Pakistan's prime minister addresses climate risk

The Nation (Pakistan): Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani Thursday called for a global approach to respond to climate risks in view of vulnerability and inability of developing nation to cope with the challenge.

Participating in an interactive Session on “Adapting to Climate Risk” that focused on how the communities, companies and countries were adapting to the risks posed by climate change, here at the annual 2012 World Economic Forum, Gilani told the participants “We strongly feel that the world must come together with renewed vigour.”

In his address, Gilani said Pakistan has been hit by ‘horrible’ droughts and floods last year and sought a ‘global fund’ to tackle the climate risk issues. He suggested that an important step in this regard would be channelling of finance to the Green Climate Fund, established in Durban last year. The United Nations proposed $100 billion Green Climate Fund was central to agreements reached in 2010 by UN treaty negotiators in Cancun, Mexico.

“It (climate change) is quite visible in my country. We have suffered both drought and heavy rains in past one year. It was horrible, not just by our estimates but also as per the estimates of World Bank and Asian Development Bank,” Gilani said. “There has to be global solution to these problems. The first step we can take is establishing a global fund to tackle the climate risk issues and Pakistan would be happy to partner,” Gilani said. “If the glaciers in Himalayas melt, there will be huge floods in Pakistan.“

...Stressing that developing countries were particularly vulnerable and unable to cope, at their own, with the natural calamities in terms of massive losses to lives and property, the prime minister urged the international community to cooperate in transfer of green technologies and capacity building, besides provision of financial assistance for adaptation projects....

Indus river Flood in Alipur, District Muzaffar Garh, Pakistan- The 2010 Pakistan floods began in late July 2010, resulting from heavy monsoon rains in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan regions of Pakistan and affected the Indus River basin. Shot by Aamir Shahzad, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license