ISLAMABAD, Jan 9 (APP): Federal Minister for Climate Change Senator Sherry Rehman on Monday said Pakistan needed to create the much-needed lifeline that will help Pakistanis manage predictability for basic survival amid unprecedented climate crisis which was the only way to confront the polycrisis hitting the nation.
Addressing the first plenary at the global Climate Resilient Pakistan Conference held in Geneva, the Minister was flanked by Finance and Revenue Minister Senator Ishaq Dar, Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Prof Ahsan Iqbal, Minister for Economic Affaris Division Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner and Vice President South Asia Region, World Bank, Martin Raiser.
Senator Rehman said, “the world ‘polycrisis’ which is a new word for the 21st century as the challenges faced by the century are entirely new.”
She added that Pakistan was at the frontline of the extreme climate precipice. “We do appreciate all partners, the UNDP, entire UN system, all development partners, international non-governmental organisations (INGOS) and Pakistani NGOs as all had their sleeves rolled up and gumboots on the ground.
She mentioned that as many of the present had heard that Pakistanis were a resilient nation but, as projected in the video at the forum, the peril for Pakistan is not over. “Some eight million people still living in inundated areas particularly in the province of Sindh and a homeless winter for many, now 20 million are still affected which is again three times more than the size of many countries.”
She noted that it was a new tidal wave of disasters that were besetting the world, adding, “We need to be very clear. They will not go away by themselves and the countries who are facing such frontlines, the ground zero as I called it of climate stress, will not recover on their own.”
She emphasised that there was no default setting to nature or human recovery at this scale. “You have seen as the water ripped through one third of Pakistan, the magnitude and velocity as it was pulling out huge bridges built back better like toothpicks in its fury. So, building-back-better is going to be harder than we planned for and harder than we imagined.”
The Minister underlined that the 2010 flood was a great flood and called ‘the Super Floods of Pakistan’ which had affected some 20 million and just for the sake of perspective this flood affected 33 million masses.
“We hope, and pray and also plan for ensuring no such disaster over takes this particular catastrophe because wrapping ones head around the sheer numbers to service has been a monumental challenge. So, everyone has responded of course wonderfully but it is to remembered that while we are building for resilience; Pakistan lies in one of the largest flood plains of the world and it has created now the way the topography of Sindh has been transformed probably forever.”
The Minister said there were lakes that were sitting over a hundred kilometers, impossible to drain for a year, transforming the land that ‘we till’ and the livelihoods living of it and of course the Indus River, the lifeline of the country, was given a new geography.
Sherry Rehman added that amid living in these areas, the axis of vulnerability, it was time to look very hard at how risk management was part of a cascade of ongoing timely and agile investments that could build up the defences and the shields that societies’ need to stand up to what the UNSG called the war the nature was waging against the world.
She also explained that the strategic interventions in rebuilding with flood resilience did not mean the $16.3 billion what Minister Ahsan mentioned were about frontline basic flood resilience and some sag-ways into the large storm drains country needed because it needed a new architecture of flood resilience clearly as well as an old one that needed investment.
She said the country had lived through the new archipelago of complete disasters (year of 2022) including famine, flashfloods, forest fires and glacial lake outburst floods (GLOF) with spiking up melting of glaciers.
“I hope that we are able to build up the speed and agility to respond with a kind of compassion needed and the foresight,” the Minister said.
