Climate change and its impact on our everyday lives is one of the most urgent human problems. Our lives are changing, not in any good way. We are facing existential challenges each and every day, but there isn’t really enough action to deal with these.

The biggest issue is climate change not being part of the everyday discourse. It is a communication problem. The city of Lahore is simmering with smog, cutting our life spans with each breath we take. Diseases ranging from allergies to asthma have become household items. Our medical bills are swelling and our energies are lowering, affecting not only our workplace productivity but our lives overall. Do we know what’s going on? We don’t!

 It’s an awareness problem that makes action impossible. Social action precedes political action. But it is the individual’s will to change their lives that precedes every social action. Universities are knowledge production institutions, primarily focusing upon developing informed citizenry. On the one hand they groom the youth into better aware, action oriented citizens. On the other it is our job to offer discourse platforms to generate knowledge that not only inform but add to our actionable reservoir for social change through discourse evolution.

The ICA regional conference in December 2024 aims at fulfilling both the societal responsibilities. We are bringing together global expertise with local knowledge in a city that is suffering from deteriorating climate conditions. We are giving a chance to academic discussions help in solving one of the greatest existential crises, the obvious but oblivious problems of our times.

The conference will deal with almost all issues related to climate change under the sun presented in the event under different streams. Our aim is not a flashy drawing room debate, but a substantial contribution to the solution to the crisis through involving media, both traditional and social to add to actionable knowledge in everyday life. This is also a good opportunity for the local academics to work along with the global expert in their own home. This is one of the rare opportunities where the proverbial global South is represented in the South. For FCCU it is an honor to host such an important event. It also shows our commitment to collaborate with all academic institutions to further the cause of quality higher education. We also believe in the development of knowledge systems that help solve societal problems. At the same time it shows our commitment to accept global knowledge and expertise to find local solutions. This commitment to glocalization is important to live in a globalized world where all global phenomena have local effects and vice versa. 

As a final word I would like to emphasize the fact that understanding science as one’s own is important. We are living in the era of science. Our lives are no more the same as our forefathers. We need to bring this awareness home by adding science and the scientific methods into our daily lives. We need to trust science in the same spirit as we believe in the ways of our forefathers.

My expectation of this event is to contribute to this goal, making facts believable, knowing how realistic climate crisis is and presenting the solution in a way that people understand and trust these. This, after all, is the very purpose of the existence of universities in our world. The truer we are to this ideal, the more trust we could garner.