that a state’s obligation not to forcibly return someone can arise, an interest is created in requiring one another to take action to curb the adverse effects of climate change on people’s lives, else nations will have to grant climate refugees protection in the future.

And the ruling makes a call to arms to all nations tackle environmental destruction as one; Laki Muhumuza felt New Zealand’s action was more like ‘forcing a drowning person back into a sinking vessel’.

This means that nations less affected by climate change, often those more economically developed, must act now, and help save those more vulnerable. If they do not, they could be held responsible for some of the most unforgiveable violations yet of the right to life.

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Venus Was Once More Earth-Like, But Climate Change Made It Uninhabitable

The Conversation - 

An artist’s rendering of the surface of Venus. (Shutterstock)
Author Dr. Richard Ernst Ph.D. is Scientist in Residence in the Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, and a Professor in the Faculty of Geology and Geography at Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Siberia. 
We can learn a lot about climate change from Venus, our sister planet.

Venus currently has a surface temperature of 450 C (the temperature of an oven’s self-cleaning cycle) and an atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide (96 per cent) with a density 90 times that of Earth’s.

Venus is a very strange place, totally uninhabitable, except perhaps in the clouds some 60 kilometres up where the recent discovery of phosphine may suggest floating microbial life. But the surface is totally inhospitable.

However, Venus once likely had an Earth-like climate. According to recent climate modelling, for much of its history Venus had surface temperatures similar to present day Earth. It likely also had oceans, rain, perhaps snow, maybe continents and plate tectonics, and even more speculatively, perhaps even surface life.

Less than one billion years ago, the climate dramatically changed due to a runaway greenhouse effect. It can be speculated that an intensive period of volcanism pumped enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to cause this great climate change event that evaporated the oceans and caused the end of the water cycle.

Evidence of change

This hypothesis from the climate modellers inspired Sara Khawja, a master’s student in my group (co-supervised with geoscientist Claire Samson), to look for evidence in Venusian rocks for this proposed climatic change event.

Since the early 1990s, my Carleton University research team — and more recently my Siberian team at Tomsk State University — have been mapping and interpreting the geological and tectonic history of Earth’s remarkable sister planet.

Soviet Venera and Vega missions of the 1970s and 1980s did land on Venus and take pictures and evaluated the composition of the rocks, before the landers failed due to the high temperature and pressure.

However, our most comprehensive view of the surface of Venus has been provided by NASA’s Magellan spacecraft in the early 1990s, which used radar to see through the dense cloud layer and produce detailed images of more than 98 per cent of Venus’s surface.

A visualization of Venus’s surface produced by radar on board the Magellan spacecraft.

Ancient rocks

Our search for geological evidence of the great climate change event led us to focus on the oldest type of rocks on Venus, called tesserae, which have a complex appearance suggestive of a long, complicated geological history.

We thought that these oldest rocks had the best chance of preserving evidence of water erosion, which is a such an important process on Earth and should have occurred on Venus prior to the great climate change event.

Given poor resolution altitude data, we used an indirect technique to try to recognize ancient river valleys. We demonstrated that younger lava flows from the surrounding volcanic plains had filled valleys in the margins of tesserae.

To our astonishment these tesserae valley patterns were very similar to river flow patterns on Earth, leading to our suggestion that these tesserae valleys were formed by river erosion during a time with Earth-like climatic conditions.

My Venus research groups at Carleton and Tomsk State universities are studying the post-tesserae lava flows for any geological evidence of the transition to extremely hot conditions.

A portion of Alpha Regio, a topographic upland on the surface of Venus, was the first feature on Venus to be identified from Earth-based radar. (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA)

Earth analogies

In order to understand how volcanism on Venus could produce such a change in climate, we can look to Earth history for analogues. We can find analogies in super-eruptions like the last eruption at Yellowstone that occurred 630,000 years.

But such volcanism is small compared to large igneous provinces (LIPs) that occur approximately every 20-30 million years. These eruption events can release enough carbon dioxide to cause catastrophic climate change on Earth, including mass extinctions.

To give you a sense of scale, consider that the smallest LIPs produce enough magma to cover all of Canada to a depth of about 10 metres. The largest known LIP produced enough magma that would have covered an area the size of Canada to a depth of nearly eight kilometres.

The LIP analogues on Venus include individual volcanoes that are up to 500 kilometres across, extensive lava channels that reach up to 7,000 kilometres long, and there are also associated rift systems — where the crust is pulling apart — up to 10,000 kilometres long.

