The Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) Acting Chairman Dr Nadeem Amjad said that it was imperative to develop a climate-smart agriculture mechanism to fulfil the growing food demands of the country.
Addressing a workshop on ‘Enabling Institutions and Policies for Climate-Smart Agriculture,’ he said food security of the country was linked to sustainable agricultural production, whereas agriculture sector was dependent on prevailing climate.
The aim of the workshop was introducing a climate-smart agricultural approach to make the country food secure on a sustainable basis to meet the development goals, said a press release issued here Monday.
The event was organised by Ministry of National Food Security and Research in collaboration with PARC and World Bank.
Dr Nadeem said that any short term and long term changes in climate could have serious consequences to arrangements to feed the nation with high quality, affordable and accessible staple foods.
He informed that agriculture sector was the most vulnerable of climate changes as compared to any other sectors and impacting the food safety and security.
He said that Pakistan was contributing very little to the greenhouse gases emissions but was among the highest victims of adverse impacts of climate change.
He called upon the developed countries to mobilise their resources in order to protect the agriculture and livestock sectors of developing countries from extreme weather impacts and climate changes.
He asked for investing in rural development programmes for enabling small farmers to adopt climate-smart agriculture technologies for increasing food security in the country.
All countries, he said, including Pakistan, were incorporating sustainable development and climate change perspective into their policies, objectives and action plans.
The government was committed to adapt state of the art climate-smart technologies, through sustainable natural resource management, especially improved integrated water resource management and creating climate resilient communities for the development of agriculture sector of the country, he added.
