Islamabad : Musadik Malik, Minister of State for Petroleum, has said that we cannot simply start counting carbon emissions from today and start asking every country to decarbonise at the same rate irrespective of the level of development.
Mr Malik was delivering his keynote address at launching of the Asian Infrastructure Finance (AIF) Report on “Moonshots for the emerging world: transforming state capacity and mobilising private sector toward net zero” prepared by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) at a ceremony organised
here by Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) University.
The Minister said that we understand that the contributions toward net-zero transition come from each and every economy since we are in it together, but there should also be a realisation that this transition should be justified. Some economies in the world, he said, achieved faster economic growth in the past and reached a higher levels of development, but it came at a higher cost, in terms of polluting the world and environmental degradation. As a result of higher economic growth, he observed, the benefits were mostly reaped by the developed economies today, but the costs, in terms of environmental degradation and climate change, was borne by the whole planet.
The economies left behind did not add much to the pollution, but they have been adversely affected by the worsening climate and were left on their own to fend for themselves. In his presentation, AIIB Chief Economist Erik Berglöf shared the key findings of the report. He said that the report cogently argues for the acceleration and scaling up of the state capacity and the collective global effort needed to accelerate the net zero transition.
It also shows how, through innovative and technology adoption frameworks, public-private partnerships can work together with state-owned enterprises and financial institutions to bring about moonshots – inspirational, once-in-a-generation project breakthroughs – that can decarbonise emerging world economies, giving renewed momentum to their development and growth. He opined that it underlines why global MDBs – through a combination of capital, convening power and investment in
green innovation – are so
vital to enabling wider institutional reform. Earlier, Dr Nadeem-ul-Haque, Vice-Chancellor, of PIDE University, welcomed the participants.