 Welcome, and thank you for joining us today for a discussion of climate change and environmental degradation in South Asia's mega cities. My name is Thamena Salikateen, and I'm the director for South Asia programs at the United States Institute of Peace. USIP is a national, nonpartisan, and independent institute founded by Congress and dedicated to the proposition that a world without violent conflict is possible, practical, and essential for U.S. and global security. We're very happy that you've joined our discussion today, and we thought this is an apt or opportune moment to have this discussion after President Biden's climate summit last week, where many South Asian leaders participated. South Asia is home to a fourth of the world's population. It is one of the most densely populated regions in the world. And out of the 37 mega cities, that's an urban center of more than 10 million people, eight of them are in South Asia. And even second-tier cities in South Asia are almost reaching that mark. So when you visit, if you go to Dhaka, or Mumbai, or Karachi, you can see the actual impact of environmental degradation and climate change on not only the city, but of all, obviously, on the citizens. And here at USIP, we are really interested in understanding where that intersection between conflict and environmental degradation and climate change exist and what solutions there are for those problems. Today, we're joined by an amazing panel from across South Asia. I'm very happy to welcome them. Briefly, we have Dr. Hrera Jabeen. She's an academic and development professional with over 20 years of experience on urban resilience, gender, and built environment with a specific focus on the intersection of gender and climate change in cities. She works for the World Bank in Dhaka, Bangladesh. And next, we have Dr. Aditya Bahadur from India. Dr. Bahadur is a principal researcher in the Human Settlements Group at the International Institute for Environment and Development in the UK. He has been working at the intersection of climate change and urban development for almost 15 years. And last, but certainly not least, we have Sara Hayat from Pakistan. She is a lawyer by training with expertise in climate change law, and she received her LLM from Durham University in the UK and practices law in Pakistan for six years before going to the University of Michigan to study climate change law. She currently advises the government of Pakistan on preparing the nationally determined contributions to share with the UNFCCC. She's currently a development fellow also for the Asia Foundation in Pakistan. We hope that you all can join our discussion on our USIP page. Feel free to send in your questions. With that, I'll turn it over to my colleague, Jamina Siddiqui, who's a senior program officer with our South Asia program to moderate our discussion. So I welcome you and thank you for joining our discussion. Thank you, Temana. I echo my thanks to you all for joining us and Temana for that wonderful introduction. Just to add to that, you know, exacerbating these demographic trends, as Temana mentioned, is climate change. We're seeing record heat waves. We're seeing extreme weather events. We're seeing torrential rainfall, stronger cyclones and things are only going to get worse, which is going to lead to severe humanitarian crisis, but also impact the stability of the region. For example, migration to urban centers, which is the topic of our discussion today, will continue to grow and place additional burdens on these mega cities to provide food, shelter, jobs and other services. This migration is not just a majority populations, but also vulnerable minority groups, which could stop communal tensions and conflict in their new urban communities. So our three distinguished speakers will address this and other stresses faced by urban centers in South Asia. And we'll begin with Herrera. Over to you, Herrera. Thank you, Jomaina, for the introduction and giving me the opportunity to talk in this panel. So today is an interesting day for me. I think after 26 years, the Hakka City finally experienced 40 degrees of temperature. So you can see I was looking at the news that I was thinking, what a day to start talking about it. But if you talk about Bangladesh, in general, we often talk about two different opposing scenarios. One is definitely when we think about climate change. We talk about the most vulnerable country. In fact, we are the sixth most vulnerable country in the world from exposure to natural hazards. But on the other hand, when we talk about Bangladesh and if you read about Bangladesh in the recent time, you will see that we are having a very good socioeconomic development, which are going to, we are hoping that that will place us in as a middle income country by 2020. So this both positive and negative vibe about the country always put at its confusion or sometimes put up in our challenge. But we also see many opportunities. So one of the socioeconomic development or the key strength of development in Bangladesh is full by the urban economy and urbanization. So the government of Bangladesh predicts that by 2045, most of the population or majority of the population will be living in different kind of urban centers that includes these mega cities, the smaller cities, and even the smaller urban centers. We have around 327 urban centers. So our urban population growth is about five percent. That means our urban population is growing in one of the kind of one of the highest level. But at the same time, the interesting part is when we think about urbanization, we don't only talk about the urban population, but we also talk about the urban area expansion. So if you talk about Bangladesh to be one of the most dense country where 1,200 people live in one square kilometer of area, if you compare that to Dhaka city, where more than 47,000 people live in one square meter of area, you can only imagine how densely populated it is. But interestingly, the urban area expansion did not happen significantly in the last 10 or 20 years. It's rather staying stable, which resulted in very high density development in different cities and others, which leads to a lot of pressure on the infrastructure and on the availability of resources. When we think about climate change, especially in urban areas in Bangladesh, we often use to portray Bangladesh as sort of a flood risk is the highest one, or water logging or sea level rise will be the highest climate impact to think about. But we often do not talk about this increased heat and the impact of this heat. So as I was talking about that today Dhaka experienced more than 40 degree temperature. So in terms of the temperature, it might feel like, yes, it's the heat that we are talking about, which is the direct impact. But we don't usually talk about the indirect impact, like the health risk or low productivity. Usually in the previous years, when we see this kind of high temperature for consistent for a few days or several days or even week or month, we see a lot of hospitals being filled with diarrheal patients, which comes from water scarcity and waterborne diseases or scarcity of water. We see a lot of low income, low skill employment, livelihood opportunities being impacted by the health risk and the low productivity from high heat. And also what it means that not only people are exposed to the direct heat, but the indirect impact. Indirect impact affect the households, their health expenditure, their food expenditure, their income. And also another issue that are very important for around that, especially in urban areas, is this extreme or erratic rainfall. So I remember a day in 2009 when almost entire years rainfall happened in only six hours. So no way our infrastructure, especially the drainage system, can be ready for these kind of erratic rainfall incidences. So these happens, which are creating challenges for the urban areas. And those are, you can say, mostly infrastructure design and development. And also we have very limited land for development. So since we are not expanding our urban areas, the existing infrastructure remain heavily under