 Oh, this is Hamzara for the sand. You're watching Islamabad today for Think Tech Hawaii. Today's topic is climate change in South Asia. And when we talk about South Asia, it's an extremely strategically important region. It has, it is a region which is extremely dynamic. There's a lot of poverty. There's a lot of socioeconomic challenges. And amid all of this climate change also presents a significant amount of challenges to try and overcome, to try and make sure that South Asia and its future generations can actually be taken into consideration as far as sustainability is concerned. I am joined by, and I'm lucky enough to have with me, Ms. Aisha Khan. She's the executive director of the Civil Society Coalition for Climate Change. And she's also the chief executive officer of Mountain and Glacier organization. Ms. Aisha Khan, thank you so much for joining me on the show. Pleasure to be with you. Well, Ms. Aisha Khan, let's start off with climate change in South Asia. How significant of it is that, you know, when you talk about it as a challenge, when you talk about, there's this view that unless there's a concerted effort worldwide to cut greenhouse gas emissions, South Asia will suffer huge economic, social, and environmental damage from the consequences of climate change. I'm not gonna ask you whether there's any truth to it. There must be some truth to it. But how significant of a problem is climate change in this region? I think climate change is a significant problem globally. But when we narrow it down to this region, I think it is a huge challenge because South Asia is warming up more rapidly than the rest of the world. And within South Asia, Pakistan is warming up more rapidly. So we need to take a very holistic and integrated view because South Asia is a subcontinent and its geography and its typography is highly varied. So when you look at countries with high mountains, you also have countries with long coastlines. You have deserts, you have, you know, so much geography over here where temperature extremes can rise up to 50 degrees Celsius and they can be minus 50 degrees Celsius as well. So when you're looking at that region, you have a potential for conflict over here because as climate warms up, a lot of things are going to start happening. A lot of sectors are going to get affected. We have, of course, you know, the nexus between food, water, energy. We also have recurring disasters and we have a lot of people who rely on these ecological goods and services whose lives will get disrupted, whose livelihoods will get disturbed. And I think one example loud and clear is the recent floods in Pakistan. We've seen what that has done to the economy of the country, to the poverty levels which have gone further deep and the way it has altered the social and the economic dynamics. So if you take that to scale and you see these things happening in every country in South Asia, you're looking at a very, very dangerous situation. Yeah, well, absolutely. And it can actually become dire as well. So Miss Aisha, a warming trend of about, you know, 0.75 degrees Celsius has been observed in annual mean temperatures in South Asia over the past century. This trend is absolutely consistent. What do you think are the measures that South Asian economies can actually adopt to try and make sure that increase in temperatures can actually be averted? Countries can work at the country level as well. But I think when you're talking about climate change, just as we need a multilateral agreement and arrangements to arrive at mitigation and adaptation measures, I think the same applies to South Asia as the region because we are connected by air, we are connected by land, we are connected by water. We share a common ecology. So unless we start working together, it will be very difficult for any one country to address its problems. And I say that with water in mind. We all derive our water from the same source, the Himalaya-Hindukush-Karakura mountain ranges. This is also the third poll. So any hydrological imbalances and changes that take place in this region are not going to remain confined to this region. They'll have a rippling effect on the economy of South Asia and they will also disturb and disrupt the global planetary regime. So I think that the way forward lies in cooperation. Unfortunately, we do have dysfunctional relationship between countries in the region. We do have political tensions in the region and we need to bypass that. We need to somehow find a way to decouple politics from the other climate change related aspects where cooperation is possible and move towards geo-cooperation in the region and geo-economic incentives in the region which can provide livelihoods, which can provide opportunities for sharing information because what happens at the higher altitudes affects countries or regions downstream. So all these issues are interconnected and most of the economies are reliant on agriculture. We also share social similarities. We have the same issues with poverty, with a youth bulge, with gender not having enough representation and decision-making. So when you look at that, learning and cross-pollination of ideas and creating knowledge hubs where we can learn from each other because each country does have a way of addressing its challenges and constraints and convert all of that into an opportunity for the region. All right, so when you talk about resolving disputes and decoupling politics from climate change, obviously India and Pakistan, especially with the multi-led BJP government in New Delhi and the fact that even the Pakistani establishment along with the democratic government, they don't seem to be seeing eye to eye on many issues. So do you think climate change or collaboration on climate change would inevitably suffer? And that would lead to smaller countries like the Maldives and Sri Lanka suffering from possible inundation? I'm an optimist, so I'd like to think that climate change will probably push us towards cooperation and collaboration because each country stands to lose. The dividends of collaboration are many and the perils of not cooperating and disruptions and destabilization will be bad for every economy because one thing happening in one part will affect other regions. Let me just mention out migration, for example. When you have large numbers of people who are living in climate hotspots and there was a few years ago a report by the World Bank that says nearly 800 million people living in South Asia will be in climate hotspots. Essentially what that means is that survivability in these areas will become very difficult. So people will move out. That means disruption in livelihoods. That means displacement. That also means a burden on the host communities. So this will trigger societal strife and this will also trigger violent conflict due to resource scarcity. So I think that we need to have policies for how to deal with climate