World seriousness on environment change!

THE RECENTLY held representative conference of world leaders at Rio was aimed to reiterate the commitment of the Earth Summit 1992 towards protection of Earth as well as biodiversity in the world, however, the gathering turned out to be a cause for major disappointment mainly due to the lukewarm attitude of many heads of governments and states. Though climate change has emerged as collective and global critical issue risking the very survival of the Earth and biodiversity, yet developed countries representatives in the conference appeared unwilling to agree on a core principle of the summit that all states should strive to protect the worlds resources and that those with the most money and who have done the most damage should play comparatively a greater role to tackle the looming challenge of global change. Ironically, heads of states of major powers like US, UK and Germany did not even attend the Rio+20 Conference. While developed countries, which are facing financial crises back home made them reluctant to carry out the commitment they had made on contributing 0.7 per cent of their GNP to the implementation of the sustainable development goals. The Rio conference was supposed to focus on critical issues like protection of worlds forests and fisheries, bringing electricity to more than one billion people who lack access to it and weaning the world off fossil fuels. But it seems that the global community is unwilling to do what it will take to achieve these goals practically. And at the same time, participants of the conference shifted their focus on developing states especially Pakistan for ensuring its adherence to the world Protocols and Conventions for the protection of environment. Going through the available data, it comes to fore that despite no tangible progress has so far been made to control the pollutant elements, yet the country is ranked at about 130th amongst the states creating environmental hazards but on the other side it is among the top ten world states bearing most the brunt of the degrading environment. At this critical stage, the world immediately needs to devise the definition of green economy that should integrate and bind the three pillars of sustainable development – social equity, economic prosperity, and environmental conservation. Heads of governments and states are supposed to show high level of seriousness towards the critical issue of climate change as drought, glaciers melt, floods, global warming, reduction in farm productions, etc. are the offshoot of this problem. But that cannot be used as an excuse to exonerate the government of Pakistan from the wrongs it is committing by showing its persistent sluggish attitude towards climate change. It must rise to the situation for a greater role.