pressure to support this increased urban population. And access to this infrastructure become also challenging. But what it means that it's related to a lot of the built-in government issues. So when we talk about urban area, we talk about a lot of built-up area, which, in turn, also contribute to the increasing heat, creating heat island in the urban areas. But also due to the high density development, our soakable surface are becoming very fewer. And we don't have enough space for the aquifer to be refilled. So if we think about how the climate change can or can create some kind of conflict, I think most of the academic research so far talks about these existing resources as a main contributor to possible conflict. So in that way, water scarcity, especially in urban areas, can be one of those key issues to think about if we think about climate change as a conflict issue. So it will be more important to think about the infrastructure, whether they're adequate or not, and their capacity, and also the land availability to develop this kind of infrastructure to address the water scarcity issue. And also the energy supply related to water scarcity can be one of the issues. The other issue that often academics talks about related to climate change and conflict is the economic stability and urbanization. So when we think about it, the recent political stability has given us that economic boost up that we are working on. But again, there's a limit to how much the government, the public sector, can do, how much their institutional capacity can be. So in future, even though we don't talk about it, we have to think about how the policy domain, the institutional challenges are there for the public sector to support this urbanization. But I see a lot of effort from the Bangladesh government to think about climate change and urbanization as an issue. So if you read about Bangladesh, there is a new plan. It's called the Bangladesh Delta Plan, which was prepared keeping the climate change in mind. And of the six categories that the Delta Plan tried to focus on, one of them is the urban areas, considering the future urbanization and conflict. And in the urban areas intervention, the government is suggesting or trying to work more towards increasing drainage capacity, ensuring water security and water use efficiency, and protecting the wetland and rivers to support the urban areas, and also trying to develop urban infrastructure and governance. And also Bangladesh government is now working on the nationally determined contribution, the NDC, like all of the countries. The interesting part is the government is not only talking about mitigation or adaptation. The government is trying to work on the both sector, keeping the water sector in mind as well. For example, in the transport sector or in the energy sector, government is trying to reduce greenhouse gas emission and trying to cut its emission level as well. But also in the adaptation plan, Bangladesh is developing this national adaptation plan, where urban areas will be getting focused. But there is quite hopeful situation from the government in a way that Bangladesh government from their own support system, they try to invest about 2.5% of the GDP in climate change adaptation. And most of this adaptation program or measures are very locally driven based on the local expertise trying to bring into the community, into the development. Maybe some of most of them are now working in the rural areas, but there is a sort of a proposal or an enhanced to think about in the urban population as well. So I think one of the key reason that you started talking about climate change in a new perspective is I think the COVID situation has created or asking us the question whether the way we are thinking about urbanization and climate change is that can that be continued or not? So there are a couple of studies which has been done in urban livelihood in the recent time in Dhaka. So I will take some from those studies just to sort of say how the pandemic has sort of made us start thinking differently or trying to think differently. So if we think about migration in Bangladesh the urbanization or the urban population growth is definitely fueled by migrants. So we don't know how much of them are environment migrant, how many of them are economic migrant because it's become difficult to segregate economic migrant from the environment migrant because the environment migration happens due to loss of livelihood into the coastal areas or in the very vulnerable areas. So definitely we were looking into migration as an in migration due to economic and environment reasons as well. But what this pandemic has showed us that there is out migration now because of the pandemic. So whether it's a long-term thing or a short-term thing that we need to think in future it's just people have started studying about it. But what it brought out into discussion is this when we are thinking about out migration this is very much fueled by this typical urban issue that urban living or urban vulnerability is very much dependent on the non food expenditure living costs to stay in urban areas. So what the pandemic has shown us the non food expenditure for the urban population especially the migrants who move to the city or live in a very vulnerable area or in vulnerable economic state they are the one who can be very highly hit by this non food expenditure and which can this non food expenditure increase for any kind of disaster can increase or deepen the poverty or it can even make the economy fragile which we are trying to build very strongly. But in all of this discussion what I want to bring another or bring into attention is another issue that when we talk about climate change we think about communities in general we don't desegregate data to think about how men and women act differently within the same climate change vulnerable scenario and especially thinking about migration and others. So what I want to bring into discussion is this that we talk about more people living in urbanization urban areas in the coming decades or still people are living in there but we don't talk about is there will be in the coming decades more women will be living in the urban areas and there will be more female headed households and most of this female headed household may be living in informal settlement in a very vulnerable condition if we do not think about them now on. And this is a concern for us because if you think about the women and children in urban areas especially in urban poor communities they are double burden what the pandemic has shown us that they can be highly, highly vulnerable because they are the first one to lose their unemployment and one of the recent studies suggested that going back to work is five time challenging for women who are very low skill and even the skilled job holder in the lower rank they are the one who are facing five time challenge to go back to work. And also because of any disaster people use up their savings and also they live or depend more on the borrowing and taking loan which in another term women become more responsible to pay back or to adjust to it. And the indirect impact that started to show some indication which needs father study is that we are hearing a lot of higher rate of dropout from children from the education which builds their long-term resilience. We are hearing a lot about early marriages of girls and we are discussing about a high rate of domestic violence. So we don't usually talk about this smaller things when we talk about climate change in general but if you break down the climate change in the urban areas and the life of the urban population we can think about this smaller issue which can build up to create a situation where we need to think about the challenges of conflict in different levels. So I want to stop here now Romaina and hear from the other colleagues from India and Pakistan. Thank you so much, Aditya over to you. We can't hear him. Hello. Hi Aditya, we can hear you now. Okay, thank you, thank you Stara for pointing that out. And we've lost you again. Yes we can. Okay wonderful. Your headphones were the