This is not to absolve local agents: From old drainage and sewerage infrastructure, to reckless urban planning, to real estate, to military-led deforestation, to the complete absence of flood storage infrastructure, there are The long list is missing interventions.
Clearly, Pakistan has been indifferent to adopting effective flood management strategies such as that of its neighbor China.
While mobilizing an effective flood management strategy to mitigate the intensity of the crisis is absolutely critical, the recommendations are a distraction on the one hand and a trap on the other.
dialectics
They are vital because they must be used no matter what: even though the planet has developed a strong resistance to ecological crises through continued pro-nature policies, the level of irreversible damage the biosphere has experienced over the past few decades makes adaptation inevitable .
That is, a fundamental shift in the system Have Along with effective climate management policies. However, they are a distraction and a trap because they are totally inadequate to avoid a flood crisis on their own.
Distractions because they distract attention from the most basic drivers of the crisis. The pitfall is that they completely block another imaginary possibility.
Let’s briefly compare flood management strategies to a similar type of disturbance called “climate change avoidance technology”. Proponents of technological messianism believe that only technological development can save humanity from the climate crisis.
There is no doubt about the power of new technologies. However, if technology-enabled mitigations are seen as helping to return to the tools of making nature available for exploitation again, we are immediately confronted with a dangerous dialectic involving the complicity of science on the one hand, and the unscientific nature of unbounded and unbounded growth. error. On the other hand, consumerism.
speculative
Take carbon removal technology as an example, which we are told is very helpful in overcoming some of the confusion created by infinite growth models. How will this work?
The question, again, is whether we are looking for business as usual and expect carbon capture to achieve this or We are revolutionizing the economic system and using these technologies to help in that process.
Just as carbon removal technologies cannot solve the problem of increased carbon emissions caused by overproduction and overconsumption in the first place, effective flood management strategies will not be enough to solve the flood crisis caused by rainwater.
On the contrary, unlike many previous crises, including the Great Depression of the 1930s and the financial crisis of the late 2000s, rainfall-induced floods and various other manifestations of ecological crises inherently challenge the ability of the economic and political order to manage.
This is not to say that previous crises have not exposed systemic suicidal contradictions: they have not only forced a pause in the linear process of growth, but have exposed the fragility of multibillion-dollar speculative structures.
managed
Given the magnitude and endless continuum of shocks and shocks, the ability of the economic system to continue to manage the crisis may have been exhausted long ago, but the system already has enough absorbing capacity to survive, albeit in the form of injuries.
In its management pursuits, it even uses two diametrically opposed measures: austerity (2008 financial crisis) and generosity (Covid-19 crisis).
However, these strategies may not work after an ecological crisis, as the problem fundamentally questions the management philosophy.
As the philosopher Miguel de Beistegui put it, this is the only crisis in recent history that requires a completely “new normative”: a crisis can no longer be dealt with within the coordinates of an existing norm; it need one all overhaul, a all A shift in popular frameworks.
If the nature of the ecological crisis is such that it challenges the ability of the system to manage, overallin terms of crisis management capabilities, what do we expect from a country like Pakistan?
breathe
These countries are the recipients of some of the most catastrophic consequences of climate change, and despite the insignificant harm to the biosphere, these countries are profound examples of geography.
With a humble desire to survive on Earth, millions of Pakistanis are burdened with crimes they were not even involved in.
Solidarity and donations from countries, organizations and individuals from all over the world are invaluable, but a country like Pakistan cannot afford to be left to the generosity of the global north.
Pakistan is one of the most important examples of climate-induced damage rapidly reaching — or, in a sense, reaching — the greatest possible significance.
While the monsoon season floods more than a third of the country, winter in the Punjab urban centres, especially Lahore, marks persistent cloudy days smoke For three months a year, a strange combination of fog and toxic fumes make it impossible to breathe without causing some sort of damage to the respiratory system.
damaged
The country also regularly experiences deadly heat waves, with certain cities in Sindh and Balochistan appearing as the hottest cities in the world every year.
Equally worrying is the situation in much of northern Pakistan, where many of the glacial lakes – more than 3,000 in all – could erupt at any time in the face of rising temperatures and rainfall, a sequence that has struck a chord several times this century. Mountainous areas caused extensive damage.
While Pakistan remains one of the most vulnerable regions, its neighbors are equally vulnerable.
Rain-induced floods, heat waves and smog are no strangers to India. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are equally vulnerable, and to some extent even more vulnerable, due to their coastal conditions.
Countries in Greater Asia, Africa and Latin America are not far behind. Clearly, the South is not only at risk of massive damage, but already irreversibly damaged.
stone
This situation reminds me of Martin Heidegger’s “being”, a concept that has been explained in different ways, but it is more and more connected to the concept of making existence interpretable by humans.
In Heidegger’s own words, being can have a very unique relationship to beings in each era and space. That is, the essence of existence is not static, but experiences changes from time to time.
From commanding sortable roles to revealing revealable roles to granting grantable roles, existence has been transcendental in nature, paving the way for major shifts throughout history.
The important point to note here is that while existence may be transcendental to humans in the Heideggerian sense, for the vast majority of non-Western worlds, the experience of being on Earth has always been a form of There is the experience of how to present itself to humans. Western humans.
Collectively, billions of people in the Global South have been constrained by how Western humans stand in the world and see them as items that exist in the calculation of value and are commodified to increase Western power. It has been so since Plato, but even more so since Descartes.
Capital Cenozoic
Although Heidegger used the word “man” in a broad sense, liberation is important in the light of his deep understanding that modern Western computational thinking alludes to the destruction of nature. man responsibility for ecological damage and identify specific actors and systems that treat nature as a vast collection of disposable raw materials. Therefore, “man” needs to be replaced by some kind of specificity of human beings.
And the “Anthropocene”, which means the current geological era in which humans have caused damage to the environment, needs to give way to the “Cenozoic”, which truly reflects the special characteristics of the era of destruction.
This is precisely because, as the anthropologist Peter Rudiak-Gould put it, “It is not ‘human beings’ who are disturbing the planet: it is certain human beings (Westerners, consumers, fossil fuels) elites, etc.), within a specific historical (modern), political (neoliberal) and economic (capitalist) environment.”
Alternatives to the Anthropocene that stand out because of this understanding include the capital world, the economic world, and the consumer world. However, Heidegger was probably more interested in the Cicene or Technocene.
indigenous
The apocalyptic manifestation of climate change pushes us to look beyond ostensible measures, half-hearted political reformism and ill-considered environmentalism.
Given the urgency of the situation in the global South, internationalist efforts to seek climate reparations and full debt cancellation can no longer be deprived of materialization.
While this will help the global South deal with the crisis, the crisis itself requires deeper intervention: extreme Transforming the way we treat life, nature, and everything that makes up our planet—and beyond.
Ecofeminists in the South have sought to respect nature as home. A new symbiotic relationship is developing between awareness of capital operation and creative political action.
Indigenous communities in Latin America, Asia, and Africa have also been offering non-Western epistemologies that are entirely conducive to planetary longevity. We need to go beyond the geographies, systems and ideas that have brought us to today.
this author
Bilal Zahoor is the editorial director of Folio Books, an independent publishing house based in Lahore. He recently completed a Master of Political Philosophy at UPF Barcelona.He is also the editor-in-chief of the magazine Rethinking Pakistan: A 21st Century Perspective From Anthem Press, 2020.
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