A speaker at Monday’s conference on climate change held international capitalism responsible for the destruction of the planet by environmental degradation.
Entitled “Global Capitalism: Responsibility for Environmental Disasters,” the conference was organized by the National Federation of Trade Unions (NTUF) and the Home Women Workers Federation (HBWWF) at the Arts Council of Pakistan.
Environmental experts, lawyers and political leaders, as well as those directly affected by recent floods and climate change, attended the conference and briefed the audience on their issues.
Faisal Edhi of the Edhi Foundation said the recent floods were the worst disaster in Pakistan’s history, directly affecting 35 million people and indirectly affecting millions. He said the Pakistani government and the international community failed not only to properly assess the losses, but also to provide timely assistance to those affected.
He said governments and the international community had left millions of affected people, including women and children, deprived of their basic needs of food, water and medicine. .
He expressed concern that the winter season would come and that it would exacerbate the human tragedy. He said the crisis is caused by multiple actors and that the polluter pays principle should be applied when dealing with climate devastation.
NTUF General Secretary Nasir Mansour said the capitalist model of progress poses a major threat to the survival of life on Earth. He called the capitalist economy environmental terrorism.
He said floods, earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, pandemics and heat waves are the result of climate change that has affected billions of people.
He said the first and last way to save the environment is to get rid of capitalism. Dr. Nauman Ahmed of NED University said the environment, climate change and progress are interconnected. He said economic progress meant more capital, more investment, and more consumerism. said to lack balance.
He said climate change is exacerbating food crises, poverty and wealth inequality in Pakistan. He said urbanization was spreading rapidly, with huge populations of cities living in slums. Forest cover is shrinking rapidly, damaging the environment and ecosystems, he said, as a proposal to combine progress with a sustainable environment.
Szabist Dr Riaz Ahmed said the Pakistani state has failed to serve its citizens. He added that people have to fight for their rights because the government never gives them what they deserve.
German political activist and philosopher Thomas Rudhof-Seibert, speaking online at the event, said Pakistan was not responsible for the crisis. The speaker said countries like Pakistan are also suffering from the global debt crisis. The conference called for urgent provision of food, drinking water and medicines to all flood victims.
