Nuaman Ishfaq Mughal,
Islamabad: Adviser to Prime Minister on Climate Change, Malik Amin Aslam Khan said that Pakistan effectively presented its case during climate negotiations at Conference of Parties (COP) 24 in Katowice, Poland and elected as vice president of Conference of the Parties (COP), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
He said this while speaking at media debriefing on ‘COP24: Poland and Way forward for Pakistan’, organized by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in collaboration with Ministry of Climate Change and Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA) in Islamabad.
The advisor said that climate change was a stark reality and it was essential to initiate joint efforts to counter it. He further said that despite least polluter to the world environment, Pakistan was highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and ranked at 8th among top 10 vulnerable countries, whereas 2nd in term of economic loss due to the impacts of climate change. “Pakistan lost around 4 billion dollars due to climate change in the last 20 years,” he added. While responding to the question he said that we should have a dialogue with India on the issue of glaciers-melt, air pollution and smog, as climate change knows no boundaries.
He also said Pakistan this year took the smallest-ever delegation of eight members, four from foreign office and four from ministry, to the COP24 meeting and saved around PKR 20 million. “With small delegation we have contributed a lot ”, he said, adding that Pakistani delegation participated in 8 side events and chaired three of them which realized the world that Pakistan was capable and understood the issue of climate change.
The advisor further told that Pakistan also secured a seat in the Executive Board of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which was an important institute of climate finance, where Pakistan could have opportunities to secure fund for climate-related projects.
Executive Director SDPI, Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri said that hard work of Malik Amin Asalm at COP24 had enabled Pakistan to play an effective role in forthcoming climate negotiations in 2019. “Full credit goes to Malik Amin Aslam, who worked tirelessly at COP24 and got Pakistan elected as Vice President for the forthcoming COP. This is the big moment and achievement for Pakistan,” he added.
