Efforts on to reduce risk of climate change

CHITRAL: Advisor to Prime Minister on Climate-change Malik Amin Aslam on Tuesday said that Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan were the worst-affected places of extreme weather conditions in Pakistan.

Speaking at a function arranged by the United Nations Development Programme’s Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) project to mark the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, Malik Amin Aslam said that the government was taking tangible steps as Prime Minister Imran Khan vision to reduce effects of climate change on the vulnerable communities.

He said that Pakistan was ranked fifth on the index of climate change that was why the government had allocated huge funds to tackle the effects of natural disasters in the prone areas of extreme weather conditions in the country.

The communities vulnerable to natural disasters, the advisor added, were being empowered through the GLOF project to allay the harmful effects of weather calamities on the people. “The government has allocated Rs6 billion for this project to strengthen communities in 40 villages of 24 valleys in Chitral,” Malik Amin Aslam said.

He claimed that the incumbent Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government had a distinction to have included the element of disaster risk reduction in the planning of development projects for the first time in the history of the county.

He added that capacity of different federal and provincial departments was being strengthened under this project to better handle the natural calamities in the disaster-prone areas. Later, the advisor handed over emergency kits to Rescue 1122. Additional Secretary Climate-change Jodat Ayaz also spoke on the occasion Malik Amin Aslam later also addressed a seminar held at the University of Chitral on the same topic.