NEW YORK, Sep 23 (APP): Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday urged the world community to take seriously the challenge of climate change which he believed would leave no country unaffected.
Addressing a session of the Climate Action Summit 2019 themed ‘Unlocking the Full Potential of Nature in Climate Action’, he said Pakistan was one of the most vulnerable countries to the climate change.
Hosted by the United Nations Secretary General, the Climate Action Summit was meant to boost ambition and accelerate action to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement wherein the leaders from government, the private sector and civil society presented the concrete actions, plans and initiatives to tackle the climate change.
The prime minister said 80 percent of the country’s water came from glaciers which were melting at fast pace.
In order to tackle the challenge, he said, the government had planted 1.1 billion trees during the last five years and had set a target of 10 billion trees for next five years.
However, he said there was a need for partnership from the world community because no country could fight the climate change individually.
The prime minister told the audience that Pakistan contributed to less than one percent of the greenhouse gases; however, it had been among the most vulnerable countries.
He expressed the hope that the world community should join in the efforts in that regard.
He feared that if the matter remained unattended, the world could face a catastrophe as billions of people depended on rivers while the temperature was soaring.
The prime minister said the world was not taking the issue as seriously as it should be. Some countries thought it not a big issue as it was going to be. No country, however, would remain exception to the consequences eventually.
Pakistan, he said, had received climate refugees from Afghanistan consequent to the prolonged drought there.
Source : VNS ISLAMABAD