refugees within the country and out migration because we have on Eastern border India and we have Afghanistan where we are seeing extreme poverty. We've already hosted a lot of refugees due to political considerations earlier and now we're going to see a climate change or climate induced refugees coming in. So how much burden can one country absorb? I think if we look at it collectively and we understand that we have to look ourselves as one South Asia and we have to look at the absorptive capacity, the adaptive capacity and the transformative potential for South Asia we will be able to move forward because I personally am convinced that we need to take an intergenerational perspective that spans across political planning and financial systems. That is the only way forward. And I think leadership sooner or later will also come to realize that because I think green voting if that becomes a trend will also drive political parties to adopt manifestos that provide them with a resilient future. And anybody who looks long-term will understand that resilience is something for which you have to work together. You have to look at all the different factors that contribute to making a people, a society, a country resilient and you have to do that together. And I always come back to water because I feel that getting water from the same source is a common agenda for everyone. We have monsoon rains also, but over that we really don't have any control but being upper and lower riparian and every country in South Asia is either an upper or lower riparian stuff. So we have to take those factors into account and we have to see how do we promote hydrosolidarity? How do we work and move towards climate diplomacy? And how can we overcome the differences to forge a future that will be good for the people and that will bring shared prosperity to everyone? Because at the end of the day, this is a question of human security and then it becomes a question of national security. So if you don't address it on time and you see the storm coming and you wait for it to hit you, maybe it's too late. And that is what adaptation means. I think we usually think of adaptation in terms of building resilient infrastructure but I think adaptation also means reconciling with the emerging geopolitical realities and changing and shifting from past ways of doing things because business as usual is not an option anymore. So we have to adopt new strategies for engagement. Absolutely for engagement. But when you talk about preemptive strategies, obviously the role of legislation cannot be sidestepped either. I mean, what we've noticed in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka is the fact that even Bangladesh for that matter, there's very little talk about climate change. I mean, legislation, which is actually passed, it's more concerned about targeting your political opponents or trying to adopt cosmetic measures to try and tackle money laundering for that matter. Where is legislation in South Asia? Because without domestic legislation, you cannot really operationalize the strategies that you just mentioned. I think more than legislation, what we need here is national adaptation plans which is part of the nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement. And I wouldn't quite agree that the countries in South Asia are not paying ample political attention or social attention or media attention to climate change. I've been working in this sector for over 20 years and in the last seven, eight years, I have seen this subject shift from the periphery to center stage in all the countries of the world and also in South Asia. India is doing a lot of things to shift to renewable energy. Pakistan also has developed its NDC and submitted that and it's in the process of developing its adaptation plan. So that provides you with the roadmap and each country does have a climate change policy that provides you with the goals and targets and ambitions that you're setting for yourself for mitigation and for adaptation. So I think countries are doing what they can within their capacities and capabilities. What we lack mostly in South Asia is resources. We lack technology and we lack capacity. And I think that, you know, if we start working together we can work towards our energy security. We can work towards our water security. And if we work as a block as a region and we go into these international conferences also our voice will be heard. It will matter more as a block as one South Asia rather than as individual countries. But that Sark needs to, you know, take center stage or because we're talking about a regional solutions they have to be indigenous solutions. So when you talk about a regional block I mean, there would be many, you know scholars and experts and practitioners who would argue that that would be more of an idealistic sort of scenario. Would you agree to that? I think that, you know, under the present circumstances it may appear to be unrealistic to think of peace and stability and prosperity in the region. But we have to plot for a future trajectory. And I think within each country that's the role that civil society plays that it becomes an enabler. It starts demanding peace and security and prosperity. And it is possible. I think, you know, in Pakistan we have demonstrated that under the new national security plan that came up that we will focus on geo-economics. So I think political agendas change and we have to understand that the focus of electoral governments is also short-lived. It runs through its electoral cycle and a lot of what they do is to try and do things that will get them more traction from the voter. But I think long-term climate change should be made into like a compact which is across borders and generations because that's a common agenda that we need to follow as a global common good. And I think with enough disasters happening and with economies suffering, we will see perhaps, I'm quite hopeful that we will see a shift. There is, I think a desire, a desire for growth or development and that cannot happen when you have the region in constant turmoil. So I think that in itself perhaps will drive us towards peace over conflict. So we talk about the role of international institutions, for example, the United Nations for that matter. We talk about climate change bodies. Do you think that there's, you know, you could say disproportionate attention being played on climate change as far as the Western world is concerned. And you know, we talk about sub-Saharan Africa. We talk about South Asia. We talk about other impoverished regions who tend to be neglected. Do you think that is also a problem as far as ensuring that, you know, a trickle-down effect on the local population in these regions can actually materialize as far as climate change mitigation is concerned? I think that's an agenda also that has been moving faster than it did in the last 30 years