Dr Nadeem-ul-Haque, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission (PC), chaired, one-day seminar organised by Pakistan Water Partnership (PWP) with the support of Planning Commission (PC), Government of Pakistan, and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), Geneva, Switzerland at P-Block, Pak Secretariat, on Tuesday.
This international seminar will be followed by Four-day Workshop for Capacity Building of Pakistani experts on Integrated Flood & Drought Management (IFDM) in Bhurban on January 12-15, 2011. The Workshop would be chaired by Ghulam Mohayuddin Marri, Member, Infrastruture, Planning Commission.
During the International events of seminar and workshop, global flood and drought management experts Dr Wolfgang Grabs and Dr Giacomo Teruggi from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) Geneva, Switzerland who declared their thoughts to the way of corporation of WMO with Pakistan in the areas of flood and drought; Dr Roberto Rudari, CIMA Research Foundation International, Italy presented that they can assist to the institutional body of Pakistan to strengthen the research activities related to climate change impact on extreme event of floods; Naseer Ahmad Gilani, Chief Water, Planning Commission, Government of Pakistan shared his view on to deliberate the concerns on important parameters of Evaluation of the existing system, Learning from the South Asia, Learning from the Global experience and Updating existing/create new models.
Naseer A Gilani also reported that reconstruction process requires US $10 billion public sector investment and equal investment by private sector. Arif Mehmood, Director General, Pakistan Meteorological Department, Islamabad and Sardar Muhammad Tariq from Pakistan Water Partnership/ Global Water Partnership - South Asia also participated in the seminar and will hold core group meetings on various aspects of flood and drought management in Pakistan during the four-day workshop. Both at national programmes on flood and drought management focusing on the objectives:
1. Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has clearly warned that in Pakistan and especially, in Indus Basin the frequency, severity and aerial coverage of extreme events of water availability and non-availability (floods and droughts) to occur.
2. Recent floods and droughts indicated that our knowledge base is not strong enough.
3. Moving from structural measures to non-structural software initiatives.
4. Reconstruction process after the massive floods requires US $10 billion public sector investment and equal investment by private sector. In the absence of expected peak flows the time, duration, frequency and location may cause the investment void.
5. Public investment for hydraulic structure for water augmentation may not provide the anticipated benefits due to reduced mean annual flows.
6. Droughts may cause reduction in growth having impacts on agricultural production and livelihood.
7. There is not much leverage or control to combat or de-accelerate the climate change by Pakistan; therefore, it is mandatory to work on climate change adaptation.
8. Climate change reaches to Pakistan through water:
a. Threat to glaciers, water towers of Asia
b. Implications of GLOF
c. Changed pattern of monsoon, intensive rains, flash floods, prolonged droughts.
d. Increased temperature will enhance crop water requirement.
e. Cyclones and sea-level changes.-PR