Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar on Wednesday urged the world to extend financial and technical support to developing countries like Pakistan to help them achieve ambitions on climate change.
The prime minister, addressing the Climate Ambition Summit 2023 on the sidelines of the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly, urged all nations to raise their climate ambitions, regardless of their statuses and geographical locations.
He told the international community that the adverse impact of climate change continued to rise in frequency and intensity, disproportionately affecting developing countries.
“Pakistan is a prime example. Despite contributing less than one percent to global warming, we are among the top ten vulnerable countries. The unprecedented floods of last year illustrated this vulnerability but these may just be the tip of the iceberg unless we arrest this global warming,” he remarked.
The prime minister thanked the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for active solidarity and mobilization of global support after the floods. He said due to its “well-established” climate vulnerability, the adaptation was a “critical” priority for Pakistan. He said Pakistan adopted the first-ever National Adaptation Plan to build climate resilience that would follow the projection and casting of interventions identified in the said Plan.
He said the second phase of the Plan would mark preparing for the sector-specific investment framework to serve as a blueprint to translate and identify the adaptation needs into tangible and bankable projects.
Prime Minister Kakar also highlighted Pakistan’s “Living Indus Initiative” aimed at restoring the ecological health of the Indus basin.
He said Pakistan took significant steps to enhance the early warning capacity as well as the flood protection plan.
He said despite its no contribution to global warming, Pakistan chose to be part of the solution by deciding to convert 60 percent of its energy resources to alternative energy by 2030 that would cost around $100 billion to the country. Citing Quranic verses, the prime minister told the world leaders that Islam promoted responsibility to protect the environment and utilise natural resources efficiently and undertake an equitable approach to nature. Urging the global community to come up with climate actions and support to the developing countries, the prime minister said, “This will be a litmus test of solidarity and perhaps for the survival of our species on our injured planet.”
Meanwhile, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar underlined the need that scientific research should be put at the disposal of all humanity, ensuring access to all the scientific breakthrough or discovery which was essential to save human lives, irrespective of the intellectual property rights.
He said that it was time for the international community to rise to the challenge and ensure better preparedness through legally binding obligations for building resilience against the future pandemics.
Addressing a high level meeting on prevention of global pandemics, preparedness and response, the prime minister highlighted that the Covid-19 had caught the world with surprise, which killed over 6 million people across the globe and led to the national and global economies lock downs. But with human ingenuity and power of targeted research the world was fortunate to have developed a vaccine which caused an optimism for the future, he added.
The prime minister said that the pandemic also caused several reasons for concerns in the world, including inequity in the vaccine distribution among the rich and the poor, resistance by the corporate sector, insisting upon the property rights, hampering the wider preparation of the vaccine and inequality in the financial support mobilized for the rich and the poor countries to recover from the Covid.
PM Kakar stressed that they must not repeat those aspects in the future pandemic or health crises.
The vaccines should be treated as global goods and available to all countries and companies, he emphasised, adding that the commercial companies, private donors and actors should not be put in charge of determining the medical production and distribution of vaccines.
“It should be determined through the intergovernmental negotiations under the auspices of WHO,” he opined.
“We should also commit to remove trade barriers, strengthen supply chains and facilitate the movement of medical and public health goods by diversifying manufacturing capacities across the regions and promoting technologies for the developing countries,” the prime minister maintained.
He further noted that financing greatly affected the national, global and regional emergency health preparedness which required about $30 billion annually and including a estimated gap of $10 billion in the new external finances.
Those should be provided from all resources including allocation of SDRs or recapitalization of the multinational, regional or national development banks, he added.
The prime minister further said that adoption of a political declaration by the high level meeting would help galvanize the political will.
“We believe that issue of prevention and preparedness, and response to a pandemic can be best addressed by legally treated through a binding treaty as mandated by the world health assembly, which is currently negotiated in Geneva,” he added.
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