Climate Carnage in Pakistan - COP27
Sincere thanks to our good friends at MOCK COP for arranging to have our COP6 and beyond film Climate Carnage in Pakistan (above) shown in the Children and Youth Pavilion at COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. We felt we owed it to the 12 million Pakistani children whose education has been put at risk to try to take their story to the heart of COP27.
Think of your own school, for a moment, or the school where your own children learn. And then think of more than 26,000 schools in Pakistan destroyed or damaged by this summer’s flooding. And even that is only part of the story, and the long struggle to rebuild. And all of this before the world has even reached 1.5oC of warming.
This story is the human face of some of the abstract notions debated at COPs. A picture of “loss and damage”, when Pakistan produces less than 1% of global emissions, but a third of the country has been under water. For Sam Wilson, who put this film together with footage from around the country, but especially from the National Commission for Human Development, the aftermath will inform all of his work on education in Pakistan. For the children affected, it is another side of “climate education” if climate change challenges their right to receive any education at all.
Perhaps “loss and damage” and “climate justice” will be fixed when we see events like this and elsewhere as a worldwide phenomenon affecting every one of us, and we find what Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados called “the simple political will”.