Paksitan committed to challeges of climate change: PM

Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Monday said that Pakistan was fully cognizant of its commitment towards the challenges of environment and was effectively dealing with the phenomenon of greenhouse effect.
Addressing at the Science Policy Conference on Climate Change, the Prime Minister said Pakistan had only one percent of the greenhouse footprint.
Prime Minister Abbasi said Pakistan had a National Environment Policy and had also allocated eight percent of its budget to fight the effects of climate change.
He said the Parliament had also taken action and the two institutions namely National Climate Change Authority and National Climate Change Council had been created.
He said the government was committed to manage national disasters and mentioned the roles of Pakistan Meteorological Department to provide related information, Global Change Impact Studies Centre (GCISC) to conduct research and National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) for the response.Abbasi said investment in reduction of climate change’s effects was important being the global citizens.
He said Pakistan had ratified the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in 2015 and was following the principles therein to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent.
He said the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif had focused on the issue with much commitment, which needed to be carried forward with swift action.
The Prime Minister said climate change had become one of the biggest challenges for mankind and had united all international community at one platform for action against its hazards.
He mentioned the recent prevalence of smog in the country and said it should serve as an eye-opener to be more serious about the issue of environment.
He said Pakistan fortunately had a very clean energy niche with its 50 percent of primary energy coming from gas and another 20 pc from hydropower and other renewable resources.
He said Pakistan had a zero import of furnace oil and was running the related power houses on imported liquefied natural gas.
He expressed confidence that in near future, all the furnace oil-based power plants of the country would no longer be running on furnace oil, adding that Pakistan was already utilizing the Euro-II diesel and petrol.
He said the shift away from furnace oil would mitigate the negative effects of fuel.
The Prime Minister said the government’s emphasis was three-pronged, i.e. to protect population, promotion of economic growth and reduction of poverty and to meet financial commitments.
He hoped that the conference would lead to more interaction among the experts to share information and knowledge on climate change.

Source: APP