Climate change: a threat missing in NISP

 Climate change: a threat missing in NISP

 By: Sohail Ahmed Memon

Climate change is the biggest threat to life on our planet. Wildfires in the Amazon forests, the Bushfires in the Australia and the fatal torrential rains in Pakistan are all signs of climate change. Sadly, Pakistan does not give proper ear to the threats posed by climate change. Evidently, Pakistani policy makers do not think of it as a threat to internal security which shows why it is missing from the National Internal security Policy (NISP) 2018.

"Notwithstanding the ambit of NISP has been widened to include cyber terrorism, the absence of the climate change is far-reaching. Therefore, another R should be added to “Revisit the NISP” be added in a report as Climate change is the biggest threat to internal security of Pakistan."

"The citizens of Pakistan are our Priority", written under the picture of the, then Premier Shahid Khaqan Abbasi in the National Internal Security Policy (NISP) report 2018. Sadly, it seems that the people killed in the rain-related incidents in 2018 and specifically in 2019 in which 137 people have been killed (NDMA), were not the priority of our parliamentarians. To our dismay, climate change could not find its place as a threat in the report.

Only a few months back under the government of PTI "The German watch" report revealed that Pakistan is the fifth most vulnerable country to climate change. The people from the treasury benches may contend that they have accomplished a Bonn challenge with regard to climate change and have been also lauded by the WEF for their ‘tree plantation program’ in the KPK province however, there is a need to do more but the first thing would be to add the threat of climate change in the new comprehensive NISP framework as Climate change is hazardous directly as well as indirectly to our internal security.

Climate change is the more profound challenge to internal security of our country than extremism. In fact, " the year 2019 has been the safest year in terms of terrorist attacks" quoted by the Prime Minister Imran khan to various foreign journalists. To verify, he seems right as the news suggests that around innocent 130 people were killed in terrorist attacks or related incidents in the said year. However, climate change alone took away around precious 240 lives in the same year.

At the outset of the second decade of the second millennium, the country was welcomed with the harsh winter. In its south-west province capital city Quetta saw its record snowfall which resulted in the tragic loss of 31 people. Besides, there was also a deadly avalanche in Azad Kashmir which took away the life of more than a hundred people. Thus, Climate change is the direct threat to Pakistanis.
Besides direct threats, climate change poses indirect threat to the internal security by affecting water resources, food security and already faltering economy which would ultimately lead to accelerate the inter-provincial rifts. Moreover, the climate change would exacerbate the unplanned urbanisation ending in the sprawling of the slums in the big cities. This way a new cycle of pollution to climate change to internal security to pollution begins resulting in the chaos.

Notwithstanding the ambit of NISP has been widened to include cyber terrorism, the absence of the climate change is far-reaching. Therefore, another R should be added to “Revisit the NISP” be added in a report as Climate change is the biggest threat to internal security of Pakistan.
That said, Hopefully, this would be taken seriously as the matter is urgent so our Premier should formulate a new internal policy and work collectively to counter this threat before the “Winter” finally may befall the land of the pure.

~Sohail Ahmed Memon
The author is a researcher at Climate and Global Politics