Minister for Climate Change Zahid Hamid on Monday urged all relevant federal and provincial ministries and departments to demand funds allocation in upcoming budget for projects related to climate change policy, adaptation and mitigation. Speaking at the third meeting of the National Climate Change Policy Implementation Committee here, he also informed the participants that work on climate change council is in progress and it would be established soon.
"A standardised pro forma will be prepared by the ministry and be sent to all relevant departments and ministries at federal and provincial levels to update their progress on implementation of climate change policy," the minister said. "All ministries and departments should demand funds for the climate change policy projects in their annual budgets," he said, adding that climate change policy and SDG goals should be integrated.
Three agendas were also discussed in the meeting that also reviewed the progress of decisions taken in the second meeting. The first decision taken in second meeting was that provinces would make efforts to implement the actions identified in the Implementation Framework of National Climate change policy.
The governments of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and Balochistan have provided report on their performance on this decision. The second decision taken in second meeting was Pak-Environmental Protection Agency and Provincial Environmental Protection Agencies should include assessment of climate change impact while reviewing the Initial Environmental Examination. A concept note on climate change impacts on development projects has been developed by Ministry of Climate Change and United Nation Development Programme.
The third decision was to constitute and notify a committee for rationalising the national environmental quality standards in consultation with provinces and broader stakeholders. The committee will revise the standards on the basis of sector scope and industry-specific issues and include Green House Gases emissions standards. The fourth decision was taken that all the provinces would communicate detailed progress on actions being undertaken and planned in future for implementation of the NCCP to Ministry of Climate Change by March 15, 2016. This would include measures of adaptation, mitigation and technology needs assessment. The governments of KPK, AJ&K and Balochistan have provided updates in this regard. The response from other provinces, GB and FATA is awaited.
All the provinces would take measures to build the technical capacity to deal with climate change. The Ministry of Climate Change would provide necessary technical support, particularly with regards capacity building, for access to climate change finance and green climate fund which is in progress.