PESHAWAR: Climate change is a global phenomenon impacting the weather conditions of Pakistan and the whole world. Unpredictable sporadic rains or drought is a feature affecting the agriculture sector.
The impact on the livelihood of the poor is resulting in acute poverty and hunger. Pakistan has to plan and should get international support in the endeavor to mitigate the impact of climate change created by industrialized countries.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger and improve nutrition and food security, considered climate change a top-line corporate priority - as reflected in the newly endorsed strategy on the issue where it will focus its work on three fronts.
Firstly, to enhance institutional and technical capacities of member states, secondly improve integration of food security, agriculture forestry and fisheries within international climate agenda. The FAO is the coordinating agency on climate change and Pakistan through all its provinces should approach FAO for its support in regard to Fisheries and Aquaculture which has not been done so.
Talking to this scribe, Omar Hayat Khan, an expert on environment and especially fisheries sector of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa said that the recent floods have taken away the livelihood of small fish farmers in the province and have damaged their farms or crops of fish. No proper survey has been conducted in any province to ascertain the damage to the stakeholders and on their livelihood, he added.
When survey has not taken place how mitigation measures can be taken by government to provide support to restart their fish farming businesses.
He said that Pakistan is located in high risk zone related to climate change for which a strategy needs to be developed with the support of FAO to mitigate the negative impact on the livelihood of fisher’s and other venerable communities. One of the proposals is that small dams should be constructed in whole of Pakistan to harvest flood water in their storage basins.
This harvested water will have multiple benefits, it will reduce the impact of floods down streams, secondly the storage water can be used for agriculture and thirdly the storage water be utilized for fish culture. In this regard medium water storage dams should also be considered on priority basis so as to mitigate the impact of Climate Change
Pakistan is an agrarian society and most of the people live in rural areas. Agriculture should be central for human development; in this global support is required to mitigate and respond to climate change. Agriculture, aquaculture and fisheries are most vulnerable to climate change and are facing great challenges in adapting to climate change. Support is required to aquaculture and fisheries sub sector that are facing great challenges in adapting to climate changes are pivotal to achieving SDG under a change.
Fisheries and aquaculture sub sector has enormous potential and opportunities to create synergies between both climate change and development agenda. In this regard it will be appropriate to approach FAO for its support as well as donors’ input for the sub sector for its sustainability.
They also offer considerable climate change mitigation potential both in the form of reducing emissions intensity per unit produced, as well as carbon sequestration per unit produce, as well as carbon sequestration in biomass.
In this regard support of the FAO can be obtained by Government of Pakistan as well as funding.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024