ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Climate Change Senator Mushahidullah Khan said on Sunday he has committed to working with the global community to boost green growth initiatives to achieve sustainable development goals by exploiting natural resources in a sustainable manner.

“Resources have rapidly depleted over the last several decades because of insane and unsustainable industrialisation in developed countries,” Mr Khan told the media after his return from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he attended the ‘Global Green Growth Week 2017’ conference. Delegates from 28 countries attended the United Nations moot.

“Lives of future generations are at risk of falling into a quagmire of unending hunger, poverty, diseases, food insecurity, pollution, water scarcity and disasters if we continue to devour into natural resources greedily and callously, particularly water, land and forest,” the minister warned the global leaders.

Elaborating on the week-long international moot on green growth for sustainable human development, the minister explained how he told the international event to jointly adopt a sane path for achieving economic growth fueled by natural resources utilised in a sustainable manner.

Climate change minister says will be working with global community to boost green growth initiatives in sustainable manner

The event also gathered stakeholders from the public and private sectors and international organisations to strengthen and catalyse green growth in the world in order to achieve global carbon emission reduction road-maps for slowing down global warming and making progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Mr Khan said a number of key topics, including mobilisation of green/climate finance for projects in developing countries such as Pakistan, sustainable management of natural resources to address water and food security challenges and adopting policies that drove environmentally-sustainable and socially inclusive global economic growth, particularly in developing countries were discussed.

He said many countries had already become more efficient in using natural resources and the services provided by environment, producing more sustainable economic output, emitting lesser carbon and using less energy or raw materials. But the progress was too sluggish.

“In fact, today no country is performing well on all green growth dimensions, particularly those related to clean energy, water, forest resources’ conservation, and sustainable land use. However, most of the countries studied have yet to fully disconnect economic growth from fossil fuel use and pollutant emissions, which have destabilised climate change due to global warming.”

It was pitiable for the resource-constraint developing countries such as Pakistan that progress made by developed countries, which are accountable for global warming, has often been insufficient to preserve the natural asset base or relieve pressure on ecosystems and on natural environmental services such as water purification and climate regulation, he added.

He said representatives from developing countries were on the same page as him, saying the rich countries should exercise sanity in tapping into natural resources for achieving their economic development goals and help developing countries to promote green growth programmes in urban planning, energy, water, land use, agriculture and irrigation sectors through transfer of technology, technical know-how and finance.

Mr Khan expressed the hope that the mass urban transport programmes such as the metro bus and orange train projects in Punjab, Sindh and KP, large-scale solar and wind programmes in Sindh and Punjab, Prime Minister’s Green Pakistan Programme in all provinces would boost green growth programmes in the country.

He said the international community promised to help developing countries, including Pakistan, to widen the green growth initiatives and help enhance access to renewable energy, green urban development, water and irrigation efficiency technologies and climate-resilient infrastructure development programmes.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2017