Anticipatory inclusive approach can handle climate crisis

Islamabad : Experts at a roundtable called upon the government and policy makers to come up with an inclusive and holistic approach to meet the exacerbating climate crisis through anticipatory adaptation.

The roundtable on “Foresight and futures thinking for anticipatory adaptation in Pakistan” was organised here by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in collaboration with International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

Amina Maharjan, senior specialist, ICIMOD, briefed the participants on the foresight and futures thinking for anticipatory adaptation in the region, methods to explore future pathway in terms of foresight, scenario development, development of efficient strategies and understanding foresight beyond predictions.

She briefed the participants on the emerging concept of foresight as the method of scoping, sensitisation, participatory scenario development, integration into plans and policies and gender inclusive steps to address data gaps and other shortcomings hampering climate resilient future development through a futuristic approach.

Sultan Mehmood, World Food Programme (WFP) representative, mentioned the climate adaptation-related interventions being implemented through WFP collaboration particularly the Living Indus Initiative. He underscored the need to address water management, governance, land cover area protection and multi-hazard vulnerability risk assessment (MHVRA) as crucial components to successfully meet the challenge of climate foresight.

Dr Shafqat Munir, deputy executive director, SDPI informed the forum that amid discourse on anticipatory approaches, it is required to have systems capable to workout disaster risk reduction and climate change anticipatory adaptation and foresight models.

He said the stakeholders and partners are working in silos that needs to end, whereas risk governance and financing need to be looked with anticipatory approach.

Dr Babar Shahbaz from Institute of Agricultural Extension Education and Rural Development said it is important to understand future risks and take anticipatory actions.

Muhammad Farooq, senior joint secretary, Ministry of Climate Change and Environmental Coordination, briefed the roundtable about the steps taken by the Ministry in the aftermath of rising magnitude of climate catastrophes. He shed light on the development of the baseline data based on modern techniques, MHVRA being done for high resolution data work underway on climate on mapping and prediction by 2090.