Shallow Environmentalism in Rapid Climate Change: An Analysis of Pakistan’s National Environmental Discourse

Abstract

This paper examines the rapid climate change in Pakistan and national environmental discourse. This also observes the dominant understandings on the topic which problematizes the standard assumptions and interrogates the geographical literature on this particular subject. The main area of “climate change adaptation” is selected for the analysis which is a major part of “National Climate Change Policy of Pakistan 2012” in which five sub divisional partitions, “Water Resources, Agriculture and Live Stock, Human Health, Forestry and Biodiversity” exist. There are several factors interlinked in the crucial climate change situation in the country and different kinds of discourses are used at different levels to describe the whole situation in Pakistan. Critical discourse analysis of national climate change policy brings the clear picture in front of the whole world and it shows the Pakistan’s vulnerability in specific areas to climate change. Several policy measures have been presented, which are analyzed on different levels of discourse with shallow environmentalism and deep ecology. This paper will be helpful for the discourse analysts as well as the national climate change policy makers in Pakistan.