‘Building disaster resilience of socio-economic sectors our top priority’

Islamabad:Coordinator to the Prime Minister on Climate Change and Environmental Coordination, Romina Khurshid Alam said that climate change-caused various disasters mainly floods and heatwaves are now a major cause of massive socio-economic damages in Pakistan. But, the present government is taking all-out policy measures to enhance the country’s climate resilience against the recurring and intensifying disasters.

Chairing a high-level meeting on Strengthening Pakistan’s Shield Against Climate Change Impacts here on Friday, Ms Romina that said despite poor economic conditions, the country remains committed to overcoming environmental and climate risks through whatever financial resources are available.

“Climate change significantly impacts Pakistan, affecting various aspects of life and the environment and these negative effects have left no option for us but to focus on building climate adaptation and improving disaster preparedness to protect lives and livelihoods of our people and environment,” the prime minister’s climate aide.

She cautioned that without exploring available funding opportunities in collaboration with international organisations including the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank, Pakistan would not be able to overcome exacerbating climate change impacts such as increasing floods, heatwaves, water scarcity, droughts, crop failures, declining crop productivity, biodiversity loss, sea-level rise and sea intrusion and health diseases.

"We are coordinating with national and international organisations such as Global Shield to help Pakistan avail existing funding resources for building the country’s socio-economic resilience through climate risk mitigation policy initiatives."

During the meeting Deputy Resident Representative for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Pakistan, Van Nguyen briefed the PM’s climate aide about the Global Shield and how Pakistan can avail from its funding and technical capacity-building facilities to build up the country’s resilience against the various climate risks, particularly disasters.

During the meeting representatives from the ministry and UNDP-Pakistan both sides discussed at length the matters related to the climate risk mitigation, climate finance for adaptation and mitigation measures, agriculture insurance, urban flood resilience.