Observer Report Islamabad
Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Thursday that Pakistan must achieve the target of planting 10 billion trees to protect the future generations and play its due role in mitigating global warming.
“Pakistan is among the 10 most vulnerable countries with regard to global warming,” the premier said.
His remarks came as he addressed a gathering related to Green Financing Innovations in Islamabad.
“The country must play its part in saving the world from global warming,” the PM said urging to grow more national forests, increasing the number of trees and investing in urban forestry.
Citing the example of China and Indonesia, PM Imran observed that Pakistan could learn a lot from these countries in terms of green innovations.
“Pakistan’s future lies in these efforts! We have taken our natural resources for granted, but now is the time [to care for them],” he remarked.
Premier termed the growth of mangrove forests a good omen for the country. “No other forests witnessed such growth,” he said.
“We started the billion tree initiative in 2013, now we have to raise awareness about it,” the premier added.
“Pakistan will take the lead in tackling the challenges of global warming and carbon emissions,” he said. The premier warned that if the green cause was ignored today the country will reach a point of no return.
The event was organised by the Ministry of Climate Change as part of the activities related to the World Environment Day activities.
As part of the initiative towards restoring the eco-system, the ministry aims to conduct an evaluation of the country’s natural capital and engage with partners for evolving innovative financing instruments.
“We are more vulnerable than Bangladesh […] due to the melting of our glaciers,” he said. “It is not our fault. There are giants that contribute to carbon emissions but countries like us face the consequences,” he said, adding that awareness was slowly
spreading.
“For the first time in the United States, President Joe Biden’s administration is focusing on climate change. The previous administration was not thinking about environmental degradation.”
PM Imran reiterated that if we wanted to protect future generations from the impact of climate change, it is imperative to take steps to protect the environment, which include making national parks, planting trees and carrying out urban forestry.
“We need to utilise all available resources to increase the number of trees in the country,” he said, adding that China had also developed a green city. “We can learn a lot from China.”
Commenting on the concept of “green bonds”, he said that the world was slowly realising the greed with which it had exploited nature.
“There were always going to be consequences of that. Thankfully, awareness has increased in the past 10 years.”
“People only started caring about global warming in the past 20 years. Before that when someone used to talk about it, others used to laugh. Even now, in the past three to four years, some developed countries did not take it seriously.”
He said that the California wildfires and Australia bush fires had jolted the global community. Major personalities, like Microsoft founder Bill Gates, had realised that steps were needed to mitigate the challenges of climate change before it was too late,
he said.