from 1992 up to 2015, for example, there was very slow progress. There was no cooperation. There was no agreement. Now after the Paris Agreement, we have at least an agenda of solutions. So 196 countries agreed there that, yes, this is human cost and it needs solutions that need to be found through a common strategy. So the progress that we're making is still very slow because the global north responsible for the historic emissions hasn't taken the responsibility to mitigate at the speed that it needs to do. Perhaps it's waiting for more technology to come in and address the issue. And meanwhile, they're not too stressed out about it because they have the economies, they have the resources, they have the technology to address their problems. But countries like ours, developing economies, the small nation states, they are going to suffer. And that is why at these conference of parties that take place in the last few conference of parties or POPs as they are known, you must have noticed that the pitch of the demand for climate justice has gone up because people are suffering. And POP has gone to one of the few countries that has been championing this entire agenda. It has, it has. And I think that, you know, we are caught along with other countries into a recovery trap. We've hardly recovered from one disaster before another one hits us. And it needn't always be hydrometrological disasters. It can be a drought. It can be a failure of crops. It can be hotspots. It can be anything that disrupts livelihoods. So we are facing that. Every year from 2010 onwards, I think, we have suffered losses to the tune of 3.8 billion annually. So that is a huge amount. And in the last floods, about 9 million people were displaced and about 7.6 million are still facing severe problems of food security. The estimates that were made by the World Bank of Lost Damage Recovery stand at 30 billion. So we find that, you know, it's very difficult for us to cope with the challenges and the constraints. And under a pessimistic scenario, I think the likelihood of the GDP falling by 10 to 13% by 2050 has also been highlighted by the World Bank in one of its reports. And I think the poverty rate will also drop by 8.4%. So, or increased by 8.4%. Yeah, it would increase. Yeah, that's under a pessimistic scenario. But right now, everything looks very pessimistic to us because the disasters are happening. Our coping capabilities are not robust. And therefore, I think with every year, the disaster becomes exponential and our coping capacity also declines exponentially as a result of that. So I think that, you know, as a country, we are very concerned and I do see as civil society actor more concerned in policy circles about addressing the issue. It's true that because people always find the topics of politics and economics more interesting, the mainstream media primetime is talking more about political instability and the drama associated with political statements and they're not giving the space to climate change that it deserves. And I think that is something that needs to definitely change. All right, so when we talk about, you know, a few statistics as you rightly mentioned, without global action on climate change, temperatures may rise by 4.6 degrees Celsius. And we talk about the collective economy of six countries. We're talking Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. They could shrink up to 1.8% every year by 2050. And more alarmingly, it's going to be about 8.8% by 2100 on average. So what we're talking about at this point in time is you have economies which are already shrinking. We have Sri Lanka, which has just witnessed a bankruptcy crisis. We have Pakistan, which is on the verge of, you know, possible default, even though the government, you know, contradicts that India is doing quite well, but you know, there's rising income inequality. So South Asia can't really bear the brunt of, you know, such GDP contractions, can it? No, it cannot. And, you know, there is a counter argument to say that the existing gaps and the vulnerabilities are due to poor policy or weak institutional mechanisms. So while that may be true, and I do acknowledge because as civil society, we often flag those issues, but climate change is a threat multiplier. If we didn't have climate change, perhaps, you know, civilization has evolved. The West also went through the period that we are going through and it gradually evolved into the developed economies. So without climate change, perhaps in our own time in the next 10 or 15 years, we would have also stumbled and found our way forward. Excuse me. That's all right. But climate change doesn't afford us the luxury of time anymore. And that is why we say that this is disproportionate. It is unequal burden-sharing, and it is pulling us down. Sajjakan, finally, if you were to give five recommendations to South Asian economies, obviously, they do vary in terms of their economic growth. Your political system is also very significant. But you do have political instability. You have lots of factors which are very similar. So in light of this, what would your five recommendations be for the South Asian government as far as mitigating climate change? Would you want to? Yeah, I would just say that they should look at the long-term human security of the region, and they should look at the past and see how they need to change and adapt for the future. And I think trade, tourism, transit, these are clear-cut direct opportunities for us to engage, where we will suddenly start seeing more economic prosperity. Because at the end of the day, what you need to do is to provide economic resilience for the common man. His own bounce-back capacity. And that cannot be ensured if you have the data that you just shared with me about poverty, the spiraling poverty. So you need to frame vulnerability, I think, in ways where you are looking at what does it feel like, not just economic losses, but intergenerational losses. What does it feel like to rob someone of their human dignity, of condemning the future generations to a lifelong sentence of poverty, of depriving and taking away the hope of future generation of being able to realize their full human potential. So I think we should frame it that way and look at human security and shared prosperity. And it's just a question of how you frame and through which lens do you look at your future? So if you look at a future through collective and shared prosperity, I think many windows will open. Saisha, thank you so much for joining us on the show. Thank you. So that's all that we have for now. You can follow our show on social media and you can give us a feedback as well. That's it for me, Hunter Rafferthu Sen. You're watching Islamabad today on Think Tech Hawaii. Take care. Until next time. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Check out our website, thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.