culprit. Yeah, I'm gonna hope like hell that this works. Very good morning. Good afternoon or good evening to everyone. My name is Aditya Bahadur and I'm a principal researcher with the International Institute for Environment and Development. We're an international not-for-profit think tank based in the UK and have been working at the intersection of environment and development policy. Thank you very much for inviting me to speak today. As Jumaina rightly said, we are at a unique moment in time. For the first time in the history of the world, more people live in towns and cities than in rural areas. Urbanization is the defining demographic trend of our times. At the same time, climate risk is rising around the world and there is little argument over the fact that climate change is the environmental challenge of our times. Therefore, the conversation that we're having today is massively important and it's fantastic that the USIP has chosen to focus on the issue of cities in the context of climate change and issue that has historically been on the margins of the mainstream discourse on climate change. To understand this issue of climate risk in urban South Asia and in particular India, it is useful to break this amorphous idea of climate risk into three constituent elements, hazards, exposure and vulnerability. A hazard is simply a disturbance or an event, cyclone, a heat wave, water shortages and cities around the world are facing a number of hazards, spanning temperature rise, water shortages, extreme rainfall and these trends are seen in Indian cities too. By some estimates, temperatures in the country might rise by about four degrees Celsius by the end of the century. In certain highly urbanized parts of the country, sea levels are rising three times faster than the global average. Incidences of flooding are becoming more acute. For instance, the number of floods in India rose to 90 in the 10-year period between 2006 to 2015, up from 67 in the 10-years between 1996 and 2005. Exposure is the second component of risk and pertains to the assets and people that are affected by these hazards. Due to historic settlement patterns determined by trade and commerce, a disproportionate number of urban centers are located along the coast or along rivers and therefore are locations that are highly exposed to the impacts of a changing climate. Let's look at the fact that 65% of the world's population lives in coastal zones and this proportion is likely to increase by about 74% in the next five years or so. Moreover, two-thirds of all cities, over five million people, are located in highly exposed low elevation coastal zones. And this is seen in India too, where about 14 million urban Indians live in areas where the elevation is five meters below mean sea level and therefore these areas are highly exposed to flooding coastal and inundation, et cetera. The third pillar of risk is vulnerability and this denotes the innate sensitivity of urban communities and households to hazards and their ability to adapt. Vulnerability is a function of tangible and intangible assets, a tangible asset being money and intangible asset being relationships and social capital. And by and large, socioeconomic status is a good indicator of vulnerability. Across the world, there is a high amount of vulnerability in cities and this is evident from the fact that over a billion urban residents around the world live in slums in informal settlements and almost 750 million earn less than $2 a day. And this global trend is born out in India too, where one in every five urban Indians lives in poverty and almost the same number lives in slums. So this is all to say that climate risk in urban India is immense. Now, some of my recent research has talked about how this risk is shifting. And there are at least four ways in which we can see the shifts in these risks. I'll go through these four very quickly. First, outlier events are on the rise. An IPCC special report a few years ago talked about how a number of hydro-metrological events across the world are on the rise. For instance, there's been a 300% rise in incidences of extreme rainfall in India over the last 50 years. And I live in Delhi, which is a large metropolis in the country and I know how much havoc these events can wreak. Some of you would remember that an extreme precipitation event or extreme rainfall event in July 2005 brought our financial capital, Mumbai, to a standstill. Almost 950 millimeters of rain fell in one day in many parts of the city, leading to the closure of train stations, roads and airports. This disaster resulted in the deaths of almost 700 people and almost 300,000 required urgent medical attention. We are now living in the time of COVID-19 and let's not forget that this too is an extreme outlier event. Statistically, there's around a 1% chance of a pandemic like COVID-19 happening in any given year, but there is emerging analysis to say that due to the densification of global social and economic networks, such pandemics are going to happen more frequently. Secondly, the second shift in the pattern of risk is the scale and spread of risk is expanding. Multiple different kinds of hazards are occurring simultaneously and more frequently. You know, large countries like the United States, India and Brazil, are prepared for emergencies unfolding in a few different places at the same time. But with COVID-19, we've seen that every major province or state and every major city in these countries have been overwhelmed concurrently. The proactive nature of this crisis has also meant that countries are being impacted by different kinds of risks at the same time and this is leading to risk management systems being stretched very thin. Let me give you a couple of very quick illustrations of what I mean here. Cyclone Amphan battered the cities on the southern coast of Bangladesh and the eastern coast of India last year. One of the provinces in India that was most affected was Odisha. Now, as some of you would know, Odisha has historically battered cyclones and has also made rapid gains in reducing risk from this hazard for a number of reasons, including the development of cyclone shelters that have had a major impact on saving lives. However, when Amphan struck last year, one in every four cyclone shelters in Odisha was being used as a COVID-19 isolation center and a third of the state's government divisions were in COVID-19 duty, stretching the state's risk management resources very thin and leading to a much higher disruption from the cyclone than would have ensued if this was the only exigency that the government was battling. But we saw similar things the world over. I'm sure you all remember the catastrophic ammonium nitrate explosion that rocked Beirut last year. It went viral on social media. The day after this event, Beirut recorded the single highest number of COVID-19 cases up to that point. Globally, 92 extreme events have impacted 52 million people who are also concurrently battling COVID-19. And let's not forget that 90% of all mortality and mobility from COVID-19 is happening in cities. The third way in which risk is changing is that it is becoming increasingly interconnected and transboundary. This is just a complicated way of saying that due to social and economic systems coming closer together, a disturbance in one part of the globe is leading to disasters is in another. There are two great examples of this from a few years ago where cyclone knocked and battered Thailand and apart from the direct impacts in Thailand, it crippled the automobile supply chains in 11 countries around the world with downstream impacts on local economies and livelihoods because the part of Thailand that the cyclone impacted was the car producing hub of the country. In another event, in Arizona, in one city in Arizona, there was an extreme heat event which led to a surge in the demand for electricity. This led to a high tension wire tripping in that one city. This then resulted in cascading grid failures all over North America and Mexico and disrupted all kinds of vital urban systems such as water supply and sewage management. There's already an