- Mushahidullah says Pakistan ranked among top 10 most vulnerable countries to climate change calamities
ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Climate Change Senator Mushahidullah Khan on Friday said that protecting lives and livelihoods of the people, particularly in the country’s disaster-prone areas such as mountainous and coastal, through public awareness programmes and integrating disaster-resilience in public infrastructure development policies must for achieving sustainable economic development and poverty elimination.
Talking to media here in connection with the International Day for Disaster Reduction being marked across the world, he said that Pakistan has suffered 133 climate change-induced disasters from year 1996 to 2015, which caused economic damages.
However, the day offered a great opportunity to sensitise public about viable techniques today and everyday to reduce their vulnerabilities to climate change-induced disasters, particularly, land and river erosions, forest fires, riverine and glacial lake outburst floods in the country.
“Role of the government, nongovernmental organisations and media is key to highlight importance of disaster risk reeducation in the disaster-prone Pakistan, which is ranked among the top 10 most vulnerable countries to climate change-caused disasters, which have shown increase in frequency and intensity since 2010,” Mushahidullah underlined.
He said that the country has been ranked the seventh most affected country in the world because of the climate change-related disasters, which have become more frequent intense and warned that the country’s ranking about vulnerability to disasters could worsen if all relevant federal and provincial government organisations failed to implement disaster risk reduction programmes, particularly in agriculture, energy, water, health, education, transport, infrastructure and energy sectors.
Quoting figures from the German Watch Index-2017 report, the minister said that as many as 133 climate change-induced disasters have occurred in the country between 1996 to 2015, which have caused economic damages of several billion dollars over these years.
“The climate change-related disasters, particularly riverine and flash floods, cause around four billion dollars of losses annually in economic damages, most of them related to agriculture, water, irrigation, health, education, energy and public infrastructure sectors,” he said.
“Addressing these climate change-induced challenges and boosting countries resilience through local and national adaptation plans require an annual investment of around 40 billion dollars in renewable energy, transport, waste management and forestry sectors for mitigating 20 percent of its national carbon emissions by 2030 and seven 14 billion dollars annually for adapting to shifting climatic patterns.”
He stressed that ranked extremely vulnerable country to extreme climate events, Pakistan was in a state of forced adaptation to strengthen its resilience through these hefty investments projects that help protect the country from exacerbating fallouts of climate change on people, their lives and livelihoods, country’s economic sectors, mainly agriculture, water, energy and transport.
“There is a huge potential for adaptation in Pakistan, particularly in strengthening and fortifying the flood infrastructure including water reservoirs and irrigation network,” he said, adding that this would involve enhancing resilience of local communities to the adverse impacts of the climate change.