Pakistan is amongst the lowest carbon emitters but is the worst victim of climate change as the magnitude of global vulnerability is unavoidable when it comes to atmospheric change. These were the concerns of experts at a seminar "Pre-Cancun Climate Change Conference, What Should Be Civil Society Perspective" organised by the climate change study centre here on Wednesday.
Malik Amin Aslam, former Minister of State for Environment, Dr Asad Majeed, Director General, UN, Foreign Office, Mahmood Akhter Cheema, Head, IUCN and Shakeel Ahmad Ramay, Head of Climate Change, Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) addressed the participants.
Shakeel Ahmad Ramay said that food security and agricultural concerns were being taken into consideration in the Kyoto and Copenhagen negotiations. He further added that climate change should not only be taken as a threat but also as an opportunity.
Malik Amin said that current year could be regarded as the year of climate catastrophe for Pakistan considering three major calamities such as Hunza glaciers outburst causing avalanche and landslides followed by heavy rainfalls resulting in floods. In terms of negotiations, complexity keeps on growing and currently negotiations are underway on two tracks; Kyoto and Copenhagen. He quoted a World Bank document which stated that Pakistan had already spent $4 billion on climate related problems.
Mahmood Akhtar Cheema while highlighting the unexpected results of COP 15 said that the resultant Copenhagen accord even did not mention how various decisions would be taken to move forward. Gaps in the accord must be kept in mind while negotiating at Cancun. The accord did not set out medium-term emission goals and practical pathway to achieve the 2 degrees Celsius target.
Some issues seem to be close to resolution as consensus is likely in adaptation, reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (the REDD+mechanism); technology transfer and capacity building. Decisions at COP 16 can restore and boost confidence in UNFCCC process and outcome of the negotiations and serve as milestone for strengthening international action and reducing greenhouse gases emission. He maintained that rapid and robust actions must be taken by all the states, communities and individuals to cut emissions.
Confidence building measures are extremely important, ecosystem based approaches must be focused upon, new and additional fast track funding also needs to be made available for adaptation and mitigation. Furthermore, there is need for establishment of an implementation oriented adaptation framework, immediate disbursement of new and additional financial means to enable adaptation actions and it is also imperative that the importance of building capacity for action at national and local level both on adaptation and mitigation be emphasised.
He stressed that there are four major challenges that must be dealt with, firstly it is equity and fairness, developed countries have certain objections towards emerging economies and historical responsibility is difficult to determine. Secondly there is challenge of mitigation and adaptation capacity.
Willingness is another challenge posted by COP 15 as many a people have started challenging the science of climate change. Lastly it is vulnerability; physical definition of vulnerability was given initially which became political at Bali. He said that dealing with all of these challenges is important for concrete solution.
In the discussion session it was mentioned that the new definition of vulnerability proposed by Pakistan mentions it to be a result of informal deliberations with like-minded delegations. It was also mentioned that Pakistan's role continues to be very effective in the negotiations and especially at the level of G77 and has shown good leadership at such level. Malik Amin mentioned that Pakistan maintains that climate finance must be streamlined and institutionalised. A committee should be established to audit the commitments of all the nations, climate finance proposal mentioned direct access finance, finance proposal on the part of Pakistan was accepted and submitted as G77 proposal.
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