By: Huria Liaqat
The Global Climate and Environmental Nexus is an Inconvenient Truth that refers to the bitter realities of the state leaders as well as their hypothetically disfavored policies towards the environment on factual grounds. The monitoring and modeling of this changing climate are expressively unfolding the science of knowledge and power being presented through the display of facts and information in a more effective and convincing way. The study of these impacts serves as an excellent job of addressing how the effect of Global Climate Change is affecting millions of lives around the globe but also outlines the impact of minute daily temperature rise on the ecological cycles and biodiversity with its irregular extended patterns. The roots of the most frightening events of all time affect the human and environment resulting in events such as accidental deaths due to increased heat waves, mass migrations due to flooding, regular occurrence of droughts, mudslides, hurricanes, and typhoons etc.
Regarding Global Climate Change, theories of International Relations have been playing a significant role in demonstrating the extent to which the state actors are cooperating based on their gains in order to explain and govern Environmental Politics. Since the late 1980s, Climate Change has only been in discussion across the domains of politics, power, and economics majorly. However, the major challenge is that we lack technologies and valid scientific predictions at hand with the tentative attitude of the Government officials towards the Environmental Policies as they get second preference over economy and trade. Furthermore, the misconceptions surrounding Climate Change needed to bring down this global hazard demands our old school of thoughts to be rectified to modern, and more compelling ones.
Today, the problems faced by the world in parallel to the drastic shifts in temperature not only stress the severity of the devastations caused worldwide but the scientific data of contemporary research claims that these events will be much stronger in the future if not considered seriously at both domestic and international level. The breaking ice shelves in the Antarctic region show us how these low-lying polar ice caps are under threat of vanishing because of these rising temperatures in the nearer future approximately fifty years later leading to clean water depletion and mass flooding in the nearby regions. Additionally, we are also faced with shocking phenomena like temperature inversion and seasonal shifts disturbing the natural ecological cycles, the consequences of which are the extinction of keystone species of the food chain such as birds that starve because caterpillar hatch early and forests that are destroyed by extended feeding periods of pine beetles. Moreover, scarcity of resources is also impacting the lifestyle of most of the groups across the globe predicting the threats that rapid and intense Climate Induced events have posed on biodiversity.
In a nutshell, the problems related to Global Environmental Issues are presented in parallel to the list of misconceptions that humans have towards environment. Through the study of impacts of the dramatic annual rise in temperature, we can very clearly see where we stand as we don’t have a Planet B. The dire need of the time is an immediate but collective and just response of the states or other non-governmental actors in this context. Political institutions and actors should also play a positive role using their power for the right cause. It also demands the modes of production and technology to be shifted to more cleaner technologies and Sustainable Developmental Goals respectively. Moreover, to tackle the irregular trends in Climate, individual contributions are needed to bring down the increasing levels of emission and temperature across the globe to normal. All of this is affecting our lives drastically, and in future, they will have very hazardous impacts on us if not considered seriously. Furthermore, the predictions for the future ahead are a reminder to tame our attitudes and alter our lifestyles to be sustained accordingly.
The writer is a student of bachelor’s in environmental sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad. She is also a research intern at Department of Meteorology, COMSATS University, Islamabad. She can be reached at [email protected]