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Women face the worst of environmental degradation: UNFPA report

By Aamir Yasin

ISLAMABAD: With the sixth largest population in the world, Pakistan produces only 0.4 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gasses (GHG), which means that it is 135th on the list of global GHG emitters.

This has been revealed in the Pakistan Supplement of United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)’s annual report on ‘state of world population’, launched here on Wednesday.

The publication is titled ‘Holding up the Sky: Women, Population and Climate Change’, which examines the issues related to links between family planning, reproductive health, gender equality and its impact on future course of climate change.

The report maintains that climate change will not only endanger lives and livelihoods of the most vulnerable groups in Pakistan but also exacerbate gaps between rich and poor and inequality between women and men. Focusing in particular on women, the report emphasises that they are especially vulnerable to climate-induced calamities.

It demonstrates women’s pivotal role in addressing climate change effects. It serves as an awareness-raising platform to demonstrate the human face of the effects of rising sea levels, melting glaciers, flooding, earthquakes in heavily populated areas, internal and external migrations, food shortages, environmental degradation, and increased levels of emission of green house gasses, among many other factors.

The Pakistan supplement provides significant information on exceptional increase in temperatures in Pakistan, changes in weather patterns, environmental degradation, air pollution, deforestation, water pollution, and land degradation in the Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, NWFP and Gilgit-Baltistan.

In the foreword to the report, Daniel B Baker, UNFPA country representative in Pakistan, points out that the country faces multi-dimensional challenges with respect to climate change.

“Rapid population growth could lead the total population to double by 2050 if urgent measures are not taken. Fertility and maternal mortality rates remain the highest in the region and some other key human development indicators are also deteriorating.

Economic activities in Pakistan are facing unprecedented challenges in the wake of the global economic crisis. In short, climate change can further exacerbate the daunting challenges already faced by the country,” he said.

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