In 2022, flooding in Pakistan devastated many parts of the country. Nearly 2,000 people died and there was $14.8 billion in damage.
Abeerah Siddiqui is president of USC’s Pakistani Student Assembly and has family in the country. Although she’s never lived there, she visited her family a lot growing up. She said it was “devastating” to see Pakistan undergo such a tragedy, especially because climate change has severe, disproportionate impacts on the country.
According to a 2022 United Nations report, 69% of deaths from climate-related disasters occurred in the 46 least-developed countries in the world. These countries’ emissions accounted for less than 4% of global emissions in the same year.
“There’s this narrative, we attribute a lot of climate change and emissions to lower and middle income countries, but Pakistan contributes less than 1% of global emissions but is in the top 10 of being impacted by climate change disasters,” she said.
Siddiqui has always been interested in the environment. She is majoring in environmental studies and health and pursuing a progressive master’s degree in public health.
“The health of the environment plays a huge role in the health of people and the communities that are surrounding that environment,” she said. “I’m really interested in exploring that intersection further, so kind of looking at not only how humans have impacted the environment and exacerbated the effects of climate change and cause to be where we are at today, but also on the flip side, looking at what those changes mean to communities, especially communities who are already being disproportionately impacted.”