ISLAMABAD, Jun 1 (APP): Federal Minister for Climate Change Senator Sherry Rehman Wednesday called the global community to bridge the worldwide gaps between climate financing, capacity and needs to address the rapidly spiking climate crisis.
The Minister addressed the ministerial-level event on the new Global Diversity Framework and Nature Financing on invitation from Lord Goldsmith, and then a High Level Panel on the Basel, Rotterdam, and Basil Conventions.
She stated, “We are looking at an existential crisis from the vantage point of a country like Pakistan which is actually on the front lines of a 1.5 plus or even a 2-degree plus Celsius addition to a pre-industrial world.
This is the temperature expected at the end of the century but we are already living that trajectory. And we still collectively look at Climate intervention not as a future we need to protect or even a present which we need to conserve.”
She said climate, biodiversity and pollution the triple planetary crises are not a part of the mainstream mindset, thoughts or even public demand. They are seen as a science based niche subject where young people who were passionate about saving their future were mobilised, but really back home there was a growing sense that we have to make very expensive transitions as tiny polluters who were contributing under 1% to GHG emissions when we do not have the requisite policy tools and frameworks.
“It’s not just Pakistan, there are many countries here that do not have the necessary instruments or resources for knowledge or data for Nature Capital Accounting to carbon trade frameworks, which is core to a just energy transition to clean energy . It is imperative for us to exchange knowledge and best practices but we must understand that there is a huge climate and technical capacity gap here between the rich countries and the developing ones .”
“Parts of Pakistan already live through a fifth season of smog caused by pollution or crop burning in both India and Pakistan; we are on the edge of water scarcity but have no immediate path that is resourced to adapt to such a future. Solutions need to be global, with responsibility located as much in the local as the public and private sectors of all countries that have gained the most from extracting natural resources from the global south”
She concluded, “The global south is fighting multiple compounded crises, there are cities in Pakistan where it is already 51 degrees, which is hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement, which is uninhabitable, and we are predicted to be water scarce by 2025. Our crops are suffering leading not just to an economic crisis rather a severe food shortage as well. These water and food insecurity crises are compounded by anthropogenic activities globally and we are now seeing ourselves as the dumping grounds for critical marine and aquatic pollution. Until there is a bridge between financing, capacity, and our needs, the future looks very despondent.”
