Federal Minister for Climate Change Senator Mushahidullah Khan has lauded the European Union for announcing a generous funding of €9 billion to help the global community fight climate change.
“The announcement of whopping amount in funding for climate action in developing countries will help boost climate resilience of various socio-economic sectors, particularly agriculture, water, irrigation, health, energy and construction,” he said.
He said his climate change ministry will try to get sufficient amount of the new funding by the European Commission to protect country’s agriculture, health, irrigation and energy sectors from the fallouts of the recurring and protracted droughts, heat-waves and floods.
He highlighted that the climate change was predicted to lead to more frequent and intense droughts, floods, heat-waves, and other extreme weather, as well as more intense storms and rising sea levels. These fallouts of the climate change were likely to badly affect agriculture, water, energy, health and infrastructure sectors of economy across swathes of the globe, including sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia.
“These effects will also be felt in Pakistan in a harder way and dampen the gains of the poverty reduction, health improvement, food security, diseases control, development and energy infrastructure,” he warned and said, “The present government was very much aware of the situation and was taking institutional and policy measures to cope with these climate change impacts.”
Pakistan was extremely vulnerable to devastating effects of the global warming-caused climate change and sufferings climate-related losses to the tune of nearly four Rs 400 billion in socio-economic damages.
In its Global Climate Risk Index 2018 report launched last year in November in Bonn, the globally-recognised independent think-tank German Watch ranked the country the 7th most climate-vulnerable country in the world.
The European Commission announced last month a funding of €9 billion for action on climate change, one of a flurry of measures from governments, businesses and investors aimed at achieving the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
EU fund will be focused on clean energy and sustainable cities and agriculture as a part of climate change adaptation and mitigation according to European commission.
The climate change minister said with such funding by industrialized countries, blamed for global warming-induced climate change, it was possible to create alternatives to the fossil-fuel driven economy in these advanced countries.
“But more aggressive efforts on the part of the rich countries including US, Germany, France, Poland, Japan, China and India are quickly needed for climate change mitigation through transitioning towards low-carbon economy,” he emphasized.
Mushahidullah Khan highlighted that the developed countries continued to ruthlessly exploit natural resources beyond limits and in an unsustainable manner to achieve industrialisation goals over last several decades.
