The problem of climate change was discussed in a session conducted by Rina Saeed Khan where panelists included head of WWF, Hammad Naqi; eminent environmental lawyer Dr Parvez Hassan; and award-winning journalist Paul Salopek.

“One of the most frightening statements that we get to hear is that as a country we do not contribute much to greenhouse emissions and, therefore, climate change,” started Naqi. “But the biggest impact will be on a country like ours which is extremely vulnerable and depends on water usage.”

He said that projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) made things seem formidable. “One of the major impacts of climatic change will be on water too. And we are a country that does not even treat our wastewater.”

Naqi also referred to Rina’s book From Mountains to Mangroves which studies the conditions in different areas of Pakistan and the effects of climate change.

“The coastal areas are vulnerable too because of rising sea levels and where in many places the sea water started to intrude into the ground water,” he said. “This is not fit for consumption and has also affected the fish population and economy.”

Dr Hassan, who has been responsible for bringing about the Environment Protection Act, said there were two urgent issues in Pakistan -- climate change and population growth. He explained that although there were some flaws in the Act, it was a huge step in the right direction. However, since 2014 there was no meaningful implementation of the law’s goals. “Only recently a standing body has been established with the climatic change secretary on it in order to monitor implementation.”

Two-time Pulitzer winning journalist Salopek spoke about how he had travelled across certain parts of the world in the last five years telling stories of people he came across.

“The commonality in all the stories was that climate change had affected their lives,” he said. “In places like Ethiopia there were groups fighting over resources which were scarce, there were places like a desert in Kazakhstan which had people as old as 100 years living there but who had never seen rain.”

He said CPEC is expected to have a massive environmental impact in Pakistan.

In the session, ‘The New Pakistani Middle Class’, scholar Ammara Maqsood and architect Arif Hasan were in conversation with Khaled Ahmed. The two experts reflected upon the middle classes in Lahore and Karachi and spoke about the differences and similarities between them.

Ammara said it was difficult to define middle class. In colonial times the middle class was a kind of buffer between the elite and working class, and perhaps this was one reason why it was disliked so much, especially by leftists.

Hasan said the state had by and large accommodated the middle class, which was subservient to it. One of the examples was promotion of Wahabism by state and the middle class subscribing to it.

The panelists believed a new middle class was on the rise in Pakistan and, much like in India, was more religious and conservative, giving rise to nuclear families in Karachi. Ammara said that was not the case in Lahore where joint families have been strengthened. Hasan said this difference was also one of the reasons cityscapes were changing with more apartments and high rises being built in Karachi to accommodate nuclear families. However he pointed out that there was a phenomenon of ghettoisation in Karachi where people of a similar ethnicity or sect lived together. He believed this phenomenon was not so apparent in Lahore. There has however always been ghettoisation because of differences between rich and poor, and the poor always lived on the fringes.

Ammara said much of the middle class was nostalgic of the 1960s that yearned for progressiveness of those days. “There was religious influence but it was more invisible unlike the new middle class today,” she added.

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2018