ISLAMABAD: National Assembly Deputy Speaker Zahid Akram Durrani on Sunday emphasised facilitating dialogue on the climate crisis among the global parliamentary community.

The deputy speaker was heading a parliamentary delegation to the United Nations Framework for Climate Conference (UNFCCC). He said it would help identifying inter-parliamentary solutions for a more sustainable world.

Mr Durrani said Pakistan needed the support of international community for tackling the devastating impacts of global warming.

The deputy speaker along with noted parliamentarians from Pakistan attended the parliamentary meeting held on the occasion of the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27).

The Pakistani delegates touched upon key climate issues including emission reductions, scaling-up adaptation efforts and mobilising climate finance for developing countries that were on the front lines of climate change.

The delegation drew attention of the world parliamentary leaders to the fact that the recent devastating floods had caused severe damage to the lives and properties of millions of people in Pakistan.

They also stressed the need to enhance inter-parliamentary cooperation to address challenges of global climate change.

The delegation comprised MNAs Syed Mehmood Shah, Nuzhat Pathan, Zeb Jaffar and Naz Baloch.

Climate action

A statement issued by the Ministry of Climate Change said that the government of Pakistan had been pressing that COP27 must help unlock private and public financing for adaptation and mitigation, which would need $125 trillion to reach net-zero by 2050.

“This is no longer about saving our future. It’s a battle to save our present. It is also about saving the land we stand on, and what we expect to build and grow on,” said Minister for Climate Change Senator Sherry Rehman at UNFCCC’s annual conference for climate action.

The minister was speaking at a high-level side event at the UNFCCC pavilion, ‘Gearing towards carbon neutrality in the Asia-Pacific region.’ She recommended that COP27 should enable mechanisms that reviewed mitigation, alongside how regions would cope with the onset of accelerated climate stress, leading to constant climate emergencies.

“We need a coalition of the willing to unlock climate finance for governments, countries and entire regions to manage predictability of the future, build resilience capacity, and mitigation for a future that survives the coming climate tsunami,” she stated.

Senator Rehman also spoke at a panel discussion, ‘The broken bargain between the North and the South’ at the Pakistan Pavilion at COP27 along with other climate activists from Pakistan.

The participants agreed that the bargain between the Global North and South needed a reset, and the COP27 system offered that opportunity on diplomatic and international civil society levels.

Senator Rehman said Pakistan’s diplomatic position was not adversarial with any block rather it sought navigating an equitable burden share as a bargain between the Global North and South.

“The UN secretary general was advancing the cause of climate justice along with UNFCCC and it is time for developed countries to also acknowledge this call,” she said.

At a meeting with with the executive director of the International Trade Centre, Pamela Coke Hamilton, the minister said Pakistan was working on a scale of options in terms of interventions, mainly the Living Indus Initiative.

The Pakistan Pavilion at COP27 also hosted panel discussions on the topic of ‘A survival story from the delta: the mangroves of Pakistan’. The Pakistan Pavilion would be holding panel discussions every day till November 17 on several topics to inform participants at COP27 about Pakistan’s ongoing efforts to combat climate stress.

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2022