emerging understanding of how COVID-19 has disrupted pharma and textile supply chains across the world, but the true impact of this will only become evident in the coming months. The final impact of this shifts and risks is that we are seeing that we are seeing existing systems are being rendered redundant. We've all heard the usual stories of health systems crippling under COVID-19 and being from Delhi, I can tell you what's happening now in our cities is also disastrous, but more fundamental weaknesses in risk management, architectures of countries and cities only now coming to light. For instance, I recently read a really interesting commentary on how India's Disaster Management Act that was launched in much fanfare in 2005 as a response to the tsunami fails to adequately classify what a disaster is. And therefore the agencies that were best equipped to respond to COVID-19 in the country were not mandated to lead the charge against this pandemic. So these are the ways in which I feel risk in cities is shifting. Now, given that we're speaking at the United States Institute of Peace, I would like to say a few words about how all this links with issues of security. I want to say also that I have not looked at the link between climate risk in cities and security directly. So these are some broad thoughts to spark some discussion in the Q&A session. I believe there are three main vectors through which this issue of climate change and security interacts. First, these issues are related through a biophysical vector. This is seen most clearly through the mounting evidence that certain changes in the climate such as an increase in heat contributes to spikes in public violence, domestic abuse, and crime. Let me give you two or three interesting examples of this. A study recently found that in South Africa, for every degree that the temperature goes up, there is a 1.5% increase in the number of murders. In Greece, one study found that more than 30% of the 137 homicides reported in a particular region of the country occurred in days with an average temperature of more than 25 degrees Celsius. In the UK, between April 2010 and 2018, there was a 14% more violent crime at a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius than there was at a temperature of 10 degrees Celsius. Across South Asia, incidences of extreme heat are rapidly rising and in countries like India, most cities with a population of more than a million have recorded rising daytime and nighttime temperatures. This portends rising fragility and insecurity. The second vector in my view is resource scarcity. Climate-induced scarcity in critical resources, such as food and water, will contribute to growth in violent disturbances. For instance, climate change is going to have a negative impact on water availability around the world. A study found that recorded incidents of water-related violence have more than doubled in the past 10 years compared with the previous decades. In 2019, Chennai and India faced crippling water shortages and at the same time, there was a statistical spike in disputes and violent clashes. Also, climate change is set to exacerbate food insecurity. For example, by some estimates, climate change will lead to reductions of up to 15% in the years of important food crops like mares over the next three decades. Also, there is incontrovertible evidence that food price volatility and food shortages have been found to trigger incidents of conflict and socio-political unrest. All countries that are at high risk of facing famine according to the food and agricultural organization are also experiencing violent conflict. Of course, this relationship between food security, climate change, and violence is much more complex and dynamic, but there is a strong relationship here that needs to be scrutinized further. The third vector is displacement. And again, in India, there is increasing evidence of growing displacement due to climate change, but I don't want to say much more of this because evidence is currently very limited. And of course, there is increasing evidence that displacement leads to spikes in violence, but this is a highly understudied area. And I think there are others on the panel like Herrera who are probably better equipped to talk about this, so I'm gonna stop there. But I didn't want to just end my talk on a depressing note. I want to end on a slightly more positive note by outlining what we can do to deal with this dynamic climate risk in the country that has an impact on safety, security, violence. In a recent paper, we identified five areas of action that are important for dealing with the kinds of risks that we've been talking about. I'm not going to go into detail, but I mentioned these five risks in about 30 seconds each as I can feel Jumayana staring at me to finish up quickly. So I'm gonna go through these quickly. The first is that we need to recognize that there is a high degree of informality in the riskiest cities across the global south. As a rule of thumb, roughly 30% of everyone who lives in a city lives in an informal settlement. So we cannot build resilient cities by focusing on only formal policies and formal planning processes. We need to partner with the informal sector. And we've seen some really interesting examples of this during COVID-19 in places like Dharavi and Bombay, which is the largest slum in Asia and the most densely packed settlement on earth. Second, we need to build the capacity of those running critical urban systems, water, electricity, transport, energy to manage these systems under uncertainty by training them in management processes such as adaptive management. You can see the rise and fall in the opening and closing of public transport systems around the world during COVID-19 is reflective of an adaptive management mode of being. But now while that was reactive, what we're arguing for train the people in these cities running critical urban systems in these ways of managing systems to deal with emergent problems. Third, the fact that risks are shifting and we're going to be facing new kinds of risks, new kinds of hazards in different combinations means that cities need to have the ability to innovate. Now, I'm not arguing for a model of innovation that is expert led and top down. What I'm arguing for is a bottom up through the model of innovation that is based on the South Asian concept of Jugaard, which is working with few resources, iterating and experimenting quickly to see what works and scaling up those innovations. And again, I've written a whole paper on how Jugaard can be useful for other resilience and I'm happy to go into a whole range of examples of this in the question and answer session. The fourth strategy that I want to emphasize is that we need new ways of collecting and analyzing data. No longer can we rely on top down scientific methods that are slow, expensive and need a high amount of expertise. We need bottom up ways of generating and analyzing data which could include big data that is showing more and more usefulness when it comes to understanding risk. We've seen that during COVID-19 where ossified government departments that are slow to uptake any innovation have suddenly jumped onto the big data bandwagon through applications like contact tracing. But I'm also talking about distributed models of understanding and collecting and understanding data where slum dwellers might survey themselves these initiatives have been led by institutions like slum dwellers international across 10 countries over many decades. And it has shown promise. This is a way through which invisible populations in a city can be seen and heard. The fifth strategy that we need is we need more endogenous finance for building resilience. Anyone who's at the misfortune of engaging with an international climate fund to access financing knows that it can take upwards of five years from the time you start thinking of a concept to the time the first dollar hits your account. And many cities do not have the capacity to access this finance. So we need to build the capacity in cities to raise finances themselves. Lots of examples here. Why can't we