UNITED NATIONS: Highlighting Pakistan’s unique ecological diversity, Prime Minister Imran Khan has reaffirmed the country’s resolve to preserve the valued asset and protect flora and fauna, besides achieving resilience against the climate change.
In his virtual address to the United Nations summit on “Urgent action on biodiversity for sustainable development”, convened by the UN General Assembly President at the level of heads of state and government on Wednesday, the Prime Minister, who also co-chaired the session, said Pakistan had enlisted the help of local communities for both biodiversity protection and climate change resilience.
He told the world community that Pakistan happens to be one of the fortunate countries for being ecologically diverse from North to South and East to West. “Pakistan has 12 climatic zones and the reason is that we have the steepest gradient. We go from Alpine climate zone to right down to the tropics.”
The Prime Minister highlighted the crisis being faced by humanity from the degradation of biodiversity and the urgent need to accelerate action on biodiversity for sustainable development.
He said Pakistan was among the top 10 countries most vulnerable to climate change. He added his government had taken up the challenge to plant 10 billion trees for which it had enlisted the help of local communities. “We have also increased our national parks from 30 to 39 as part of our ‘Protected Areas Initiative’ launched during the Covid era,” Khan told the summit.
He said consequent to the government’s efforts during the last two years, the country’s national parks had increased by 9 or 25 per cent. “This shows our strong commitment to the protection and preservation of biodiversity,” he concluded.
Speaking on the occasion, President of UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), Pakistan’s Ambassador Munir Akram, called for political will on part of world leaders to achieve biodiversity goals aimed at protecting the Earth and wildlife.
As the UN secretary-general said humanity was at war with nature and nature was fighting back, Ambassador Akram noted that impacts of climate change were visible and biodiversity loss will be equally devastating for the future of humanity.
Loss of biodiversity increases the likelihood of zoonotic diseases and Covid-19 was a grim reminder of the relation between humans and nature, he said. “The 17 Sustainable Development Goals are interlinked and if the biodiversity goals are not achieved, most of the other goals will be difficult to realise by 2030,” Ambassador Akram said.
“A new social and economic paradigm is needed that values nature more than gross national product (GNP) and per capita incomes,” he said, adding: “In promoting biodiversity goals there is a need to contain the economic greed and policy negligence that is driving humanity to destroy the planet.”
The meeting virtually gathered some 70 heads of state/government and a number of top officials. The summit provided an opportunity to heads of state and government and other leaders to raise ambition for the development of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework to be adopted at the 15th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2021.
