ISLAMABAD, July 11: The Climate Change Division (CCD) on Thursday stressed upon coordination between the division and provincial environment departments to tackle the vagaries of climate and to revive projects which had come to a halt after the 18th Amendment.

While presiding over a meeting titled ‘Post-18th Amendment Coordination Issues’ at the committee room of the division, Secretary Raja Hasan Abbas said coordination was important to develop mitigation and adapt plans at the national and provincial levels.

“Cooperation of the division with the provincial environment departments is inevitable to ensure effective implementation of policies,” said Raja Hasan Abbas. He said Pakistan was vulnerable to changes in climate including incidents of flash floods and drought, even though it was one of those countries which contributed the least to global warming.

The CCD had formulated and implemented a number of policies such as the National Climate Change Policy, National Sanitation Policy and National Drinking Water Policy in coordination with the provincial governments and other stakeholders concerned.

Keeping this in view, the provincial secretaries, who attended the meeting, stressed upon the revival of the umbrella projects which were discontinued after the Ministry of Environment was devolved following the 18th amendment.

Senior representatives of the provincial environment departments and Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency, National Disaster Management Authority, International Union for Conservation Network and other officials of the CCD attended the meeting.

They acknowledged that progress on the policies (which were designed by the centre in collaboration with the provincial environment departments) had suffered after devolution two years ago, and the provinces had stopped responding to requests from the centre for the way forward.

The participants agreed to convene quarterly meeting and review coordination-related matters pertaining to the environment and climate change. They said this would ensure better implementation of the national and provincial policies, which would be developed further and enforced.

Joint Secretary Administration of CCD, Rao Dilshad Ahmad Babar, explained that the major reason to convene the meeting was to speed up progress on policies pertaining to environment and climate change through close coordination of the division with provincial environment departments.

The meeting was also apprised that the CCD was a national focal point for 14 conventions and protocols related to different fields of environment, and had to prepare national level policies, strategies and action plans to implement them.

It had to report to the respective international secretariats of the convention and required close coordination between the federal and the provincial environmental institutions.