The Federal Minister for Climate Change Senator Sherry Rehman held a meeting with the delegation of country directors of International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) on the panel of Pakistan Humanitarian Forum (PHF) as part of the consultation for the International Conference on Climate Resilient Pakistan, scheduled to be held in Geneva on January 9, 2023.
Speaking to the delegation, the federal minister said, that this high-level Conference in Geneva aims to marshal international support for the people and Government of Pakistan to move forward on recovery as soon as possible after the country went through the world’s worst climate event in living memory.
The plan to rehabilitate, recover and rebuild with resilience is urgent, but we face a huge funding gap even for first-order recovery needs, given that we are servicing rehabilitation and relief for 33 million people, she added.
She said that this is a huge number for any country to rehabilitate on its own. Our cost of $16 billion for the reconstruction of damaged infrastructure in a flood-resilient mode is not enough to cover full climate resilience but we cannot wait, as another season of extreme weather could well hit us before we even begin rebuilding.
To this end we are co-hosting an international climate-resilient Pakistan conference where our objective will be to present the Resilient Recovery, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Framework (4RF), comprising of plans and arrangements for the post floods recovery, rehabilitation, and reconstruction and forging long-term partnerships for building Pakistan’s climate resilience and adaptation.
The conference will be co-chaired by PM Pakistan, Mian Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 5th, 2023.
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