Exercising multidisciplinary approach to assess interrelationship between energy use, carbon emission and land use change in a metropolitan city of Pakistan

Population of two cities in Pakistan has already crossed the 10-million figure and for the rest of the areas in the country populations are also increasing rapidly. Urbanization has boosted the use of energy in the cities and so is greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but the ground situation as to the extent, vulnerability, past trends and future scenarios are not unveiled for the cities of Pakistan. Dearth of data in Pakistan is a huge hindrance to the investigation of energy use and actual GHG emissions. We dared to take steps in addressing this case and put preliminary efforts in compiling baseline sectoral breakdown of energy use, carbon emission and land cover/land use. Furthermore, the relationship of CO2 source and sink is also explored. This study mainly tries to achieve three objectives. The results illustrate that industrial and residential sectors are vibrant consumers of energy and CO2 emitters among all other sectors of the city. Sparse trees in the city and reduced agriculture areas by more than one-half in 2009 compared with those in 1975 are the main reasons for increased energy use and reduced CO2 emissions from agriculture sector as well. However, all the other sectors have increased their CO2 emissions in an escalating trend. The forecast analysis portrays the same trend too. Therefore, there is a need to make policy makers recognize such vulnerable situation of energy use and GHG emissions for them to take proper and timely actions to cope with the threats of climate change which can occur anytime in the very near future. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.