Minister for Climate Change Mr. Zahid Hamid on Friday held a detailed meeting in Paris with Mr. Janos Pasztor who is assistant secretary-general on climate change in the executive office of the Secretary-General United Nations on the sidelines of the United Nations’ global climate change conference.
Both sides discussed various matters pertaining to the ongoing two-week long climate change conference and contributions of Pakistani delegation on various matters in different sessions of the conference being discussed among rich and poor countries’ delegations from over 190 countries.
The minister told him, “Pakistan is part of the G-77 plus China group at the conference jointly pushing rich countries to provide finance, technology and help build up capacity of developing countries like ours to cope with dangerous impacts of climate change. At the same time, the group is also press on rich nations to radically cut carbon emissions levels to slow down climate change and reduce intensity of its impacts on social and economic sectors, particularly water, agriculture, energy and health.”
He emphasized that sealing a carbon emission reduction agreement at the end of the conference is inevitable to avert devastating impacts climate change. And, historic rich polluting nations have to pay for the damages being faced by the poor countries and enable them to boost their climate resilience and adaptation in agriculture, water, energy, health sectors.
“Failure is no option as far as the Paris climate conference is concerned and everyone of us want to go back with a message that the all of us are committed to save the earth from further climate change-induced losses and damages, which have put the global economy and ability of the developing countries to deal with them at stake.”
The climate change minister Zahid Hamid is heading the Pakistani delegation in the two-week long climate conference, which will conclude on December 11.
The most important event, in terms of the expectations of the people from all over the world, who are looking on, is the negotiations themselves.
In the lead-up to the Paris conference, a draft version of the international agreement to limit global warming was circulated during this week. Negotiators from each nation including Pakistan broke into specialist teams, each taking a section of the draft to consider.
At this stage they’re all in these smaller groups working on a limited set of issues. All separately.
The negotiations are tacking place both formally and informally, day and night, in a gruelling process for the delegates.
The 2015 climate conference aims to have the draft text fairly well nailed down by the middle of the next week and finally push for ambitious, just and balanced Paris agreement on climate change, applicable to all after 2020, to keep global warming below 2°C.
The new agreement will replace Kyoto Protocol signed in Kyoto, Japan, in 1992 which aimed at rich countries to reduce emissions level for slowing down the climate change, will expire.
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