Pakistan, a victim of devastating floods this summer and which represents only 0.8 % of global CO2 emissions, considers being unjustly struck by the climatic effects caused by the industrialization of large countries.
Le Monde with AFP
Pakistan wanted to convey a strong message on the climate, Friday, September 23, at the gallery of the United Nations General Assembly (UN) in New York. Victim of spectacular and dramatic floods during the summer, the country of South Asia denounced the effects on its soil of climatic disruption, and launched a desperate call to save the threatened planet.
When UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres went on September 10 in a Pakistan under waters, he exclaimed that he had “never seen a climatic carnage of this magnitude”. Friday, the Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif abounded in his sense: “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 dark prediction to it. He warned the international community that this climatic “calamity” due to rains of “monstrous monsoon” 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,” said Sharif, his voice sometimes taken by anger and his face closed.
According to the leader “the very definition of national security has changed today and unless world leaders unite and now act on a minimum program, there will be no more land To carry out wars there “.
“Nature will contraindicate and for that humanity is not in size,” warned the 71-year-old leader, in power in Islamabad since April.
nearly 1,600 dead
caused by torrential monsoon rains, increased by global warming according to experts, the floods had covered a third of Pakistan – the area of the United Kingdom – and caused the death of nearly 1,600 people for 1,600 people since June, according to the latest assessment.
Habitations, shops, roads, bridges and agricultural harvests were destroyed. Islamabad estimated its financial losses at $ 30 billion (around 31 billion euros) and its finance minister Miftah Ismail announced on Friday on Twitter that he would ask for a reduction in his debt from bilateral creditors. >
In this country wedged between Afghanistan, Iran, India and China, more than seven million people have been moved, who were living in makeshift camps without protection against mosquitoes and where the drinking water and sanitary facilities.
On the spot in early September, Mr. Guterres had urged the great polluters of the planet to “stop this madness” consisting in investing in fossil fuels. The Hollywood star Angelina Jolie, who also went to Pakistan this week as an emissary of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said he had “never seen anything like it” and that This had to serve as a warning to the rest of the world.
injustice
But for Islamabad, the effects of the climate are particularly unfair for a country poor in development of 220 million inhabitants and barely 350 billion annual GDP (in 2021 according to the World Bank).
“Why my people pays the price of such global warming” while Pakistan represents 0.8 % of the world emissions of Co 2 , questioned the Prime Minister. He was carried away against a “nature [who] unleashed his fury against Pakistan without even looking at our carbon footprint”.
“Pakistan and the Pakistani have not created this crisis, which they are [now] the victims” due to “the industrialization of larger countries”, added, before the press, to the UN Young Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.
“We do not do charity, we do not want weapons or aid. But justice for our people and for other countries struck by the [Dragment of the] climate”, launched this son of the ex- Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto killed in 2007 and former president Asif Ali Zardari.
In the hall of the United Nations Palace in New York, photos and maps of Pakistan under the waters are exhibited. One is struck by this assertion: “Today, it’s Pakistan. Tomorrow, it can be any other country !!!!”