Pakistan among countries most affected by climate change: Sherry

ISLAMABAD: Federal Climate Change Minister Senator Sherry Rehman has said the government was looking at an existential crisis from the vantage point of a country like Pakistan which is actually on the frontlines of climate change in the world.

“This is the temperature expected at the end of the century, but we are already living in that trajectory,” she said while addressing a ministerial-level event on the new Global Diversity Framework and Nature Financing. She said parts of Pakistan already lived through a fifth season of smog caused by pollution or crop burning in both India and Pakistan and “we are on the edge of water scarcity but have no immediate path that is resourced to adapt to such a future”.

There were cities in Pakistan where the temperature was already 51 degrees Celsius, which was uninhabitable and the country was predicted to be water scarce by 2025. “Our crops are suffering, leading not just to an economic crisis but also a severe food shortage. These water and food insecurity crises are compounded by anthropogenic activities globally.” She said until there was a bridge between financing, capacity and Pakistan’s needs, the future looked despondent. She said climate, biodiversity and pollution crises ware not part of the mainstream mindset, thoughts or even public demand. “They are seen as a science-based niche subject where young people who are passionate about saving their future are mobilized. But really back home, there is a growing sense that we have to make very expensive transitions as tiny polluters are contributing under 1% to GHG emissions when we do not have the requisite policy tools and frameworks.”