ISLAMABAD: Islamabad has lost vegetation, greenbelts, seen water shortage, increase in environment unfriendly housing units, traffic mess and air pollution during the last three decades.

This was stated by climate advocacy expert Munir Ahmed while speaking to participants of a seminar organised by the National University of Modern Languages (Numl) on Friday.

He said the increase in temperature has changed the life style of the residents.

The use of electric home appliances and room-cooling machines has immensely enhanced the emission of the greenhouse gases while on the other hand the loss of green cover has enhanced the impact of the increased local temperature.

Mr Ahmed said the rise in the diseases wa also one of the worse effects of the climate change.

The shortage of public medical hospitals has multiplied the miseries of the locals.

“The unavailability of clean drinking water has further deteriorated the health of the poor and marginalised living in the suburbs of the federal capital,” he said.

He said about 44pc of the residents were aware of the climate change impacts mostly through the media but they didn’t know the solution.

“If half of the respondents are considered to be from the well-informed sections of the society even than only 20pc of the people have only heard about the concerned agencies. It shows the poor performance of the public environmental agencies,” he said.

Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2018