Zubair Qureshi
Federal Minister for Climate Change Senator Sherry Rehman received a phone call on Thursday from John Kerry, United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate and discussed with him Pakistan’s roadmap to adopting climate-friendly policy.
The Federal Minister underscored that Pakistan is consistently placed in the top ten ‘most vulnerable’ countries in the world impacted by climate change which has now become an existential threat to the country.
Rehman apprised Senator Kerry about Pakistan’s accelerated vulnerability to the climate crisis, saying that despite producing less than one percent of GHG emissions Pakistan is now the ground zero of a global climate catastrophe. The country is lurching from unprecedented heat waves, to critical glacial melt, draught one month and flooding in another. While high climate ambition commitments are important, including NDCs that include an enormous energy transition.
Apprising Mr. Kerry on the NDCs, Minister remarked, “with the current global energy crisis, and the disruption in supply chains caused by the Ukraine war, including the invisible costs of the pandemic to climate vulnerable countries, energy transitions are facing an uncertain timeline, so technical and financial assistance is the need of the hour. They discussed a need for just energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and committed to a renewed working partnership between PAK-US. Furthermore, they talked about Pakistan’s commitment to a Global Methane Pledge, and suggested cooperation on the path forward.
