Pakistan need access to global funds to cope with climate change
Pakistan will need approximately $40 billion in funds to achieve the desired level of greenhouse gas emissions during the next one and half decade and counter climate change threats, according to Asian Development Bank (ADB).
Pakistan’s Minister for Climate Change Senator Mushahidullah Khan said: “Pakistan is bearing the brunt of climate change and the country needs around $40 billion to deal with issues arising from this phenomenon.”
Pakistan is ranked seventh among countries most affected by and vulnerable to climate change disasters in spite of being ranked 135th among the countries in globalgreenhouse gases contribution. Pakistan contributes only 0.8 in global greenhouse gasses.
Climate change is becoming a challenge for many countries as the frequencies of weather anomalies and climatic extremes have increased during the last two decades.
In the previous year’s country had faced extreme climate change in the form of floods, droughts, sea intrusion and rapid melting of glaciers. The dangers are still very real as Pakistan is one among the top 10 countries that will be badly affected by global warming.
In Pakistan 30 percent of transport in Pakistan was being run on compressed natural gas while machinery installed in many industrial units have been converted to liquefied natural gas (LNG) said by Minster of Climate.
At the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) under UNFCCC, the developed countries agreed to pay at least $100 billion every year to the developing countries as a climate adaptation fund till 2020.
Fund allocation for climate change adaptation seems very low as in the 2015-16 budget the domestic allocation was only Rs39 million and in the 2017-18 budget Rs815 million has been earmarked for the Environment Division, mostly for the climate change schemes.
For this purpose, Pakistan has recently passed the Climate Change Bill 2017 to show its commitment to combating the adverse effects of climate change by passing specific laws.