have a green municipal bond where the proceeds are invested in building resilience just like Cape Town did a few years ago? In India, there is no legal or legislative hurdle for cities issuing resilience bonds but there is no capacity to do this. We need to build that capacity. I'll stop there and I'll hand back to Jimena with an apology for going over my time limit by a couple of minutes. Thank you so much, Aditya. You've given us all a lot of ideas and the food for thought. And I myself, through our programming at USIP, especially our big fans of Jigar are finding innovative ways to solve local problems. Sara, over to you to talk about the situation in Pakistan. Thanks, Jimena. And thank you to everybody and thanks for calling me. I've learned so much from Herrera and Aditya and also they've said pretty much everything I had to say. I think my favorite part of this talk though has been that you've brought together people from a part of the world that experiences climate impacts similarly. Bangladesh, India and Pakistan by virtue of our topography are positioning in the global south, very large populations are vulnerable to climate impacts in by and large the same way. But that said, Pakistan is a very, very, what should I say, is at high risk of climate impacts. And in 2020, we were the fifth most impacted by climate change by the German watch. That's the, they sort of provide a list of countries that are most impacted by climate change. In 2020, we were on the fifth number in the long-term impacts. In 2021, on the long-term index, we are on the eighth number. I don't think this has anything to do with our policies per se, but it's just how the global, the shifts in atmospheric patterns and its impacts on climate change. But that said, 49, almost 49% of Pakistan's population is living in about nine urban cities in the country. And Lahore itself has a population of over 10 million. Karachi is a nearing 20 million. Faisalabad, Multan, we are all very heavily populated cities. Now, how climate change impacts cities is contingent upon a number of factors, most of which have already been discussed, but it's important to mention here that how a city gets impacted by climate change, I would personally say is by and large, influenced by its geographic location. So how close it is to, let's say, melting glaciers or to the sea, whether it borders the coast, whether it's on the coast, whether it's next to a big river, I think that's a very important factor that needs to be considered. Secondly, of course, the financial health of that city, then the socioeconomic sort of socioeconomic standing of that city, then how prone it is to high temperatures or to heat extreme and then to extreme weather events. And then the adaptive capacity of stakeholders and institutions to address climate challenges in that city, I think that just can't be stressed enough. And Aditya, I think, has given a very sort of holistic picture of how things should be managed. So what I can do is I can talk for the benefit of our viewers, I can talk a little about how climate change is actually impacting cities in Pakistan, like what we're seeing. And the first city that comes to mind really is Karachi. Karachi is very highly populated. It's in the south of the country and is a coastal city. Almost every year, Karachi experiences erratic weather patterns. And so it experiences extremely heavy monsoons most years. Unfortunately, the city hasn't really done anything to prepare for it. And that is, I think, the golden question, which is that cities that are already experiencing climate impacts, why are they not now planning for future more heightened climate impacts? In 2015, Karachi saw a heat wave. That heat wave lasted for about over a week, but with temperatures rising to almost 48 to 50 degrees Celsius, we lost 1,200 people. These were lives we could have saved. There was a national emergency declared in hospitals in Karachi, but it's not as if the weather department didn't know that this heat wave was coming. They knew it was going to come, but they just didn't prepare in advance. And these are not impossible tasks. If you know that Karachi is going to experience a heat wave, then there should be an early warning system. People should know about it. Your government should stock up on things, very simple things like rehydration salts. Like they should be access to cold water that should be available. People should be told to stay indoors. Hospitals should be told to stock up. Little, little things that you can do in advance. For example, now Karachi is experiencing extremely hot weather these days also. And this time the meteorological department has said that Karachi should prepare for a heat wave, but we haven't seen any evidence of how Karachi is preparing for that heat wave. People are just complaining about it being very hot, but nothing's really been done about it. Then in 2020, bright in the heart of the pandemic, we saw Karachi flood, not just Karachi Synth, which is our southern province, Pakistan's southern province flood. It just come to a complete standstill because it rained consecutively for five days. During this time, our infrastructure couldn't support this kind of rain. Roads got blocked, a couple of bridges collapsed. There was no electricity for 48 hours in Karachi. There was no internet, no cellular services. There was no way to get to hospitals. Roads were flooded, our sewerage systems collapsed. The dirty sewerage water ended up penetrating water tanks in houses, diarrheal infections rose. And so these are all climate impacts that you have, these are all very tangible climate impacts. But what's, and so, and because these have happened in Karachi, the next question should be, and the issue and the area of concern should be, how is Karachi going to adapt to them? But, and that is where I feel what Aditya said is very important and also where, if there is any disparity between local governments and provincial governments and federal governments, that should be set aside and the well-being of the citizens should be prioritized. I feel, unfortunately, that with Pakistan our post-constitutional, 18th constitutional amendment, the environment has been delegated to the provinces, whereas climate change remains a federal subject. So what happens is there remains a continuous tussle between the provinces and the federal government on who's going to be responsible for what's happening. And that's something that, you know, countries should bypass altogether. They should just be aiming to start developing infrastructure that can deal with climate impacts. Then we've seen, again, monsoons have become a big issue in Lahore also, but what the government has done here very smartly is that they've made large underground water collecting reservoirs. So they're sort of like sewage tanks, which are spanning across like a couple of hundred meters and they really helped Lahore in 2020 when the monsoons came. There's something like this should be emulated across the bigger cities of Pakistan and I think the government is planning to do it. Then in Multan, our city of saints and shrines and also our city of famous mangoes, people, climate change has caused mango growth to get hampered. And so a lot of people have lost their livelihood because of it. And then Pakistan's exports are suffering. Again, the government can do something about it. They can ensure that there is more water availability in parts of Multan, let's say where mangoes are grown or they can start investing in seeds and research to grow mangoes that can survive high temperatures or erratic weather patterns. That all said, I think what Horeira mentioned in the beginning of this talk was that climate change induced migration has become a real cause of concern in Pakistan also. We call it climate change induced migration, although yes, the backbone to it is definitely economic. So Karachi, for example, and I worked on a study myself where we saw that from rural districts of Sindh, which is the province in which Karachi is located, there is mass migration towards Karachi. And an already overpopulated city really cannot take more migrants