Federal Minister for Climate Change
Senator Mushahidullah Khan is representing Pakistan at Conference of Parties
session 13 to Combat Desertification in China.
He highlighted while addressing to
high-level segment of conference that Pakistan is severely affected by land
desertification and degradation like many other countries. About 80 percent
area of the country is arid or semi arid and is prone to land degradation. He
further said two third of its human population depends on these dry lands for
their livelihood.
He also said that the country has a
fast growing population of 210 million people. Most of the rural population
survives on the fragile rain fed lands prone to desertification. Pakistan
recognizes the seriousness problem of land degradation and desertification and
has developed its national action program to fight the problem. The government
of Pakistan is implementing Sustainable Land Management Program to combat
desertification in collaboration with the provincial government. This program
is jointly funded by Global Environment Facility, United Nations Development
Program and Government of Pakistan.
The session started on 6th September
and will end on 16th September 2017.
The Convention, the only convention stemming from a direct recommendation of
the Rio Conference's Agenda
21, was adopted
in Paris, France on 17 June 1994 and entered into
force in December 1996. It is the only internationally legally binding
framework set up to address the problem of desertification.
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