Zubair Qureshi
Pakistan needs serious course correction and better comprehension of eligibility crite-ria for global loss and damage fund and this is crucial to overcome challenges hinder-ing the country’s access to global finances needed to boost resilience of the vulnerable countries against climate change.
This was said by Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, Adviser World Bank while speaking at a semi-nar titled “The Potential of Pakistan’s Case for claiming reparation for Loss and Dam-age in the aftermath of floods 2022” organized by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in collaboration with Oxfam and partners.
The seminar was the 4th in the series of collaborations with Oxfam-Pakistan.
Ali Tauqeer stressed establishing a clear definition of loss and damage in policy documents and building capacity of the bureaucrats about pledges made under NDCs so they can develop more competitive climate financing proposals.
He elucidated that under the NDCs Pakistan committed to undertake assessment of loss and damage, costing of losses and augment data management and integration of evidence.
The low progress in their achievement remains a key objection/criticism when climate finance projects are applied.
He proposed developing a holistic and consistent definition of loss and damage to enable convergence of national and sub-national efforts. Dr Shafqat Munir, Deputy Executive Director, SDPI, also highlighted that Pakistan is vulnerable to various kinds of climatic disasters, direct and indirect hazards, with macroeconomic imbalances further exacerbating after recurrent climatic disasters.
The 2022 floods submerged one-third of the country under water, displaced around 8 mil-lion people, and affected 33 million people with Sindh being the worst affected prov-ince with close to 70% of total damages and losses.
These significant losses revealed that the country has weak DRR capacity coupled with inaction in addressing climatic hazards.