at this point. The slums are also, the slums in Karachi are also collapsing under the weight of the kind of climate migrants that have arrived there in recent years. And again, it's climate change induced migration is something that can be controlled by the governments in the sense that they can help people diversify their livelihood. So if people are migrating due to agricultural, due to the fact that there is no agricultural growth in their regions or their saline water has penetrated the water table, then the government can do something about it. It can help people diversify their livelihood and have different sources of income generation. So they don't need to migrate to bigger cities unless absolutely necessary. And if people have to migrate to urban cities, urban sprawl is something that can accommodate climate change, that can adapt to climate change. So when you are planning your cities, when you're planning different, because you see Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, these are all cities that are growing rapidly. And this is not something the government isn't aware of. When they are expanding infrastructure, they should be doing it in a way that it can combat climate impacts. When they are developing housing societies, these housing societies should be able to withstand climate impacts or excessive rainfall or excessive heat. So these are things that are very manageable if you ask me. What it does require though, is it requires dedication on the part of governments and extreme and a lot of awareness amongst the population at large. Pakistan's government has, I've seen the two minute mark, Pakistan's government has, and I really must compliment them here, that the government itself, by and large, is actually very conscious and cognizant of climate impacts on the country. And so one of the biggest things that they've done is they've started a mass tree plantation drive. Now tree, and it's called the 10 billion tree tsunami. Tree plantation in urban areas is definitely going to help. It's going to help reduce temperatures, it's going to help bring down, it's going to create more humidity in the atmosphere, it's going to help animals, it's going to help vegetation and ecosystems generally. But I think all of us can agree that governments need to really actually invest in mitigation measures at this point. And so we've got electric vehicle policies that have come up, we're trying to shift away from coal to solar, to hydro electricity generation. And I can say, I'm sure that India and Bangladesh are also doing the same and Pakistan isn't a very large contributor of global greenhouse gas emissions. We contribute less than 0.8% at this point. But even then, I think all countries really must accept their role and do their best. And yeah, and that's what I'll say. And so a lot of people end up saying that for the agricultural world, like Pakistan, Bangladesh, India efforts should be more adaptation based. They really, they should be a very solid balance between adaptation and mitigation that the governments should be undertaking. No, thank you. Thank you so much, Sarah. And all of our panelists for your wonderful presentations, it's giving me a lot of thought about how USIP, who is now launching a program on environment and conflict, how we can shape our efforts and our thought leadership around these issues. So thank you again for these ideas. A couple of questions, I'll take the moderator's prerogative to ask you a few questions. All of you have highlighted water scarcity. Is there a role for regional cooperation on this? There are bilateral treaties and like the Indus Water Treaty. There is conversations between India and Bangladesh on water. We are seeing dams being built infrastructure, which that infrastructure itself causes negative environmental impacts, the actual construction of that infrastructure. But do you think that there is room for more cooperation, especially given the Leader Summit on Climate Change last week, that all three countries were represented and all three countries agreed to do more and have high hopes for the climate financing and Bangladesh, the Prime Minister Bangladesh said that there should be a 50-50 split on the $100 billion a year to look at adaptation and mitigation. And then India has also endeavored to move towards green, the green economy, green financing, etc. So is there a way for the countries to come together to speak with one voice? Because all of them are going to have, as you've already pointed out, have the same impacts of climate change and faster than most other parts of the world. So I opened it up, you know, Ditya and Sara, who are whoever would like to jump in first. Well, I can't start saying that we are in the downstream, so whatever happens in the upstream are impacting us definitely. Yes, I do feel there are a lot of, it's actually the focus should be on having a regional cooperation and regional strategy, because whatever we are experiencing in Bangladesh is definitely related to what is happening in the upstream, in India. And we were, the other day we were discussing, the same water issue is very much, has a very different face of risk in Nepal, where we have a different opposite face in Bangladesh. So I think water scarcity is something where this cross-border across this region, some kind of cooperation, some kind of strategy, working together will be essential. And I think our Prime Minister, our Prime Minister was focusing when she was emphasizing on having like a collaboration or co-national work area. This is what probably one of the things that we should be talking about, that it's not only an issue that is ours. If we say that we are not the polluter, we are not the contributor, but we are in the receiving and in the same way, it's not only us, we can do something if we are thinking about adaptation or even medication. I think definitely for water scarcity, because how we are connected, that should be our key concern to think about. I will let others to come and tell me. If I can jump in very quickly, I think Ureta is certainly much more optimistic about this than I am. I used to, I helped run a big UK government funded adaptation project across Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh. And one of the things that was specifically in my list of responsibilities was trying to engender some kind of regional cooperation. And we found it extremely difficult. I think it's possible for India, Nepal to do stuff together. There are interesting experiments happening on cross-border flood management. I think to a certain extent with a hazard, a guess and say that it's possible for India and Bangladesh to cooperate in some limited capacity. I think it's virtually impossible to expect regional cooperation between India and Pakistan, given the complexity of our relationship, much as I would like that. And much as it makes sense because we share the same river basin, one of the major river basins. I don't know if Sara is more optimistic than I am. I also think it's pretty difficult for Bangladesh and Pakistan to cooperate with each other on this issue, given again the complexities in their relationship. However, I think I'm talking about a track one relationship, right? I think a track two, track three relationship is certainly possible and could create a lot of impact. I think there is room for exchange of climate scientists from these countries to share experiences and knowledge and ways of working. There's a case for joined up approach to the media raising issues of climate change. And even in fact, we did that. We brought people in civil society together in a third country from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and all these places to talk about climate change issues. And I think that led to a spike in coverage in those sorts of issues. So I think a track two, track three cooperation is possible, but I wish the best of luck to anyone who attempts to track one engagement on climate issues. Sarah, I don't know if you agree with me. I was actually, I tried to avoid commenting on it. Yeah, I think I agree with you. I wish I didn't, but I can say for