Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

Despite well-tomtomed conservation projects, tigers ( and other species) are facing an uphill struggle for survival. Since the acceleration of the Chinese economy in the 80’s, neighbouring India has lost out on ecological  conservation. The Chinese, be they in mainland China or abroad, like to show off their wealth. And they like to do it in style. Dinner parties are indispensable items where are served soups made of ( Indian) tigers and wine made of tiger bone. Tiger whiskers and bones are used in Chinese medicine to cure respectively toothaches and joint pains, rheumatism,… Tiger penises are supposed to give sexual power. Moreover, the Chinese love to buy tiger skins. They like it so much that the demand outgrow the supply.

The rarity of tigers has pushed up prices and the pressure has increased on India, home of most of the world’s tiger population. In the rest of Asia, the tiger…

Do you like warm weather? Do you wish it could be warmer still? Be careful what you wish for. The Earth may be moving in that direction and the trend is called Global Warming.

Do you wonder what causes the warming of the Earth?

Earth is given energy through sunlight and this light turns to heat when it hits the ground. The heat in turn seeps away from the Earth, but the atmosphere slows the heat’s escape. The atmosphere is a layer of air around the planet and it holds in some of the warmth.

The atmosphere is a mixture of many gases. In the last 250 years, this mixture has been changing. The amounts of gases such as methane and carbon dioxide have been rising. These gases trap heat more effectively than other gases. They make the Earth’s atmosphere act like the glass in a greenhouse. It lets sunlight…

Human activities have contributed significantly to the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that causes climate change.

Climate change is already having dramatic effects on forests, natural resources and people’s livelihoods.

Today, we are living in a generation wherein technologies are everywhere. The more technologically and legally advanced a civilization, the greater the need and desire for environmental stability, for a balance of nature and because of these we have not noticed that we are already destructing our own home, Philippines.

The Philippines is a hotspot for climate change disasters particularly the risk for agriculture and food security due to extreme El Nino and severe tropical cyclones. The spread of infectious diseases are influenced by fluctuations in climate variables, temperature, relative humidity and rainfall. Severe super typhoons like Pablo that destroyed millions worth of agricultural products and infrastructure.

Diseases such as dengue fever, malaria, cholera have increased throughout the…

Thinking about environment sitting in Pakistan is an idea which does not come to mind generally. And thinking about environmental aspect of global warming on Pakistan and linking it to the whole subcontinent is just a novel approach. This approach has recently been shown by Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, chairman of biggest political party of Pakistan ‘Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN)’ and former prime minister of Pakistan. This person does not make me stop wondering about his capabilities. The part of his speech during South Asian Free Media (SAFMA) conference, which specially took my attention was when he said following words:

“It is not only the people of this region who are yearning for peace; nature itself is pointing to the need for such a course of action. The manner in which climate change has transformed the environment and impacted on glaciers on the Himalayas, the Karakoram and Hindu Kush…