PM for constituting expert committee on climate change

ISLAMABAD     –   Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif Tuesday direct­ed to constitute an Expert Com­mittee on Climate Change which would be advising the Feder­al Government with regard to strategies on the issues relat­ed to various aspects of climate change such as climate finance, adaptation, and loss and dam­age assessment.

The prime minister, who was chairing the first meeting of Pa­kistan Climate Change Coun­cil (PCCC) here, commended the initiative of the Ministry of Climate Change with regard to the constitution of the Climate Change Council and praised the Minister for Climate Change for pleading the case of Pakistan with regard to climate change, globally. 

He said the climate change in­duced devastating floods had caused havoc across the coun­try, especially in the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan.

Despite having less than 1 percent share in the global carbon emission, Pakistan was one of the 10 countries most affected by climate change, he underlined, a press release is­sued by the PM Media Wing said. 

The prime minister urged the need to improve risk mapping, capacity building to access cli­mate finance as well as loss and damage assessment ability.

He emphasized on including risk mitigation and adaptation in disaster management strat­egies to reduce damages in the future. 

The prime minister also stressed on the need of better coordination among the feder­ating units on environment is­sues as environment was a de­volved subject after the 18th Constitutional Amendment. 

The meeting was briefed that this year, Pakistan suffered overwhelming events like se­vere drought (that dried the delta area of Sindh province), forest fires, heat waves, glacier melting with three times than the average rate, glacial out­break floods followed by heavy monsoon rains, were induced by climate change.

It was informed that the World Bank had estimated Paki­stan’s recent flood losses at US $ 40 billion.

Pakistan faced 152 extreme events related to climate change in the last two decades and there was 300 percent increase in Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOF), the meeting was told.

It was further briefed that high intensity heatwave per­sistence had increased to 41 days per year and Pakistan had the hottest cities in the world for straight three years with temperature rising as high as 53.7 degree celsius