Pakistan that our prime minister is very keen to bring climate change to the forefront and to sort of engage in discourse on it. And I don't just say it as a Pakistani, I say it because this is one of his good, what should I say, one of the good things he's doing. And so I do feel like if all three governments were willing to sit across the table and discuss this, and I'm not talking about the water issues in the region, but no, I'm just talking about climate change generally. I think something could be done. What should be stressed on is that I think civil society members and all three countries are very keen to engage with each other and to discuss it and to raise awareness and to work in collaboration with each other. I know Pakistanis are always talking to smog hits Delhi and Lahore with equal intensity. I am in myself in so many WhatsApp groups where people from India and Pakistan are always talking about how we can manage smog. And I think even if at a governmental level, we can't get people, we can't get them to prioritize peace or the well-being of the citizens over everything else. We can, as a civil society, really make an impact. That's not something that we should put under the rug at this point. Thank you. So I have a few questions that have come in from our audience. And a couple of these are on these similar lines of cross-border issues. First question. Anticipating significant cross-border climate migration amongst these countries, what might be challenges or impacts in cooperation and how to manage especially the cross-border migrant-driven conflict? If anyone wants to tackle that, I know Bangladesh is not dealing with climate migrants, but there is influxes of migration across the region. So if anyone wanted to address this particular issue. Okay, I'll just go first. This is a great question, but we don't have migrants coming in from Bangladesh or India into Pakistan's climate or otherwise. It's just not possible. We have, of course, a lot of migrants and refugees coming in from Afghanistan and other parts of the world. Climate migration, I think for our part of the world, is by and large actually very domestic. So people from the north of Pakistan shifting to the south, people from rural areas shifting to urban centres. It's very real and equally potent in the kind of impacts it has, but it's not cross-border, not for Pakistan. I think I agree with that. I think this whole Boogeyman of cross-border migration is massively inflated for political reasons in all countries. And I think in our country too, there's a lot of distressed migration from rural to urban areas. And I think, I mean, there are lots of things you could do, right? But I think one of the most potent weapons is social protection. And I think it needs to be discussed to a much greater degree than it is currently. Making sure that social protection mechanisms like India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme or Pakistan's Venezia income support program, targets, vulnerability, better or people who are exposed to climate change better can help manage this migration to a greater extent. And also provide opportunities in urban areas. But I also feel a bit uncomfortable with this discourse because we suddenly start talking about migrants have a problem coming to the city as well as the fact that our cities engines of economic growth and centres of innovation is precisely because we have this fast movement of goods and people. So I think while we are talking about managing migration and controlling migration, I think we need to talk about urban development and making our cities much more able to receive migrants and give them a decent standard of living and a place to live while we also talk about migration as a problem. And there are good models of how to receive, make sure that receiving areas are able to accommodate migrants in a civilized fashion from around the world that need to be replicated and scaled up. I want to agree with Adito on this thing that when we think of migration and think it as a sort of a problem that migrant people needs to be separated, they are a problem for the place where they are coming. Rather look at this issue as a more of how to deal with this, like start preparing what I think I'm not very involved with the migration, Rohingya migration in Bangladesh, but as a sort of an outsider, what my understanding is, what it exposes is how prepared we are to receive migrants and how that can impact on the infrastructure that we are developing or we have, especially if we take the case of there will be a large amount of people number, people who will be eventually migrating to the city for livelihood for any other reasons. The key concern to think about is how prepared we are in terms of, of course, the social safety net or the safety net we talk about, but also how think about the infrastructure. If we, Sara was saying that it's about keeping that mindset that we need to prepare. We need to prepare for a gradually changing condition. Maybe the extremes can make us think, start thinking about it, but we have to gradually become prepared to better manage risk. Risk is not something that you cannot eliminate. You can better manage. You may not be able to eliminate all the hazard things, but you can better manage if you are prepared. I think one of the things that if you're thinking about migration and I will go back to Aditha's presentation we're saying that when we talk about migration, climate migrant and we talk about this many, one-fifth of this country or this amount of country will be going underwater, one-third of the population will be moving. But if we assume that yes in the extreme condition, we can have a scenario like this, but the question would be how much evidence we have to predict how to prepare for the risk. I think one of the weakest link we have is that we are making assumptions which needs a very strong evidence base. Sometimes we don't have that evidence to think about the future, think about the planning. I think migration can be around that because when we talk about migration in Bangladesh I was having a discussion with my students and they were saying, what is this? Is it an economic migration? Because people for generation migrated to the urban area for better living condition, better lifestyle. Or it's an environmental migration where people have lost all their livelihood and have no option to move to urban centers. Still, if you ask me how many people migrate in Dhaka city, there's one assumption that 400 to 500,000. But there's no evidence. We cannot say how many people will be thinking about migrating to different areas and thinking about across the border is something that I think we need a lot of understanding, discussion of the dynamics, why people will need to migrate or should be migrated. Thank you. An interesting question has come through the website. And I will pass it on to all of you to think about and comment on. How do urban areas affected by climate change would strive social fissures, become a recruitment ground for violent extremist groups to perpetuate interboundary conflict in the region or internal conflict? I think this is an interesting question. I'm not sure how to, if there's evidence out there, but I'm near to the experts. So I turn to you, our panel to comment. If you see that there's potential links or if this is an understudied issue worth looking at, where are those conflict drivers? Are violent extremist groups the ones that are going to manipulate the situation or are there other drivers of conflict that you think might be lynchpins? Adithya, to you. I see your attention. I think, yeah, I think you might need to pick on us. So one of us wakes up and answers the question quickly. Yes, instead of the silence. So I think, yeah, I'm yet to see convincing evidence of this, but I think there are three, as I said, in my talk, I think there are three, I see three direct ways in which this is linked. One is through the link between changes in climate variables, like an increase in heat eating to greater violence. Resource scarcity, which I think really is the story that is going to lead, that needs