Rice University's premier undergraduate journal of scholarship in domestic and international policy.
Elaine Zhang
Oct 23, 2022
To actually help Pakistan, the US can’t forget its role in fighting climate change
The 2022 floods in Pakistan have left a devastating impact on millions of Pakistanis. As of August 27, experts estimated over $3 billion in damages to the country’s roads, homes, livestock and crops. That number has now more than doubled to over $6 billion as of September 8, with a worst case scenario of $10.2 billion in total financial/asset damages (Younus and Khan 2022). In contrast to this monumental level of estimated damage, the US has only sent $53.1 million in aid to Pakistan (Iqbal 2022). The low amount of aid is even more shocking in light of the US’ status as a leading carbon emitter. If the US and other high-emitting countries are to honor their commitments to fight against climate change, they must increase their aid to Pakistan and pay reparations for climate injustice.
Pakistan is home to the greatest number of glaciers in the world outside the poles (Jones 2022). Warming temperatures means that these glaciers are melting at alarming rates, exacerbating damage to a country already vulnerable to flooding from monsoons. Pakistan, however, is nowhere close to being the top carbon emitter responsible for this glacial melting. When measuring carbon emissions over time, the US has emitted 25% of all CO2 emissions ever, the most of any country. Other Western industrial states, such as the UK, were responsible for more than half of all CO2 emissions before 1950 (Ritchie 2019). In contrast, Pakistan has contributed to less than 1% of global cumulative carbon emissions (Ritchie and Roser 2020). Despite this wide disparity in contributions to global warming, more vulnerable countries like Pakistan often must contend with more devastating and frequent climate disasters than wealthier and higher-emitting countries.
Along with climate change and global wealth inequality, the floods in Pakistan also demonstrate the urgent need to address a variety of health disparities. Infrastructure damage alone will create enormous ripple effects across Pakistan as millions of displaced people lack access to clean water. Destroyed roads will also complicate efforts to connect patients with medicine and healthcare workers. The floodwater itself will certainly facilitate the spread of diseases like cholera, malaria, and dengue fever (Khan 2022). Along with infrastructure-related challenges, food-related health issues will be exacerbated due to widespread crop destruction. Pregnant women and young children in Pakistan will have to face malnutrition in a state of already heightened vulnerability (Baloch 2022). As the country faces a record 27.3% inflation, food insecurity is all but inevitable amid extensive crop damage and rising prices (Haq 2022).
Amidst catastrophic levels of damage, Pakistanis are calling for increased humanitarian aid from wealthier countries. Advocates for climate justice are pushing the US and others to not just send aid. They believe that given their outsized role in exacerbating climate change, these wealthy nations should provide reparations to disproportionately impacted countries like Pakistan (Aamir 2022). Earlier this August President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which brings the US closer to its emission reduction goal under the Paris Agreement. In the wake of the August floods, however, it is clear that even this “landmark” policy change comes too little, too late.
Given public pledges to combat climate change, the path forward for the US is clear. Not only should the US send financial aid to Pakistan, but that aid should reflect climate justice principles that address its role in exacerbating climate catastrophes. Any aid package sent to Pakistan in response to these floods must be accompanied by more proactive climate change policies. Furthermore, any policy that promises to tackle climate change should reflect on the issue’s intersections with wealth and health disparities, as demonstrated by the Pakistan floods. In the wake of more frequent and damaging climate catastrophes, these are not only possible but imperative policy solutions to actually help Pakistan.
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