ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Climate Change & Environmental Coordination, Senator Sherry Rehman, on Friday, said Climate Finance was uncharted territory for many developing countries due to the capacity gap and unavailability of required knowledge on this critical issue.
While delivering her keynote address at the launch event of the Climate Finance Accelerator (CFA) organized by the UK Government, the minister said that Pakistan was facing dual challenges of limited accessibility to climate finance and a dearth of technical capacity, impeding its progress in achieving important climate adaptation and mitigation goals.
According to a news release issued here, the Federal Minister emphasized the significant role that programs like CFA could play in knowledge-creating, building capacity, and new pathways within both the public and private sectors.
She underlined the challenge of prioritizing climate change in both sectors and emphasized the potential of such initiatives to promote the government’s narrative on climate finance.
By creating awareness and aligning public interests with government objectives, these programs could effectively expedite the discourse on climate finance.
She highlighted Pakistan’s commitment to exploring Carbon Markets as part of its efforts under the Paris Agreement.
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She further said that the country was in the process of developing an interim framework for a voluntary carbon market, and the country had officially signed on a collaboration with Verra, a global standard-setting body, to share knowledge and educate stakeholders on carbon markets and the certification process for generating carbon credits.
She claimed the Delta Blue Carbon Project by the Sindh Government as a flagship in voluntary carbon markets, as the world’s largest blue carbon project, with a 60-year lifespan and aim of restoring 350,000 hectares of land in the Districts of Thatta and Sujawal in Sindh.
She remarked that the restoration of the mangrove forests has the potential to enhance the mitigation capacity of the country by reducing emissions worth 27 million tons of CO2e over the life cycle of the project.
Most of the resources from that carbon trade would go into regenerating mangroves and enhancing water conservation projects, as well as building climate-smart agriculture opportunities for small farmers.
The minister highlighted that country was extremely climate-stressed and drew attention to the increasing frequency of severe and extreme weather events in Pakistan and stressed that these events were no longer isolated or random occurrences but were a direct result of climate change.
Sherry Rehman emphasized that climate inaction had disrupted the ability of nature to maintain its natural weather patterns, and it was crucial for all and sundry to take responsibility for creating an environment where nature could thrive and preserve its existing balance.
World Community Urged to Fulfil Climate Change Pledges
She continued, “We need promises made at COP27 to materialize, but clearly the financial challenges faced by the international public sector in meeting the massive funding requirements of the developing world, which have gone to trillions from billions, fall far short of the quantum of funding now needed. The world is not only missing its emissions reduction targets but is also failing to fulfill the promised funding pledges made by the global community.
It is worth mentioning here that during his recent visit to Paris, London and other destinations COP28 President-Delegate, Dr. Sultan Al Jaber also called upon the Global North (developed countries) to play their role in protecting the lives and livelihood of the masses from Global South (Third World Countries) adding that one of the near future targets would be the requirement of generating and financing about $100bn to help the third world nations.
Pakistan is one of the worst affected nations in the Global South Countries despite contributing very little share in carbon emissions and other environment related issues.
The federal minister also recalled that the Paris goal of limiting global warming to 1.5ºC was no longer alive and we were hurtling towards a 2.8ºC where countries like Pakistan will feel the burn first.