more attention, how shortages in water and food scarcity in urban areas is going to lead to more unrest. And I think third is this whole issue about displacement that could contribute to violence. Now, I think that's when it comes to urban areas. In non-urban areas, perhaps there is a link, right? Of course, I mean, we know that there's a link between increasing resource scarcity and groups capitalizing on scarce resources and that leading to tensions like it has in different parts of the world. Or natural resources and ecosystem services being strained in areas that already have conflict. For instance, maybe in India areas with Maoist militia. And that exacerbates and adds another stress to an already incendiary situation. But I'm yet to see any convincing evidence that militia are capitalizing on the situation and that I feel that's yet to happen. Well, that's a bit of a wishy-washy answer. But I think that's kind of where the state of knowledge is. And that's why I applaud the USIP for focusing on this issue that I think needs more attention. That's my quick save here. Yeah, thank you. Rere? I think I will agree with Aditya on this because we really don't have any convincing evidence yet. And if you think about, it's a very general understanding that if you think about extremist group taking advantage, there are so many dynamics working a person or a group to make vulnerable. Climate change can be one of them, but I don't think we can firmly say now that it will be one of those main contributor of the state. Because if you think about extremism, it breeds in the ground where there are scarcity, there are difficulties, understanding between the people and the government and the governments, governance and accountability, everything. So it's not something that climate change can be sort of pinpointed as a sort of, this is the thing that can extreme. Because extremism can happen for many different reasons. If that is about a lack of access to resources, about accountability or transparency in the government, I think climate change can create or sort of exacerbate the condition, but I don't believe it can be one. I will be looking for more convincing evidences to agree that or disagree that it does not happen. I think we are still lacking there and definitely need to think about it in future. I'm going to disagree with Herrera there at some part. So there are some studies that have been conducted that suggest that the Syrian war, the Syrian civil war started because of droughts in the outer regions of the country that caused mass migration and then civil strife. But I think again, the backbone of that is resource availability or resource scarcity. So maybe perhaps it would be visor to say that it is resource availability or scarcity that is actually going to trigger extremism and then which is exacerbated by climate change and rising temperatures and global warming. And I absolutely wholeheartedly agree that we don't have enough information in Pakistan and I think I believe in India and Bangladesh also to corroborate a statement that says that climate change is fueling extremism in the country. But I think it would be fair to say that wherever there is resource scarcity and wherever there is civil strife, climate change will exacerbate it or heat will exacerbate it or even monosomes will exacerbate it. I do feel that very strongly. Thank you and I have one more question and then we can wrap up to all of you. What, all of our countries have made tremendous strides in addressing issues of climate change. What is the one gap you wish that your countries, your respective countries would do that they aren't doing already to address the risks of climate change, mitigation, adaptation, I leave it to you to pick your particular bucket of issues. We can start with Hurrah. I will borrow from Alito's thing which I forgot to mention and thank you for that, Alito mentioned it. In Bangladesh, if you think about urbanization, one of the key concerns that we don't talk about is the informality. In urban areas, we were talking the other day about the livelihood. In urban areas, 85% livelihood are in informal sector. 40% of the people live in informal settlement. We don't have people's right when we talk about right to the city. Most of the people living in urban areas do not have right to even vote in some cases to have access to services. So if you ask me to think about climate change and the government needs to think about is how to address the informality in urban areas because I think if we have this attitude to think that the people who are living in informal settlement do not belong to the city, yet they are contributing to the city's GDP, that's where we will miss them and we will leave them vulnerable and eventually that will cut up into the system if we are thinking about scarcity of resource as a sort of a main contributor or a sort of a risk factor of climate change. I think where we are still lacking is addressing the informality in urban areas. We are talking about rural poor, but we hardly talk about urban poor in terms of the climate change adaptation policies. I think that's one where I think I really want the government to think about. Thank you. Sara, Lydia. So thanks, Lydia. So I think I would like Pakistan to focus more on collecting grass root level data. I work in the area and I myself have relied very heavily on information from Bangladesh or India or even some African countries to sort of suggest what potential impacts Pakistan could experience. And I think that my government is doing a lot to combat climate change and I think they're doing the best that they can, but what they're doing is that they're bypassing the very grass root level requirements, which is collecting data on the ground and also raising awareness. Raising awareness is something most governments tend to overlook because they feel like it doesn't have the kind of tangible effect that they want in the next elections, but it's very important. It is especially for an issue like climate change in countries that have low literacy rates, there should be massive awareness drives. Thank you. And last but not least, I'll give you the last word on this. I fully agree with Vrera and sort of the prescriptions that they provided. Recently I was asked by India's principal opposition party to give them suggestions on what they could include on tackling climate change in their election manifesto. And I gave them on my wish list for things that would totally have no interest to them because they were totally unsexy and not jazzy with no razzmatazz. And I think if someone has put a gun to my head and said, tell me one thing, it would be about building the capacity of urban local governments across the country to understand what climate risk is and how to integrate that in their plans and projects. So a big capacity building drive across the country for people working in municipal corporations, municipal councils. As I said, not the jazziest, almost exciting initiative, but I think one that is going to deliver the most gains over time. And we've certainly seen shifts in capacity on particular issues in India, right? Just when people think, oh, this is too difficult, or the whole move towards e-governance in our country has been a result of sustained capacity building over a decade that is going to deliver big gains, is already starting to deliver big gains for governance, but is going to continue to deliver benefits going forward. So I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you so much. I hope that representatives from your respective governments are listening. You guys are the, and I'm so glad you all were able to join us because I truly believe that you are the next generation of experts that will have an impact and are the ones on the ground making a difference. So thank you very much for your time, especially in your evenings. And thank you to our audience for tuning in. And please do keep an eye out on USIP's website for future events and publications on the issues of climate change, environment and conflict, not just in South Asia, but around the world. Thank you so much, everybody.