Baku - Coordinator to Prime Minister on Climate Change, Romina Khurshid Alam on Monday emphasised the urgency for unified global response to protect rapidly degenerating ecosystems, lives and livelihoods of the vulnerable communities and infrastructure.
“Time to respond the century’s worst challenge to the sustainability of planet earth, human lives and ecosystems is running out fast and climate inaction is no option,” the PM’s Coordinator Romina Khurshid highlighted while talking to media after plenary session of the two-week’s annual UN-led global climate conference (COP29), which began on Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Romina Khurshid Alam is leading Pakistan’s delegation at the climate conference, with emphasis to highlight Pakistan’s commitment to global climate action and the country’s actions for resilience building despite limited financial resources.
The 29th annual United Nations climate summit kicked off with delegates from nearly 200 countries readying for tough talks on finance and trade, following a year of weather disasters that have stretchered developing countries in their key demands for more funds to cope with exacerbating impacts of climate change.
Here at the annual UN climate meeting, global leaders have converged hoping to contain rising global temperatures, which are making deadly events like the recent floods in Pakistan, India, Nepal and Spain far worse.
An overarching aim at this year’s global climate meeting is agreeing on how to get more cash to poorer countries to help them curb their planet-warming gases and to help them cope with the worsening impacts of climate change. During her conversation with journalists, Romina Khurshid Alam called upon the world leaders to meet their pledges for climate finance for the developing countries.
“Here in Baku, we, however, must reach an agreement on a new global climate finance goal to save the planet earth from devastating impacts of climate change.
She also appealed for an “ambitious” new goal on providing climate funding to the world’s poorer nations, urging leaders of rich countries, historically responsible for heat-trapping carbon emissions, to realise that climate finance is no charity which the developing countries are demanding for meeting their climate change adaptation and disaster resilience needs.
“We must understand that COP29 is the unmissable moment to chart a new path forward for everyone,” the PM’s climate aide Romina Khurshid Alam stressed.
Talking to media, Ms Alam said that a number of bilateral and multilateral meetings and events have been planned for engagement with global partners to invest in Pakistan’s mitigation, adaptation and resilience-building initiatives such as clean energy, smart agriculture and water conservation.