Provinces face SC ire for neglecting climate

Court laments lack of funds in budgets to tackle threat

ISLAMABAD:

The Supreme Court has expressed its concern that the provincial governments had not allocated any funds in their ongoing budgets or proposed effective strategies to address the “existential threat” of climate fund – despite the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) repeatedly warning about urban flooding because of heavy monsoon rains in the country.

A three-judge bench of the SC, headed by Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, ordered Coordinator to the PM on Climate Change Roomina Khursheed Alam and the chief secretaries of all the provinces to inform the court at the next hearing about the measures taken as well as the strategies chalked out to deal with the issue.

The court was hearing a petition filed by the Public Interest Law Association of Pakistan that highlighted the dangers of climate change.

“Climate change is a serious existential threat to the people of Pakistan which affects directly the fundamental rights of the people, still the recent provincial budgets have not allocated any climate fund for climate change or come up with any effective strategies,” read a three-page order authored by Justice Shah.

The SC judge further noted in the order that the lack of allocation of funds became “doubly worrying as monsoon rains are round the corner and the country has still not recovered from the devastating floods of the year 2022”.

“When inquired, if the Ministry of Climate Change has any climate change policy in place and the effective steps taken in order to address the challenges of climate change, nothing concrete was placed before us. It was mentioned that [the] NDMA and PDMA [Provincial Disaster Management Authority] are looking into the matter. Our understanding is that [the] NDMA and PDMA are disaster management institutions, while the Ministry of Climate Change has to come up with preventive policies addressing the challenges of climate change head-on. It appears that no such policy is in place and no action on the ground has been taken,” the order read.

“Still we provide opportunity to the climate change secretary to place the relevant policy on the record and apprise the court on the next date as to what are the key challenges of climate change and what strategies and plans have been put in place by the ministry and what action has so far been taken.”

The hearing of the case was adjourned until July 15.