Sherry Rehman urges int'l community for 'clear re-set' of climate agenda

Climate minister says Pakistan perfect example of all disasters that come with climate stress

ISLAMABAD:

Climate Change Minister Senator Sherry Rehman asked for a clear re-set of the global climate agenda, for equitable resourcing of change, new goals, and an accelerated pace of operationalisation of pledges made as well new ambitions that address the needs of developing countries before the COP 27 in November.

The minister took the floor at the Petersburg Ministerial Climate Dialogue on multilateral climate negotiations – co-hosted by Egypt and Germany – and highlighted Pakistan’s extreme vulnerability to accelerated climate-induced events which had exposed it to a multitude of risks.

According to Rehman, climate disasters in Pakistan range from unprecedented heat waves, forest fires, glacial lake outburst floods, fast-approaching water scarcity, torrential monsoon flooding, increasing desertification and droughts and rising sea levels.

Rehman said that all these changes made Pakistan the perfect example of all the disasters that come with climate stress where life on earth had been impacted at exponential levels.

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“Damage to agricultural productivity, livelihoods, human health and economic stability have led to irreversible impacts including massive internal displacements as well as GDP losses that go as high as 9.1%,” she said while referring to United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific findings.

While mitigation has been foundational to the earlier COP agendas and Pakistan has attempted to meet its articulated ambitions, Rehman said, what we have not seen until today at the multilateral level is a concerted acknowledgement of Loss and Damage as a core agenda. 

The minister maintained that the Global South was looking now for a robust financial mechanism to actualize its goals on the ground, where a transfer of resources goes beyond pledges and promises. 

In fact, she continued, it is troubling to countries like Pakistan that so far pledges for Loss and Damage compensation have also not been made at all. “This is either an egregious oversight or worse, an index of the climate injustice that is at play in a world where countries that emit less than 1% of GHGs are expected to not just fulfil their commitments on their own,” Rehman said. On top of it, she said, the countries are also asked to make an unfinanced energy transition or pledge to Net Zero goals without the means for implementation of such transformational shifts.

In her address, Rehman added that Pakistan also stands with other developing countries on the position that climate-induced Loss and Damage (L&D) be redefined, to include recurring and amplifying extreme events.

Secondly, she added, given that we now agree that notwithstanding mitigation, which is not a goal to be lost sight of, adaptation finance now also needs to be front and centre, with a serious scaling up of the financial envelope for the same at the COP 27 agenda. 

“If this does not become a key priority of the next conference of parties meeting, the sense that these agreements are removed from the ground reality that we face will only exacerbate the fault line of inequality between the Global South and the North,” Rehman expressed. It will also strip such convening of crucial consensus needed for fixing the broken planet in the time that is needed. 

Thirdly, Rehman incorporated, time was critical to the entire equation we model our global projections on, and this pace of change, of adherence to articulated ambitions, totally misses the mark where the planet can remain habitable. 

“The need to accelerate actions as well as joint finance implementation goals is compelling,” she said. Until now, she added, mitigation financing has been prioritised at the global level, at the expense of adaptation financing, which has been treated as the stepchild of the multilateral system. “This needs to change now,” she said. 

If all this does not take place at a much higher pace, she said, we will see the climate change catastrophe overtake both actions and ambitions. It has already overtaken our talking points. 

“The crisis is existential, and if not addressed equitably, history will remember this as-modernity’s false promise,” Rehman reminded, adding if “we lose this opportunity to fix the broken climate system we will have tragically failed our future and the survival of both our planet and the human race.”
 
For a better future, she said, global pledges must go further, adding they must also translate into planning and accessible funding pipelines for operationalising the joint goals. Minister Rehman was leading the country delegation comprised of Asif Haider Shah, Secretary MOCC, Mr Mujtaba, Senior Joint Secretary, Ms Sayyeda Hadika Jamshed, Climate Change Policy Specialist and Dr Saima, Director MoCC.