If LIP-style volcanism was the cause of the great climate change event on Venus, then could similar climate change happen on Earth? We can imagine a scenario many millions of years in the future when multiple LIPs randomly occurring at the same time could cause Earth to have such runaway climate change leading to conditions like present-day Venus.

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19/12/2020

A 10 Billion-Tree Plan Is Restoring Pakistan’s Lost Forests

Bloomberg Green - 

  • Government has begun planting 3.3 billion trees in first stage
  • Pakistan has one of the lowest levels of forest cover

A worker prepares planting bags at the Model Colony forest nursery in Karachi. Photgrapher: Asim Hafeez/Bloomberg
Pakistan’s arid climate and rocky deserts may seem an unlikely place to look for a green revolution, but the nation of more than 200 million people has begun one of the world’s largest reforestation programs.

The government is in the first phase of planting 3.25 billion trees at an estimated cost of around 105 billion rupees ($650 million), Malik Amin Aslam, minister for climate change said in an interview. Prime Minister Imran Khan wants to extend that to almost 10 billion by the time his term in office ends in 2023.

Trees and plants are grown along the M9 highway in Karachi. Photgrapher: Asim Hafeez/Bloomberg
“We are trying to unleash a green economy,” Aslam said by phone.

The task is enormous. Pakistan is among the six countries that face the biggest impact from climate change, according to the United Nations, with risks of floods, melting glaciers and droughts. Its forest cover is now among the lowest in the world – about 5% of the land, compared with a global average of 31%, according to UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
“Unfortunately, we never cared about them,” said Khan at a tree-planting ceremony in July. “After independence from the British, we have lost forests instead of adding to them.”

Pakistan is planting trees that need relatively little water, like the azadirachta indica, a fast-growing mahogany commonly known as the neem tree. Neems typically don’t need to be watered after the first five years, while the other species that have been chosen only need extra water for the first few months, according to Tabish Hussain, a government-employed forester in Karachi.

A Sindh Forest Department employee pours water over a sapling in a mangrove plantation island on the Karachi coast. Photgrapher: Asim Hafeez/Bloomberg
Khan has been advocating reforestation since his days as a professional cricketer more than three decades ago. He has added nine new national parks, the first additions since independence in 1947. As provincial ruler of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province he oversaw a billion-tree planting program that raised the region’s forest cover to forest cover to 27%, from 20%, in the five years to 2019.

When Saudi Crown Price Muhammad Bin Salman visited Pakistan for the first time last year, he was invited to add some soil with a shovel and to water a plant at Pakistan’s Prime Minister House. On Aug. 9, Khan asked everyone in the nation to plant a tree, with a target of 3.5 million for the day.

Trees line an intersection on Karachi’s Northern Bypass. Photgrapher: Asim Hafeez/Bloomberg
Despite Khan’s efforts to raise public awareness, economic pressures continue to beset the nation’s forests. The need to feed the world’s fifth largest population means that most fertile land has already been turned over to food grains like wheat or cash crops like cotton. Trees are also cut down to make firewood, though the government has tried to curb the practice in recent years.

Critics say the government may struggle to undo the damage to the nation’s forests.

A plant nursery raises saplings by the M9 highway in Karachi. Photgrapher: Asim Hafeez/Bloomberg
“It’s not enough,” said Lahore-based climate policy consultant Dawar Butt. “The government has other agendas as well.” He said that while the central administration has the environment as a top priority, “actual environment-related laws are broken by state institutions.”

Often in the past, many energy and infrastructure projects skipped public environmental-impact hearings and many construction programs still do, Butt said.

Wind turbines generate renewable power behind a mangrove plantation near Karachi. Photgrapher: Asim Hafeez/Bloomberg
The nation has also been investing heavily in coal, one of the biggest polluters. With Chinese backing, Pakistan inaugurated its biggest coal mine last year and produced a record 20% of its electricity from the fossil fuel in the fiscal year through June. It generated only 3% from solar and wind. The government has set a target of drawing 30% of its power from renewables by 2030.

In addition to restoring some eco-systems and absorbing planet-warming carbon emissions, the tree plantation drive has provided thousand of jobs in a country that struggles with unemployment. “I am hopeful that we can save our nation,” said Khan. “You go to Dubai, its all a desert, they don’t have trees. God has given us everything, we just need to take care of it.”

A portion of land at the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Park in Karachi that has been dedicated to urban forestry. Photgrapher: Asim Hafeez/Bloomberg


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Lethal Heating is a citizens' initiative