Climate change impacts in Pakistan : awareness and adaptation

Climate change is a serious threat to the security and prosperity of the world in the twentyfirst century. Although it is an inherently global problem but its impacts will not be felt equally across our planet. Developing countries are much more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This paper explores various climate change impacts and their consequences in Pakistan. Pakistan is already a resource poor country with a very high and fast growing population, very low natural resource base and peculiar unfavourable local socio-cultural conditions. Climate change is an additional stress for this country. According to a recently published index, Pakistan was ranked 12th on the list of countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. It is known that increasing environmental awareness leads to better planning and management of environmental resources. An important aspect of this research is to look into relevance of awareness about climate change impacts among policymakers in Pakistan. This paper analyses climate change adaptation measures for a poor, developing and stressed country like Pakistan. In particular it assesses the possible role of GIS (Geographical Information System) in awareness raising about climate change impacts in Pakistan.