At the Petersburg Dialogue on multilateral climate negotiations, Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman asked for a clear re-set of the global climate agenda, for equitable resourcing of change, new goals, and an accelerated pace of operationalisation of pledges made as well new ambitions that adress the needs of developing countries before the crucial COP 27 in November in Egypt. Taking the floor at the ministerial dialogue Co hosted by Germany and Egypt Rehman said “We meet here today at a crucial inflection point in global negotiations on pace and scale of Climate Change. Pakistan’s extreme vulnerability to accelerated climate induced events has exposed it to a multitude of risks. These range from unprecedented heat waves, forest fires, glacial lake outburst floods, (GLOF events) fast-approaching water scarcity (annual water availability level below 1000 cubic meters) along with torrential monsoon flooding, growing desertification and draughts (for the past two years as per the UNCCD Report,), and rising sea levels. All these changes have made Pakistan the ground zero of climate catastrophe where life on earth, water and under-water has been impacted at exponential levels, making the country a perfect example of all the disasters that come with climate stress. Damage to agricultural productivity, livelihoods, human health and economic stability have led to irreversible impacts including massive internal displacements as well as GDP losses that go as high as 9.1 % (UNESCAP). While mitigation has been foundational to the earlier COP agendas, and Pakistan has attempted to meet its articulated ambitions, what we have not seen until today at the multilateral level is a concerted acknowledgement of Loss and Damage as a core agenda. The Global South is looking now for a robust financial mechanism to actualize its goals on the ground, where a transfer of resources goes beyond pledges and promises. In fact, it is troubling to countries like us that so far pledges for Loss and Damage compensation have also not been made at all. This is either an egregious oversight, or worse, an index of the climate injustice that is at play in a world where countries that emit less than 1 % of GHGs are expected to not just fulfil their commitments on their own, but also make an unfinanced energy transition, or pledge to Net Zero goals without the means for implementation of such transformational shifts. Pakistan also stands with other developing countries on the position that climate-induced Loss and Damage (L&D) be redefined, to include recurring and amplifying extreme events. Secondly, given that we now agree that notwithstanding mitigation, which is not a goal to be lost sight of, adaptation finance now also needs to be front and centre, with a serious scaling up of the financial envelope for the same at the COP 27 agenda. If this does not become a key priority of the next conference of parties meeting, the sense that these agreements are removed from the ground reality that we face will only exacerbate the faultline of inequality between the Global South and the North. It will also strip such convenings of crucial consensus needed for fixing our broken planet in the time that is needed. Thirdly, time is critical to the entire equation we model our global projections on, and this pace of change, of adherence to articulated ambitions, totally misses the mark where the planet can remain habitable. The need to accelerate actions as well as joint finance implementation goals is compelling. Until now, mitigation financing has been prioritised at the global level, at the expense of adaptation financing, which has been treated like the stepchild of the multilateral system. This needs to change now. If all this does not take place at a much higher pace, we will see the climate change catastrophe overtake both our actions and ambitions. It has already overtaken our talking points. The crisis is existential, and if not addressed equitably, history will remember this as-modernity’s false promise; if we lose this opportunity to fix the broken climate system we will have tragically failed our future and the survival of both our planet and the human race. We must hope for a better future, but hope is not a plan. Global pledges must go further, and they must translate into planning and accessible funding pipelines for operationalising our joint goals.
PREVIOUS NEXT
