Pakistan must develop advanced skills to overcome challenges: Naveed Qamar

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Commerce Syed Naveed Qamar on Thursday said that Pakistan needs to rely on local resources and develop advanced skills to overcome today’s pressing challenges such as economic crisis, climate change and devastating flood losses.

He was speaking at the concluding plenary titled: ‘Looking Beyond 75’, on the last leg of 25th Sustainable Development Conference (SDC) organized by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) and jointly held alongside UNESCAP's 6th South and Southwest Asia High-level Political Forum and Policy Dialogue on SDGs.

Naveed Qamar noted that the country in 2010 and 2011 witnessed floods, but after a decade the same occurred and if we had to repeat the same things then it was wrong with the governance model.

“We will have to support our people within our limited resources whether the world helps us or not. The flood loss estimates by Pakistan accounts for $32 billion whereas the world estimate is $16 billion. Commenting on the rising global warming, he said the world had to change its behaviour and stop overeating the planet and cut its galloping carbon emissions. The minister said the country has pledged to convert its energy mix over renewables, which is ambitious and rightly decided as it cannot afford power generation on import-based resources. He underlined that the country has quit reliance on import-based power and it has to adapt to the new flood and drought cycles.

Dr Ishrat Husain, Former Advisor to the Prime Minister on Institutional Reforms and Austerity, said the latest study of 32 countries has come to the conclusion that there is no cut off between growth and carbon emissions and there is no binary between the carbon emissions and growth.

He stressed the need for building strategy integrating climate change and extensive growth agenda as the country’s economy is not going to be isolated from global trends, he added. Amid changing global trends, the first is the demographic change where the countries with aging population are demanding trained labour to fill the gap like Japan having 0.7% population decline, it demands 80,000 IT professionals from Pakistan till 2030.

“We have huge information exposure where there is fake news, disinformation and sensationalism; the youth must not be persuaded by television talk shows and social media fake news rather make efforts to make this country a great country,” he maintained.

Speaking at an earlier plenary, Malik Amin Aslam, former Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Climate Change termed the COP-27 reaching on an agreement on new loss and damage fund for vulnerable countries a big achievement. However, he said, it would remain a hollow victory till the actual availability of funds to compensate the climate-induced losses.

Aslam said that we have to take measure to balance the imbalances we have created in connection with the nature. He added that climate change is pushing the developing countries towards the debt traps.

Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri, SDPI Executive Director, said while facing Triple-C crises, including climate change, conflict, and health-related emergencies (especially Covid-19), we have several challenges, including social protections, food security, and engaging local communities in a meaningful manner and build their resilience. Therefore, an alternate paradigm on these issues is very important to be heard, being a democratic country.