Pakistan Red Crescent (PRC) Sindh Branch hosted an inter-school debate competition on climate change at Baldia Town to mark Pakistan’s Independence Day here on Tuesday. The Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) Unit has assigned a topic to four government and four private schools to participate in a debate competition, said a statement. The topic of the debate was, “Is Pakistan capable of evolving as a developed country while dealing with the effects of climate change”.
More than 250 students and teachers from all the invited schools attended the event. In a message, the Provincial Secretary PRC-Sindh Kanwar Waseem said that Pakistan had been ranked the fifth most affected country in the world due to extreme weather events between 1999 and 2018.
In recent years, he said, Pakistan had faced floods, droughts, heat-waves and other stressors; therefore, climate change is now Pakistan’s most emerging and significant issue, and each of us has a responsibility to do our part to mitigate the effects of climate change for our future generations, Provincial Secretary emphasized.
Program Officer CCA Ms. Iram Ayaz addressed the participants and stated that the debate competition strengthened the CAA Program’s goal of contributing to community resilience and raising awareness of climate change and support for climate action.