Pakistan doing more than its share to fight climate change: Imran

By News Desk

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday said Pakistan was doing “more than its share” to fight climate change as the government had allocated a record Rs14.50 billion in the budget in that regard.

On his Twitter handle, the Prime Minister also posted graph showing the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government’s budget allocations compared to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) regimes.

During the fiscal year 2020-21, the PTI government allocated 6 billion rupees whereas in the year 2019-20, the allocation stood at 7.5 billion rupees.

These budget allocations, for the ministry of climate change, are significantly higher when compared with the allocations set aside by the PPP and PML-N. According to the graph, the PPP in its last tenure made total allocations of 185 million rupees in between 2011 and 2013 to fight climate change, whereas the PML-N allocated 1.7 billion rupees in its five-year term from 2013 to 2018. Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin, in his budget speech, had announced the allocation earmarked for various ongoing and new projects of the climate change ministry to counter global warming and environmental changes with the maximum funding for the government’s Ten Billion Tree Tsunami project.

Pakistan has also recently hosted World Environment Day which was virtually attended by global leaders, organisations and partners. The hosting of such an event was a said by government functionaries as global acknowledgment of Pakistan’s rapid response to fight climate change and save the ecosystem.