Zubair Qureshi
Federal Minister for Climate Change Senator Sherry Rehman has urged the developed nations to realize their pledges of climate resilience and climate adaptation for the countries that are facing the brunt of global warming caused by decades of wealth creation based on fossil fuel development.
Delivering a keynote address at the Third Regional Seminar for the Parliamentarians of the Asia Pacific Region on Achieving SDGs in Collaboration with Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), Minister Rehman called for building climate resilience and said “As far as climate resilience is concerned, SDGs are humanity’s only hope for the best quality of life especially for developing countries. For us, right now, SDG 13 is of particular interest and gravity as building climate resilience is key for Pakistan, situated on the path of changing weather systems driven by climate stress.
She said that the bargain between the Global North and the Global South needed to be reviewed, as currently, it is not working for countries like Pakistan that are paying the price for emissions by others without contributing even 1 percent to the problem .
This is a sobering moment for us. The monster monsoon that has flooded the country in unprecedented waves of water has put millions at risk. We all know that Pakistan is facing the disastrous shocks of climate change caused by global warming and is consistently placed in the top ten ‘most vulnerable’ countries in the world impacted by climate change. But we are feeling the real risk now because it is clear that climate change has become an existential threat to the country. The problem is not just local, it originates in other countries.
Towards the end, Senator Sherry Rehman emphasized that “Pakistan has become a trailer for countries that may soon see a full climate apocalypse movie to follow,” she further elaborated. “We made a humanitarian appeal and we are still trying to work out to service 33 million people affected, many of whom are climate refugees in their own country. Adaptation finance now needs to be front and center of climate talks, with a serious scaling up of the financial envelope for the same at the COP 27 agenda.
