Pakistan, Netherlands discuss climate resilience planning

Sherry says Pakistan needs a multi-layered flood safety strategy, by combining both soft and hard solutions

Federal Minister for Climate Change, Senator Sherry Rehman, welcomed a delegation of the Dutch Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) team at the ministry on Wednesday.

The purpose of their meeting was to discuss potential opportunities for a long-term collaborative partnership focused on improving Pakistan's climate resilience, early warning systems, water management, and spatial floodplain planning.

The delegation was led by the Ambassador of the Netherlands, Henny de Vries. On the occasion, Sherry Rehman expressed her appreciation for the valuable findings of the DRR team, which conducted a comprehensive assessment following the devastating floods in 2022 on the request of the Ministry of Climate Change and Environmental Coordination (MoCC&EC) to provide technical assistance in flood and water management.

Imp mtg with the Netherlands Risk Reduction Team @ClimateChangePK on prospects for a partnership on Pakistan’s early warning, risk reduction,floodplain mapping,water management, & climate resilience. Thank u to the Netherlands Amb @HennyFdeVries for responding to my request pic.twitter.com/DeB3iNpvRP

— SenatorSherryRehman (@sherryrehman) May 17, 2023

While recognising Netherlands as a country with extensive experience and expertise in water management, the Minister highlighted that their support can greatly aid Pakistan in adopting an integrated approach towards pre-modeling, forecasting, and the establishment of preventative infrastructure.

She said that Pakistan needs a multi-layered flood safety strategy, by combining both soft and hard solutions, as we cannot engineer our way out of it. “The approach can involve various aspects, including flood prevention through conventional hard defences such as dikes, embankments, and barrages, as well as flood-resilient sustainable spatial planning, early warning systems, and flood forecasting.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, May 18^th, 2023.