By: Tariq Usmani : Published by ANI
The scene from the year 2000 is still vividly etched on the canvas of my mind when Dr. Abdelhafedh, the former Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, and Dr. Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution and Nobel Laureate, visited Pakistan. Dr. Abdelhafedh, who rendered invaluable services to the agricultural sectors of Turkey, Egypt, and several Middle Eastern countries, became my true environmental and agricultural motivation teacher in Pakistan. In Islamabad, I organized a prestigious ceremony in honor of these two great personalities, where both visionaries entrusted me with the monumental task of promoting modern scientific agriculture and preserving the land in Pakistan. We launched this mission through the platform of Pakistan's first agricultural and rural newspaper, the Daily 'Dehat'. However, within a few years, we realized that the biggest enemy of Pakistani agriculture was not traditional methods, but a silent killer known to the world as 'environmental pollution' and 'climate change'.
Today, as the world prepares for the historic COP31 climate conference in the Turkish city of Antalya, I am reminded of the old archive scattered across the Facebook pages of Daily 'Dehat'. Following the devastation of the worst floods of 2010, we ran a year-long public awareness campaign against climate change. When the mainstream media of that era was fully engrossed in political glamour, 'Dehat' raised its voice for 12 consecutive months, going directly to the doorsteps of farmers, fighting for their rights and the protection of the land, highlighting how global industrial carbon is devouring our agricultural calendar and glaciers. Long before the Paris Agreement was signed, that digital archive from the 2010 Daily 'Dehat' campaign has today become Pakistan's greatest documentary evidence in this long journey from Paris to Antalya.
If we review the journey from the historic Paris Agreement (COP21) in 2015 to the present day, a massive gap is visible between the progress made on international forums and the ground reality. The year-by-year accounts of these summits are as follows:
• Paris, France (COP21 – 2015): The world dreamed of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C. This was the exact dream we were screaming about during our 2010 campaign, warning that if temperatures rose, the Himalayan glaciers would melt.
• Marrakesh, Morocco (COP22 – 2016): The central focus of this meeting was to initiate the implementation rules of the Paris Agreement, and a roadmap for climate funding was negotiated.
• Bonn, Germany (COP23 – 2017): Under the presidency of Fiji, the "Talanoa Dialogue" was launched to allow countries to collectively review their climate targets and carbon emission reductions.
• Katowice, Poland (COP24 – 2018): The "Paris Rulebook" was finalized here for monitoring and transparency of carbon emissions, but documentary formalities were prioritized over practical action on the ground.
• Madrid, Spain (COP25 – 2019): Under the presidency of Chile, intense disagreements over carbon market rules (Article 6) prevented any major or final agreement from being reached.
• Glasgow, Scotland (COP26 – 2021): For the first time in history, a commitment was made to gradually "phase down" the use of coal, and the Glasgow Climate Pact was adopted, but no substantial technical assistance was provided to developing countries to transition to clean energy.
• Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt (COP27 – 2022): In the backdrop of Pakistan's catastrophic 2022 floods, our decades-old environmental advocacy achieved a moral victory, and the historic Loss and Damage Fund was approved.
• Dubai, UAE (COP28 – 2023): This summit marked a historic global consensus to transition away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy alternatives.
• Baku, Azerbaijan (COP29 – 2024): A new financial target (NCQG) of $300 billion annually was set for developing nations, but the truth is that it consists mostly of loans rather than grants, putting a further economic burden on poor countries.
• Belém, Brazil (COP30 – 2025): Held at the threshold of the Amazon rainforest, countries presented their new and more stringent climate targets (NDCs) and emphasized scaling up clean energy funding.
Today, we stand at the crossroads of Antalya (COP31 – 2026). The biggest agenda of this conference is "to build a bridge between the Arctic and the Hindu Kush-Karakoram-Himalaya (HKH) region." The proposals presented by Pakistan in this dialogue for a "Green Cloud" (an informative database for data sharing) and a "Green Virtual University" are the critical need of the hour.
In the light of the agricultural mission entrusted to me by Dr. Norman Borlaug and Dr. Abdelhafedh, our historic 2010 environmental campaign, and the true testimonies of farmers present in our archive, I present this case before the global community through my newspaper and YouTube channel, CTV: the time for paper promises and lengthy meetings is officially over. The Pakistani farmer and the snow of Pakistan's mountains share a deep, unbreakable bond. If developed nations do not take immediate practical steps in Antalya to reduce carbon emissions and provide debt-free adaptation funds to poor countries, this climate crisis will not remain confined to our borders. Instead, it will engulf the food security of the entire world.
The climate havoc and destruction unleashed upon our planet today is no longer just the issue of a single country, nation, or region—it is the final battle for the existence and survival of the human race. The world must accept the absolute truth that the deadly emissions of carbon gases know no specific geography, and nature's wrath does not differentiate based on color, race, or economic power. If we do not take emergency measures today to save our Mother Earth by rising above political expediencies and corporate profits, our name and trace will be erased from the pages of history. The Earth is no longer just calling out; it is suffering! This blue planet is our only and shared home; if it does not survive, we have no secondary refuge in the vastness of space. Time is slipping away like sand through our fingers, and if the global conscience does not wake up now, the next climate storm will not even give anyone the luxury of regret!
