Federal Minister for Climate Change, Senator Mushahidullah Khan, says present unsustainable global economic order has brutally over-exploited the natural resources to achieve so-called development, which has benefited only few while plunging millions more into poverty, hunger, disease and debt trap, particularly in developing countries.
“The world direly needs a whole new economic framework to cope with these challenges being aggravated further by the consequences of the global warming caused by increasing trajectory of emissions of climate-altering and heat-trapping greenhouse gases, mainly carbon-dioxide,” the minister underlined in a news statement issued here on Sunday.
Mushahidullah Khan cautioned that the world was unlikely to be able to deal with the pressing threat of global warming and achieve sustainable development goals without a new economic order, through which it could be made binding on rich industrialised countries and the world’s top historic polluters to use natural resources in a more judicious manner and move from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
What he termed the “business as usual” model of development has led to dangerous levels of pollution, triggered climate change and biodiversity loss, and has fallen flat to wipe out poverty and inequality.
All countries, Khan said, should make a shift towards a zero-carbon economy, which was ultimately the key to durable development and prosperity. But it was a tremendous challenge, particularly for developing countries.
“No one can deny the fact that no country has developed without fossil fuels to date. However, o co-operation is key to providing the technology, finance, skills and systems to create an alternative way of developing countries to adjust to the impacts of unfolding climate change for which rich countries are responsible,” she said.
He backed statement of the Irish President Michael D Higgins that “present generation could be the last one with the chance of responding to the urgent, uncontested effects of climate change”.
“The Irish president, last week rightly told at a meeting in Paris entitled the ‘Summit of Consciences for the Climate’ that the challenge of climate change provided opportunities to build up a new economic order for humanity and for the sustainability of mother Earth,” the minister highlighted.
Mushahidullah Khan said that Kofi Annan also rightly told the summit that the threat posed by climate change is as grave as the danger of nuclear war.
The summit was convened by the President of France, François Hollande, and was attended by religious groups, Nobel laureates and artists, as well as prominent politicians.