BE it food insecurity, water stress, or climate change, Pakistan is under threat from wide-ranging environmental problems. If ever we needed a reminder, the heatwave in Karachi provided just that. Yet, the shock will pass and life will go on: such is the scale and frequency of the calamities afflicting this nation that it finds no option but to go numb. Only the brutality of Peshawaresque proportions feels extraordinary, and even then the collective response remains only a non-action plan. For everything else, amnesia is an easier alternative.

However, climate change remains a threat even as our attention drifts. Several world bodies have warned of extreme dangers to agriculture if we don’t reform our practices. In fact, farmers have been abandoning agri­cult­ure to take up other means of livelihood such as cattle and poultry farming, and fish­ing.

If society is to respond to these challenges, we must first ensure that they do not vanish from our collective memory. Consider the National Climate Change Policy devised in 2012 that exists practically only on paper. It is particularly instructive to peruse its sections on “awareness raising”. Often limited to a single sentence, the plans are limited to “public campaigns”. Amazingly, for such a gigantic challenge, there is no mention of enhancing and modernising the national curricula on climate and environment. After all, how better to mainstream environmental responsibility than to formally educate the upcoming gen­e­r­a­tions?

Environment has traditionally remained a specialised discipline at the university level, and is only discussed superficially during the formative years at school. Also, while producing doctors, engineers, and IT specialists, social issues are largely neglected. Thus, environment — as much a scientific as it is a social issue — is never the top draw when the merit lists are drawn up. In schools, whatever little is taught on the subject can be tossed aside as optional material. Often limited to statistics on pollution, environmental education rema­ins peripheral to our syllabi.

School curricula must teach environmental awareness.

However, since natural disasters are projected to torment us over the coming decades, the curriculum — starting at school level — must be revamped. The goal should be to raise a breed of young philanthropists who can bring about social change, while the government also takes urgent measures. However, it is important that this education be empowering and not scaremongering, scientific and not dogmatic, mobilising and not crucifying, and, crucially, using rather than overstretching the student schedules. Let me explain.

Empowerment means equipping with solutions. This inculcates a sense of community service by focusing on concrete local issues, yet with a broader perspective. This service can be especially useful while schools are out; such a volunteering experience can even help in admission to prestigious universities in the US. An excellent example of mobilising children for such purposes is the work of Mechai Viravaidya. Renowned for campaigning for family planning in Thailand, he has brought local youth into village committees to develop their communities. With the upcoming local governments, a similar approach is practical in Pakistan.

It is important that sound principles are introduced at the earliest while leaving the evolving debates to higher education and subject to regular revision. For example, although large hydro projects are not a part of the CPEC because they are environmentally questionable, there are also mitigating circu­m­stances. The curriculum sho­uld present both sides of a debate.

As students learn about the environment, they should be taught not to despise those who do not understand su­ch principles yet. Our society is alre­ady fragmen­ted, and the youth sho­uld learn to engage and not to disparage.

Above all, it is critical for the new instruction to blend into and not overstretch the existing curriculum. Integration with the science subjects is only natural, whereas social responsibility can be taught with Islamic principles of austerity, fairness and empathy.

The government must also facilitate a social curriculum through local administrations which must liaise with schools, community leaders and especially the local imams, who should speak on environmental issues. Community mosques and associated madressahs can thus become a vehicle for change. Education is not enough though: the government must also enforce social change. For example, the use of plastic shopping bags must be taxed. This will encourage reuse and recycling, and may promote the use of embroidered bags, spawning another economic activity. Likewise, to control noise pollution, each city should have silent zones, where speed limits are manageable and blowing a horn is not normally permitted.

Social attitudes and education should reflect the challenges that a country faces. A change in our practices at both these levels is necessary to move on from continuous crisis management to a state of readiness in a sustainable manner.

The writer is senior researcher at the University of Limerick, Ireland.

Published in Dawn, July 22nd, 2015

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