Thread by @astroehlein

Epic flooding in #Pakistan has:

⚠️ killed over 1000 people;

⚠️ affected 30 million others;

⚠️ destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes;

⚠️ wrecked millions of acres of crops;

⚠️ caused billions of dollars’ worth of damage.

It confirms the need for #ClimateAction.
🧵

Triggered by unprecedented monsoon rainfall and glacial melting, #Pakistan’s cataclysm is a terrible reminder that, when we talk about climate change, we’re not discussing some future environmental dystopia.

We’re living it now.

As a country particularly vulnerable to climate change, Pakistan is on the frontlines of this reality.

#Pakistan faces rates of warming well above the global average and, with that, extreme climate events are more likely to be more frequent and more intense.

For marginalized and at-risk populations in particular – including older people, people with disabilities, people in poverty, and rural populations – such events are also more devastating and more deadly.

The connection between climate change and human rights protection should be obvious, both locally and globally.

Pakistan’s government has a human rights obligation to prevent foreseeable harms from climate change & extreme weather events. They should provide assistance both to those communities already affected by these floods & to those most at-risk from future catastrophic events.

And with the same logic, we can also say that ALL governments have a human rights obligation to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to avert even more catastrophic effects of climate change.

The sad fact is, Pakistan is not historically one of the countries most responsible for climate change, but its people are nevertheless suffering greatly from it.

Top greenhouse gas emitters in Europe and North America need to face up to their outsized impact on Earth’s atmosphere over the decades and support vulnerable countries’ adaptation efforts.

Read more: hrw.org/news/2022/08/2…