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Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif highlighted on Wednesday that financial pledges made at the previous two United Nations’ annual climate summits — COP27 and COP28 — were yet to materialise.
He made the remarks during the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference, also known as COP29, that is being held in Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku.
The premier today presented Pakistan’s case on the second and final day of the World Leaders Climate Action Summit.
Pakistan is ranked among the top 10 most climate-vulnerable countries, according to the Global Climate Risk Index. It has faced increasingly frequent and severe weather events, such as unprecedented floods, intense monsoon rains, devastating heat waves, rapid glacial melting and glacial lake outburst floods.
Addressing the summit, PM Shehbaz said the event was aimed at understanding the “calamities which, unfortunately, some of the countries have already faced and some will if we do not act”.
He called on the international community “to take measures which are so important at this point in time to have a conducive environment”, highlighting the 1,700 deaths, massive displacement, destruction of houses and crops, and $30million loss to the economy that Pakistan suffered from during the 2022 floods.
PM Shehbaz stressed that Pakistan was one of the countries that “hardly contribute” to global emissions, yet it was vulnerable to climate change and listed as one of the “10 countries which can, God forbid, face this kind of devastation again”.
“My memories are still fresh,” he said, recalling meeting with flood affectees in Balochistan, including a boy named Ikramullah who had “lost everything”.
“His entire village was erased from the face of the earth, his home was completely demolished, and his school was also submerged. And we had arranged his education to another part of Pakistan,” he said.
The prime minister asserted that COP29 should “make this understanding loud and clear that we will have to fulfil those financial pledges” committed at COP27 and COP28.
“And yet, I think, those huge financial commitments have to be materialised.”
Pakistan witnessed devastating floods during the 2022 monsoon season, induced by climate change, resulting in the loss of at least 1,700 lives.
With 33 million people affected and swathes of agricultural land washed away, the damage incurred losses worth $30 billion, according to government estimates.
In June 2024, a heat wave brought record-high temperatures, severely impacting public health and agriculture.
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