Climate change: Previous financial pledges yet to materialise: PM

BAKU: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday sensitizing the global community on the risks posed by climate change and the vulnerabilities of developing countries, called for grant-based climate finance that should not add to the debt burden of the developing nations.

The prime minister, addressing the High-Level Segment of the “World Leaders’ Climate Action Summit” of the 29th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) here, called for fulfilling the pledges of COP27 and COP28 as well as those made in Paris 10 years ago.

“I strongly feel, that climate finance must be grant-based and not add to the debt burden of vulnerable developing countries. Here is the opportunity that the COP29 should make an understanding loud and clear that we will have to fulfill those financial pledges of COP27 and COP28... Ten years ago in Paris, we had failed to stop the rise in emissions and catastrophic global warming. The Paris pledges made 10 years ago have yet to see the light of the day,” the prime minister said.

He viewed that the COP29 would help understand the calamities already faced by some of the countries and others might face if counter-measures were not taken to create a conducive environment to avert calamities like the one faced by Pakistan in the form of 2022 floods which left millions of the people homeless, millions of house and acre of land submerged, standing crops destroyed, and almost 1700 people dead. Besides, the country also faced an economic loss worth around $30 billion, he added.

Highlighting the devastation faced by the people of Pakistan caused by the climate change-induced floods in 2022, Prime Minister Shehbaz recalled his interaction with a boy Ikramullah in the flood-hit Balochistan who had lost everything to the calamity including his home, school, and entire village.

“My memories are still fresh. I was meeting with people in Balochistan who were affected by the flood. I met a boy by the name of Ikramullah whose entire village was razed on the face of the earth, his home completely demolished and his school submerged,” the prime minister said.

He said as the government had arranged the said boy’s education in another part of the country, he was now becoming a very productive hand of Pakistan. However, even all-out efforts could not subdue the sufferings of all flood-hit children in Pakistan or any other part of the world, he added.

To meet the needs of the populations hit by the impacts of climate change and avert such devastations in the future, Prime Minister Shehbaz reiterated his call for the fulfillment of the pledges made in previous COP summits.