ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Over 70 percent natural disasters hitting Pakistan in last many years are due to climate change, which indicates enormity of the challenge facing the country, said National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Chairman Major General Asghar Nawaz here Monday.
Whether it was flash flood of Chitral, severity of drought in Thar or a wave of heat killing 1200 people in the port city of Karachi last year, landslides or avalanches, all were arising out of the climate change sweeping Pakistan, which was one of the 10th worst hit countries of the world, he told a select audience of diplomats, climate experts and women activists at a “reception-cum-debate on women and climate change” organized by French Ambassador to Pakistan Mrs Martine Dorance.
He said that Pakistan faced the worst challenge of climate challenge and the badly hit section of the population was women as over 70 percent casualties were in female population of the affected regions.
“It is time we have to protect our future generation from the impact of climate change,” he said, adding the country had to exploit its strengths.
The NDMA, he said, was committed and implementing its strategy at the provincial level, but he conceded “our progress is very slow.”
He said the NDAMA needed an enabling environment as implementation of lot of its projects were at the lower tier where the system of local bodies was absent hence its earlier action was in isolation. But in view of the local bodies system elections the situation could be different now.
Senator Sherry Rehman of Pakistan Peoples Party, in her remarks, highlighted various aspects of the climate change and called for inclusion of women while laying down a strategy for surmounting its challenges.
She said women lacked awareness and did not have equal access to opportunity which worked as a barrier in way of taking charge of their lives.
Sherry Rehman said women in rural areas were pretty much turning the wheel of the economy because they were producers of crops. The climate change dispossessed women more than any other section of the society, she added.
She called for solid steps to protect the people from the risks they were being exposed as a result of climate change.
French Ambassador Mrs Martine Dorance said she had noticed that during last few months, things were moving in Pakistan as the civil society had been voicing its concerns over climate change, tree plantation campaign was underway and media was also creating awareness on the subject.
She expressed the hope that while taking action to address the climate change, the countries would consider women rights as they were hit hard by it.
Quoting the United Nations figures, the envoy said the deaths of women were 40 times higher in natural disasters as they were the primary victim of the climate change.
She called for putting women at the heart of the national climate change strategy, adding that 2016 should be treated as an action and implementation year to raise awareness about the climate change.
Source: APP
