Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday sensitizing the international community on the plight of flood-hit Pakistan, said the country needed additional funding, not debts, to rebuild a resilient and adaptive infrastructure as the financing gap was widening by the day, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan.
“We have to fight and rebuild a resilient and adaptive infrastructure which can only be done through additional funding, not loans and debt… But the gap is widening by the day. It is the duty of the global north to understand our plight,” the prime minister said in his National Statement at the COP27 summit held here.
He told the international gathering that climate change-induced catastrophic flooding in Pakistan had impacted 33 million people -the size of three European countries – with more than half being women and children.
He said that the floods had destroyed over 8000 kilometres of highways, damaged more than 3000 kilometers of railway tracks and washed away crops over four million acres.
The Post-Disaster Needs Assessment estimates over US$ 30 billion in loss and damage, he added.
He said Pakistan suffered the manmade disaster despite less than one percent contribution to the carbon footprint.
He told the gathering that the flood-hit Pakistan had to import wheat, palm oil, and “very expensive” oil and gas spending around $32 billion dollars.
He said the country had also redirected its resources to meet the basic needs of the millions of flood-affected households.
He said Pakistan was spending billions of dollars from its own resources to provide shelter, homes, medical aid, and food package to millions of people.
“How one can expect us to carry out this gigantic task on our own?” he questioned and thanked the international community for extending support to Pakistan for the relief of the flood survivors.
Highlighting Pakistan’s priorities, the prime minister emphasised prioritizing the Global Goal on Adaptation both in terms of financing and timelines. The current financing gap is too high to sustain any real recovery needs of those on the frontlines of climate catastrophe, he added.
Secondly, he said the Loss and Damage needed to be part of the core agenda of COP 27 to meet the pressing humanitarian needs of those who were trapped in a crisis of public financing fueled by debt and yet have to fund climate disasters on their own.
Thirdly, Prime Minister Shehbaz called for clearly defining climate finance as new, additional and sustained resources with a transparent mechanism to meet the needs of developing and vulnerable countries with the required speed and scale.
“We have been talking for years. But have failed to even agree on the basics. Pledges made at the Copenhagen COP 15 in 2009 for mobilizing USD 100 billion per annum by 2020 have still not been realized. They need to be enhanced given the increased frequency and intensity of climate extreme events,” he urged.
Moreover, the prime minister also called for the creation of a Global Climate Risk Index of all parties of the UNFCCC where the projects from the most vulnerable countries must get prioritized and speedy approvals for climate finance.
Besides, he said the mitigation ambition needed to be revived in a clear burden-share formula.
He said Pakistan’s 2030 ambition in the NDCs were already higher than many countries and that the country was heading towards a Net Zero plan.
Prime Minister Shehbaz said the COP27 summit rang an alarm bell for humanity as it was the only platform where the vulnerable countries took their case to the rich and the resourced, to build a common purpose for justice, carbon neutrality and a roadmap to crucial policy resets.
He said the bargain between the North and the South would not work unless there was a transformational shift in the flow of capacities, finances and technology that reversed the pyramid of climate capital.
He said the COP might have a real chance to find common ground toward achieving the objectives of the Convention and the Paris Agreement.
“It is now or never. For us there is indeed no Planet B,” he concluded.
On Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday appealed to the international financial institutions and G20 countries to provide debt relief to Pakistan to help its post-flood reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts.
Addressing a joint press conference along with Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif here, the UN Secretary-General proposed a debt swap, exchanging the payment of debt with investment in the rehabilitation of the flood-affected people of Pakistan.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif who is in Sharm El Sheikh for the COP27 summit, told media that according to the latest estimates, Pakistan suffered losses of over $ 30 billion.
The UN Secretary-General said that Pakistan was a middle-income country and was not given the kind of debt relief and concessional funding it needed to tackle the adverse impact of climate change.
He appealed to the international financial institutions and the G 20 countries to create a mechanism for debt relief for middle-income countries including Pakistan.
He underlined the need for defining a clear road map to deal with the disaster, by creating an institutional framework of financing.
Antonio Guterres said an international donor conference will be held for Pakistan, as the country needed massive support for the rehabilitation of the people affected by floods.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the damages suffered in floods was also combined with a surge in poverty rates, with over 9 million of our people being pushed into a life of extreme poverty, with an additional 1.9 million families being pushed into multidimensional poverty.
He said the impact on the GDP will be 2.2 % just from the flooding, but extreme climate events such as heatwaves, forest fires, and rapidly melting glaciers had already created a 9.1 percent drag on Pakistan’s GDP annually.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said, “as a global community, we are poised on the threshold of a new green deal, or a trajectory to a 3-degree world, where returning to the earth we know today will be impossible.
“Some countries like Pakistan will be more exposed, more deeply vulnerable than others living in cooler longitudes.”
He said millions of people in Pakistan were going into winter without the shelter or livelihood that was their fundamental right. “Women and children are still looking to us to protect their basic needs, while entire villages are seeking to secure a precarious future, with all of such recovery hinging on a flow of resources that we are unable to guarantee.”
“Huge lakes of stagnant water have transformed the landscape of the south, where crops would have fed millions, and livestock would have saved families from destitution. We are picking up the pieces as we speak, but hundreds of bridges still lie broken, like the 8000 plus kilometers of metalled roads ripped out like toothpicks from the fury of the raging torrents, triggered by the record-breaking floods from the monsoon on steroids.”
He expressed gratitude to the United Nations agencies, World Health Organization, and other development partners in supporting through the unprecedented challenge.
The PM said Pakistan’s own response was still defined by resourcing the huge humanitarian gap in relief and rehabilitation.
“Our journey to recovery will be held back by increasing public debt, rising international energy prices and no real access to Adaptation Funds.”
“Our social security platform, the BISP, has allocated urgent cash transfers worth 70 billion rupees (US$316 million) to the most vulnerable 2.8 million families, providing US$113 to each affected family,” he noted.
“We have mobilised every available resource towards the national relief effort, and repurposed all budget priorities, including resilience and development funds, to the rescue and first-order needs of millions.”
“A simultaneous priority is to build up our adaptation and resilience, without prejudice to our mitigation goals. At the same time, our reconstruction planning is also in its final stages. We will be looking to the leadership of the United Nations Secretary-General in building a viable support platform very soon at the Donors Conference,” Shehbaz Sharif said.
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