SDPI rejoinder to news item

ISLAMABAD: The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), in a rejoinder to a news story published in The News and Jang levelling allegations against its Executive Director Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri that he had sent his friends and family to Glasgow to attend COP26, is totally misleading and against the facts.

None of Dr Suleri's family members or friends travelled to Glasgow. The News item, while padding a baseless story, quoted a vague procedure for registration for COP and just on the basis of assumption and without knowing the fact about who actually went to Glasgow for COP26 and who attended online, the story was crafted and the language of the story attributing Dr Suleri as member of the Prime Minister's Economic Council, which has nothing to do with the SDPI, clearly shows that it is a maligning news item distorting the facts.

This is fake and maligning news item against which Dr Suleri reserves the right to move to the court of law. The SDPI said that the reporter mentioned the name of Syed Waqar Haider Sherazi among those who were sponsored to go to Glasgow, whereas Mr Sherazi did not go to Glasgow. According to the COP26 registration process, think tanks, civil society organisations and other groups including indigenous groups, media and parliamentarians apply for accreditation and after approval from the UNFCCC, get registered to attend the COP. The UNFCCC grants permission, but does not fund the participation. This year, the COP26 was in a hybrid mode, so it was not necessary that those who got themselves registered for the COP26 went to Glasgow, majority of the people across the world attended the COP26 online. Only a few thousands, who could manage their travel to Glasgow, attended in person.

From Pakistan, from among the non-government observers, the SDPI was not the sole body to get registration for the COP26. Dozens of representatives from non-governmental organisations, academia, media and individuals from Pakistan got accredited for the COP26, only a few could make it in person while others attended online. From the SDPI, only five people attended; three were the senior research fellows (including the executive director) who are PhD and experts in the fields such as food security, energy, resilience, migration, disaster and climate hazards; two professionals were from policy and advocacy field, which is a mandatory part of COPs.

Climate change is not just a single consolidated theme, it has dozens of sub themes on which various experts work. This is misleading that 20 people went to Glasgow and this is against the fact that they did not have any expertise on environment.

Regarding the parliamentarians, the SDPI says that the parliamentarians play a key role as they connect and network with fellow parliamentarians from other countries and know from each other as what they have been doing on climate change in their respective countries. The parliamentarians, whose names have been mentioned in the story, are members of the SDGs task force and climate change caucus in the parliament, two of them travelled to the UK as part of their official travel sponsored by the Senate of Pakistan, and the National Assembly of Pakistan. One of them is former parliamentary secretary of Ministry of Climate Change, while the fourth one is convenor of Parliamentary Taskforce on SDGs. They do have understanding on climate change themes and they play their role. So, it is a wrong impression that they have no interest or knowledge on climate change.

Regarding funding of the non-governmental observer delegates, each non-governmental entity raises money from their partners to participate in various sessions to give their input. Like other dozens of NGOs in Pakistan, the SDPI also works with its partners and network members to contribute to various side events which are organised by alliance partners. Some network partners fully or partially support the travel and they too fund only once they are satisfied with the level of participation. This is not the case only with SDPI, it is also for other nongovernmental organisations across the world including Pakistan. A couple of SDPI delegates were fully or partially funded, rest of them managed their own funding. The SDPI understands the value for money and is accountable to its development partners.

The SDPI once again contradicts the misleading story published in The News and Jang and requests the editors to publish our contradiction as per the procedure given in the Defamation Ordinance 2002, Clause 5(f), i.e., "print or publish a contradiction or denial in the same manner and with the same prominence".