By Asad Cheema
ISLAMABAD: Coordinator to the Prime Minister on Climate Change and Environmental Coordination, Romina Khurshid Alam said that climate change-caused various disasters mainly floods and heatwaves are now a major cause of massive socio-economic damages in Pakistan.
But, the present government is taking all-out policy measures to enhance the country’s climate resilience against the recurring and intensifying disasters.
Chairing a high-level meeting on Strengthening Pakistan’s Shield Against Climate Change impacts here on Friday, Romina Khurshid Alam that said despite poor economic conditions, the country remains committed to overcoming environmental and climate risks through whatever financial resources are available.
“Climate change significantly impacts Pakistan, affecting various aspects of life and the environment and these negative fallouts have left no option for us but to focus on building climate adaptation and improving disaster preparedness to protect lives and livelihoods of our people and environment,” the prime minister’s climate aide.
She cautioned that without exploring available funding opportunities in collaboration with international organisations including the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank, Pakistan would not be able to overcome exacerbating climate change impacts such as increasing floods, heatwaves, water scarcity, droughts, crop failures, declining crop productivity, biodiversity loss, sea-level rise and sea intrusion and health diseases.
However, “we are coordinating with national and international organisations such as Global Shield to help Pakistan avail existing funding resources for building the country’s socio-economic resilience through climate risk mitigation policy initiatives.
During the meeting Deputy Resident Representative for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Pakistan, Van Nguyen briefed the PM’s climate aide about the Global Shield and how Pakistan can avail from its funding and technical capacity-building facilities to build up the country’s resilience against the various climate risks, particularly disasters.
During the meeting representatives from the ministry and UNDP-Pakistan both sides discussed at length the matters related to the climate risk mitigation, climate finance for adaptation and mitigation measures, agriculture insurance, urban flood resilience.
Briefed the PM’s aide Romina Khurshid Alam, the senior UNDP-Pakistan official Van Nguyen also discussed processes for benefiting from the Global Shield against Climate Risks initiative, saying the new global funding mechanism aimed to close protection gaps in climate-vulnerable countries like Pakistan, using pre-arranged finance for improving disaster risk management.
“Basically, the Global Shield against Climate Risks initiative is more and better pre-arranged and trigger-based financial resource, which is immediately-available fund in response to disasters, in the most efficient, effective and fastest way for the economy, businesses, and communities in the most climate-vulnerable countries,” she said further while conversing with the PM’s aide Ms Alam.
Sharing details during the meeting, Regional Director South Asia at the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) & Vulnerable Twenty Group (V20), Hamza Ali Haroon apprised the PM’s aide Romina Khurshid Advisor further said that the Vulnerable Twenty Group (V20) together with the Group of Seven (G7) and other supporting countries launched the Global Shield against Climate Risks initiative to provide and facilitate more and better pre-arranged protection against climate and disaster related risks for vulnerable people in the highly climate risk-prone countries.
The CVF is a South-South cooperation platform and a voluntary, non-treaty organization for vulnerable developing countries specifically focused on climate change action and policy. It represents some 1.74 billion people worldwide and is made up of 68 members from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Pacific, Hamza Haroon informed the PM’s climate aide.
While appreciating members of UNDP-Pakistan, Global Shield and CVF for their interest in building Pakistan’s climate resilience through funding and technical capacity, Romina Khurshid Alam said that she will extend her government’s full support and engage with them to build the resilience of the people and economy of the country.
“Building disaster resilience of socio-economic sectors, particularly agriculture, water, energy, health and education is top priority of the Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif-led government and my ministry will engage with every single development sector partner to make Pakistan disaster-resilience at any cost,” Romina Khurshid stressed.
