Pakistan wanted to send a strong message on the climate, Friday, September 23, at the podium of the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) in New York. Victim of spectacular and dramatic floods during the summer, the South Asian country denounced the effects on its soil of climate change, and launched a desperate appeal to save the threatened planet.
When the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, visited a Pakistan under water on September 10, he cried out that he had “never seen climate carnage of this magnitude”. On Friday, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif agreed: “Pakistan has never seen such an absolute and devastating illustration of the impact of global warming. »
But the head of government, in a vibrant speech, added a grim prediction. He warned the international community that this “calamity” climatic due to rains of “monstrous monsoons” was only a prelude to what awaits the rest of the world. “One thing is very clear: what happened in Pakistan will not remain confined to Pakistan”launched Mr. Sharif, the voice sometimes taken by the anger and the closed face.
“The very definition of national security today has changed and unless world leaders unite and act now on a minimal agenda, there will be no Earth to fight wars on. Nature will counter-attack and for that humanity is no match for it. »
Nearly 1,600 dead
Caused by torrential monsoon rains, intensified by global warming, floods have covered a third of Pakistan – the size of the UK – and killed nearly 1,600 people since June, experts say , according to the latest report.
Homes, businesses, roads, bridges and agricultural crops were destroyed. Islamabad has assessed its financial losses at 30 billion dollars (about 31 billion euros) and its finance minister, Miftah Ismail, announced on Friday on Twitter that he would seek debt relief from bilateral creditors. In this country wedged between Afghanistan, Iran, India and China, more than seven million people have been displaced, many living in makeshift camps without protection against mosquitoes and lacking drinking water and the toilets.
On site in early September, Mr. Guterres had urged the world’s major polluters to “stop this madness” of further investing in fossil fuels. Hollywood star Angelina Jolie, who also visited Pakistan this week as an envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said she had no “never seen anything like it” and that this should serve as a warning to the rest of the world.
Injustice
But for Islamabad, the effects of the climate are particularly unfair for a poor developing country of 220 million inhabitants and barely 350 billion annual GDP (in 2021 according to the World Bank). “Why are my people paying the price for such global warming? »wondered the Prime Minister, while Pakistan represents 0.8% of global CO2 emissions2.
He got angry with a « nature [qui] unleashed its fury on Pakistan without even looking at our carbon footprint”. “Pakistan and the Pakistanis did not create this crisis that they are [maintenant] the victims “ Due to “the industrialization of larger countries”added, in front of the press, at the UN the young Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.
“We don’t do charity, we don’t want arms or help. But justice for our people and for other countries stricken by the [dérèglement du] climate “, launched this son of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, killed in 2007, and former President Asif Ali Zardari. In the lobby of the United Nations Palace in New York, photos and maps of Pakistan under water are on display. One is struck by this statement: “Today is Pakistan. Tomorrow it can be any other country!!!! »
Rich countries ‘talk but don’t act’
Similarly, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, denounced in an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP) on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the “tragedy” of the inaction of the rich countries: “They don’t act. They talk but they don’t act. » In the face of unfulfilled climate promises, these countries are responsible for the damage, according to her, “but do nothing”.
A country of deltas, Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, on the front line in particular in the face of rising sea levels and increasing flooding. But like much of the developing world, it is not responsible for global warming, which has risen nearly 1.2°C on average since pre-industrial times.
Faced with growing threats, governments in the South regularly denounce the empty promises of developed countries, in particular the broken commitment to increase their aid to 100 billion dollars a year in 2020 so that the poorest countries can reduce their emissions and prepare for impact.
But the hot topic two months before the COP27 climate conference in Egypt concerns the “loss and damage” already suffered and the claim for a fund to compensate for them. “We applied for this fund. (…) But unfortunately we don’t have a positive response from developed countries.”regretted the Prime Minister, adding that a « dialogue » on the subject would be held until 2024.