Staff Reporter
Speakers at a multidisciplinary daylong 9th Pakistan Mountain Festival Conference held here on Friday urged the government and international development partners to allocate sufficient funds for mountain areas of Pakistan to ensure adaptation of climate change. Being far flung from the urban centres, the mountain communities are subject to neglect that has increased their vulnerability to the impact of climate change. They envisaged the backbone role of local educated and dynamic youth in advocacy and awareness-raising on combating the challenges confronting the mountain communities.
Devcom-Pakistan (Development Communications Network) organized the conference on “Youth Matters for Mountains” to mark the International Mountains Day (IMD) in connection with the 9th edition of Pakistan Mountain Festival at the Comsats University Islamabad campus in collaboration with Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Water Aid, Centre for Climate Research and Development (CCRD) and Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF).
The inaugural session, Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction, was chaired by the chairman of Federal Floods Commission (FFC) Ahmad Kamal. The other speakers of the session were Idrees Mahsud, Director General National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Dr. Anjum Rasheed, Assistant Professor, Centre for Climate Research & Development (CCRD), Naeem Ashraf Raja, Director (Biodiversity), Ministry of Climate Change, Dr Imran Saquib Khallid, Research Fellow, Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI).
FFC chairman Ahmad Kamal said the National Flood Protection Plan-IV is being implemented with the active participation of sun-national authorities on innovative and integrated approach incorporating structural and non-structural measures for reducing floods, reducing susceptibility to flood damages and mitigating the flood impacts keeping in view constraints, gaps and lapses in the previous Flood Protection Plans, technical shortcomings and lessons learnt from past major flood events.
