Over time, the way I spend an average day in my life has evolved. At one point, my day began with physics classes and included running a nuclear reactor somewhere in the middle. It included discourses on particle physics and quantum mechanics as well as on Cherenkov radiation due to beta particles travelling faster than the speed of light (in water). Sometimes it also included making sure waste from our reactor was not contaminated at the time of disposal, and once it included changing uranium fuel. Sometimes, I also used to hang out with friends.

Then there was a period when I studied the conditions in space, the ventilation of air on the International Space Station, and how we can remove carbon dioxide from the air stream without too much friction. Every few months, my day would include a trip to Houston to hold discussions with NASA engineers.

Since 2016, when I moved to Pakistan, my days have changed drastically, and although I would still like to believe I am a man of science, my average day does not include hard sciences any more. In the past I had focused on the micro and the macro; from particles, to the cosmos. Now my time is spent on the terrestrial, tangible plain – Mother Earth.

My day now has a lot more to do with combating climate change and rights-based advocacy, and is largely spent working on solution-oriented practices in the waste management industry via my company GarbageCAN; spreading climate literacy and environmental awareness via my online platform The Environmental, developing environmental agendas and political/societal discourse via grass-roots outreach efforts through the Pakistan Maholiati Tahaffuz Movement. And more recently, on further understanding the impact of climate change via Climate REACH.

My day includes the risk of getting beaten up for clearing trash (my workplace was also recently shot at), working with journalists to highlight the news from an environmental lens, legal battles against environmentally damaging expressways or the illegal (re)claiming of the sea, and pushing for enviro-human-centric policies.

Let’s pick the week following September 22, 2024 (on the day of writing this piece). Tomorrow morning at 5 a.m. I will be heading to Dadu with my team of researchers at Climate REACH. We are working on a fact-finding research project, where we will interview people displaced by various environmental drivers. Having already interviewed people who settled after migrating after the 2022 floods, we will be interviewing those who have returned to their villages or who are still in a state of upheaval two years on.

On our way to Dadu, I hope to make a few phone calls to my waste management team and ensure that the week’s operations are properly planned, especially considering I may be out of reach for a few hours. On a daily basis, GarbageCAN manages waste at various schools, offices and restaurants. Our staff sorts through the various waste streams – landfill waste, recyclable items, composting; the waste is then forwarded to their various destinations.

After the morning meetings, I will push forward with the work we do under the banner of the Pakistan Maholiati Tahaffuz Movement. We are in the process of developing Mohullah-o-Maholiat councils for neighbourhoods, and through these councils, we aim to work on municipal issues while keeping our nature based ideology first.

These days, a heavy chunk of my time goes into mobilising people for the Climate March on October 27, 2024 in Karachi. This week we also hope to initiate our social media campaign so that word can spread as far as possible. My aim is to make the climate march an annual affair.

Fingers crossed, I will manage to have some of this done by lunchtime. Tomorrow we will be in Dadu. I normally have lunch on the move. If I was in Karachi, this period of the day (afternoon till dusk) would be spent in business development meetings or outreach sessions, or maybe developing a short script or an idea for a video for our climate literacy and awareness platform – The Environmental.

By the time evening rolls around, exhaustion will start to creep in. But I will still need to manage our list of foster parents for our ‘foster-a-tree’ campaign. The exhaustion is not so much because of the work I do. It is more because of the challenges of doing that work in Karachi. These include water issues, unexpected electricity or gas shortages, traffic, breathing issues (due to smog) and so on. Incidentally, all these issues relate to the environment.

I am increasingly of the belief that almost every issue has its basis in our exploitation and mismanagement of nature.

This is because we are one with nature. Our identity, ranging from skin colour, hair texture, language and so on, is based on the geographical region we are born in. A fisherman’s identity is attached to ‘fish’, a farmer to the ‘farm’, and a mountain-dweller to the ‘mountain’, and city-dwellers are known by the city they live in. Our local economies are based on the same, the fish a fisherman sells, the crop a farmer grows, the orchards that grow in the mountains. Our collective economy includes natural areas such as the sea near Gwadar, Reko Diq and the Thar coal mines. Even our foreign policies are based on issues such as the Indus Water Treaty, CPEC, land issues over Kashmir, and the quarrel over smog between Lahore and New Delhi.

I am of the opinion that politics are supposed to be a negotiation for the equitable distribution of resources rather than for power as we see in Pakistan today. It is this ideology that leads me to spend the rest of my day until late at night, pondering over ‘green politics’ and sustainable policies. It is this ideology that my 2024 electoral bid and manifesto were based upon.

A few years ago, I could say my days included watching theatre plays, martial arts such as capoeira and aikido (I am very unfit now), horse-riding, music and even dance such as the Argentine tango, blues, contra and swing. These days I am driven by the urgency of the climate emergency, everything else is secondary. Even the playlist I listen to is designed to keep me going. Though, maybe soon I’ll be able to spend time with my friends, and my mother who is based in the UAE, and perhaps even hit the gym.

At this time however, I have flipped the Urdu phrase: ‘Jaan hai tou jahan hai’ to ‘Jahan hai tou jaan hai’. The time to act is now.

Ahmad Shabbar is Founder, Pakistan Maholiati Tahaffuz Movement and Climate REACH.
ahshabbar@climatereach.life