Forum to highlight climate change

LAHORE
WWF-Pakistan along with The Embassy of France in Pakistan and other civil society partners launched a forum ‘Pakistan to Paris’ to highlight climate changes in the country.
A press conference in this regard was held at a local hotel in which leading environmental experts from various organisations spoke.
The experts including Dr Ejaz Ahmad, Senior Director, WWF-Pakistan, Nathalie Dupont Political Counselor, French Embassy, Olivier Huynh Van, French Embassy, Pervez Hassan, lawyer, Rina Saeed Khan, Centre for Climate Research and Development (CCRD), Taimoor Sohail, CCRD, Aisha Khan, Mountain and Glacier Protection Organization (MGPO), Mahmood Akhtar Cheema, Director General, International Union for Conservation of Nature-Pakistan (IUCN-Pakistan) and Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, Lead Pakistan.
Speaking at the press conference, Dr Ejaz said Pakistan was grappling with a number of environmental issues such as floods, GLOFs, tropical cyclones, heat waves, shifting rainfall, river flow patterns, declining groundwater levels, droughts, expanding desertification, aridity and sea-level rise.
He said the climate change forum ‘Pakistan to Paris’ is a call for the government to submit well defined Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) so that Pakistan can highlight its condition as a climate affected country and seek funds from the Green Climate Fund (GCF).
He maintained the forum on climate change in Lahore comes at an important time, the 21st edition of the Conference of Parties (COP21), is scheduled to take place in Paris from November 30 to December 11 this year.
The 2015 Paris Climate Conference is going to be one of the largest ever events on climate, gathering all the member states of the UN, along with the major civil society organizations and local government authorities with the aim of reaching a new international agreement and devising new, solutions-oriented strategies to combat the changing climate.
The forum in Lahore is therefore conceived as a prelude to the Pakistani participation at the international conference.
The forum is an opportunity for the Pakistani government, NGOs and other related institutions to come together, discuss and share with the public the challenges posed by climate change.
Other experts highlighted the importance of climate change and said the Paris climate conference is particularly significant for Pakistan as the country is one of the most vulnerable to climate change. They added that since the past few years, the country is facing the deadliest impacts of climate change in the form of floods, cloud bursts, droughts, cyclones, sea intrusion and heat waves.
From the 2012 floods alone, Pakistan faced a loss of $6 billion, equivalent to one per cent of its GDP, they claimed.