and nature conservation.”
The Indus Consortium with the support of Oxfam also organised an environmental painting competition for the junior school kids. About 20 children took part in the competition.
Saeed Anwar, a TV and stage artiste, along with his team also performed few skits to entertain and educate the children about their role in keeping the environment clean and green.
A seminar ‘Combating the Climate Change Impact’ was also arranged with Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) Chairman Dr Iftikhar Ahmad in the chair. The speakers included Prof Dr Imran Hashmi from the NUST Institute of Environmental Sciences and Engineering (NUST-IESE), journalist Huma Khwar, Engineer Naseer Gillani, Water Chief in the Planning Commission of Pakistan, Ahmad Kamal, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Asif Shuja Khan, former Director General Pakistan environmental Protection Agency (Pak-EPA), Syed Mustafain Kazmi, Member Environment CDA, and Munir Ahmed, Director Devcom-Pakistan.
Dr Iftikhar Ahmad said the major impact of climate change would be on the water and agriculture, resulting sliding decrease in the yields of different crops. We need to introduce water efficient crops and also need to teach the farmers about the new methodologies and patterns of crops.
Dr Imran Hashmi said, the green cover is fast depleting due to overgrowth of population and the Green House Gas emissions have caused immense increase in the global warming that has caused intense changes in the climate. These changes are affecting us badly but we still need larger implementation on-ground to save the people from the negative impact of climate change.
Huma Khawar suggested the capacity building of the media persons to report the climate change impact stories. In the ‘breaking news’ culture, she said, we need to groom a group journalists that could bring forth the actualities of climate change impact from the poor and far flung areas.
Naseer Gillani said we are briskly leading to a water scarce country. “Our glaciers are melting at very fast pace and we also face heavy rains but there was no capacity of reservoirs to store the accumulated water flow in short span of time. We lose huge water to sea. The case of new water reservoirs has been already been pollicised. The poor people of the country would suffer from the lack of water in the years to come if immediate steps are not taken to construct dams, and the water storage capacity is not enhanced.”
Ahmad Kamal said Pakistan is among the top three countries vulnerable to large and intense disasters as reported by the international think tank German Watch. “We have seen the brunt of climate change during the last five years. Still, disaster management is not the top priority of the decision makers in Pakistan. We need to well equip the disaster management authorities at all levels; national, provincial and district,” he added.
Asif Shuja Khan urged the government to restructure the ministry of climate change and recruit technical and professional staff to meet the needs of the day. He said without dynamic team at the ministry, no vigorous steps could be taken to save the people from the ultimate brunt of the climate change.