Abstract
The world is facing the observable and direct impacts of climate change in the shape of extreme weather events, irregular precipitation, glacial melt, sea-level rise, an asymmetric average temperature trends, higher oceanic temperatures, damage to natural ecosystems, and biodiversity. In 2015, collective wisdom stirred the global community to agree upon two unprecedented milestones in recent human history—the Paris agreement and sustainable development goals (SDGs). The twin global agreements set a platform for collective efforts to secure socio-economic and climatic sustainability. Pakistan also joined the board to put forth policy interventions for the mitigation and adaption of climate change risks to maintain symmetry between the environmental quality and economic development. The government of Pakistan (GOP) formulated the National Climate Change Policy (NCCP (2012)) and passed the Pakistan Climate Change Act (PCCA (2017)) to provide an impetus for the implementation of the NCCP. Yet, an appropriate assessment and prioritization of the objectives of the NCCP are indispensable for productive and effective policies to achieve the targets. This study serves this purpose by prioritizing the climate change policy objectives (CCPOs) based on symmetric principles, i.e., energy, transport, urban and town planning, industry, and agriculture as criteria, with 17 sub-criteria in total. The fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (AHP) results show that the energy sector is the most pivotal while implementing the NCCP. Energy production is the most critical area that needs mitigation policy intervention for shifting the energy mix of the economy from high-carbon to low-carbon energy. The fuzzy AHP analysis further revealed the railway, population and urbanization, air pollution, crop growing practices and techniques as the most important related to transport, urban planning, industry, and agriculture sub-criteria, respectively. The fuzzy VIseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) analysis showed the ranking of the CCPOs from high to low through the integration of policies, institutional capacity building, water security, natural resource management, natural disaster management, environmental financial structure development, and social sector development. The findings of the present research would be helpful for experts and policymakers to re-examine the NCCP and put forth action plans to achieve sustainable climate and SDGs.
Highlights
The global community realized the severity of climate change, and global warming stressed the need to address this immediately
The prioritization of the ranking of the climate change policy objective alternatives (CCPOAs) is presented with a comprehensive discussion with special reference to the climate change policy objective criteria (CCPOC) with respect to the goal, ranking of climate change policy objective sub-criteria (CCPOSC) with respect to the CCPOCs, and the overall ranking of the CCPOAs is presented with a comprehensive discussion with special reference to the
The ranking of and the urbanization (CCPOSC31), water management (CCPOSC34), forestry (CCPOSC54), solid waste sub-criteria regarding the goals of climate change and environmental policy provides a strong management (CCPOSC33), integrated mass-transit systems (CCPOSC32), and livestock (CCPOSC53)
Summary
The global community realized the severity of climate change, and global warming stressed the need to address this immediately. Both global agreements are co-dependent and mutually reinforcing as climate change poses risks to economic development, whereas transitions to produce low-carbon emissions heavily depend on social, economic, and environmental development [1,2]. Tobin [3], tracking opposing economic ideas across the environmental debate, proclaims that climate change is an opportunity despite the arguments of many experts that economic growth and climate actions are conflicting. The Paris agreement (2015) [4] aims to strengthen the global response to the threats posed by climate change. It aims to strengthen the capability and ability of national economies to deal with climate change through a new technology framework, enhanced capacity building framework, and appropriate financial flows
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