Pakistan, Netherlands discuss climate resilience planning
Federal Minister of Climate Change Senator Sherry Rehman holds a meeting with a delegation from the Netherlands on May 17, 2023. PHOTO: Screengrab
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.
— 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 18th, 2023.