ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday warned the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) that climate disasters will not remain limited to his country, if the world did not take action against irresponsible environmental practices.
PM Sharif’s statement came as Pakistan continued to reel from the aftermath of devastating floods in the country, which have killed more than 1,500 people, uprooted millions, and washed away livestock, homes and crops on 4 million acres of land.
Pakistani officials have blamed the devastation on human-driven climate change and say the South Asian country is unfairly bearing the consequences of irresponsible environmental practices elsewhere in the world.
“What happened in Pakistan will not stay in Pakistan,” PM Sharif said in his address with the UNGA.
“Pakistan has never seen a more stark and devastating example of the impact of global warming. Life in Pakistan has changed forever.”
Pakistan is eighth on NGO Germanwatch’s Global Climate Risk Index, a list of countries deemed most vulnerable to extreme weather caused by climate change, despite contributing less than 1 percent to global carbon emissions.
“It is therefore, entirely reasonable to expect some approximation of justice for this loss and damage, not to mention building back better with resilience,” PM Sharif said.
He said his heart and mind had not been able to leave home and no words could describe the shock Pakistanis were living through and how the face of the country had been transformed by the deadly floods.
The prime minister said his top priority right now was to ensure rapid economic growth and to enable any such policy momentum, Pakistan needed a stable external environment.
He said his real worry was about the next stage of this challenge, when the cameras would leave and the story would just shift away to conflicts like the Ukraine.
“My question is will we be left alone, high and dry, to cope with a crisis which we did not create,” he said.
PM Sharif said for many of the lives saved in Pakistan, the future was dimmed by new fragility, lost homes, decimated livelihoods, deluged croplands, permanent food insecurity and exposure to uncertain futures.
Some 11 million Pakistanis will be pushed further below the poverty line, while others will drift to cramped urban shelters, leaving little room for climate-smart rebuilding, according to the prime minister.
“This is going to be a long haul, we can see that under the most trying circumstances, hope is the best enemy of darkness, and Pakistanis are known to be exceptionally resilient people,” he said.
“For my part, I am fully committed to fighting this battle for our survival, in the tents and trenches with my people, until we have rebuilt Pakistan to face the growing challenges of this century.”