ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Thursday pledged to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the global maritime sector, make greater use of green technology to improve ships’ energy efficiency and carry out more environmentally friendly ship recycling, as the Secretary-General of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) arrived in Islamabad to attend the International Maritime Sustainability Exhibition and Conference (IMSEC).
This is the first-ever visit to Pakistan by the chief of the IMO, a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for regulating shipping and ensuring maritime safety, environmental protection and security on international waters. Established in 1948, its primary role is to develop and maintain a comprehensive regulatory framework for shipping, which includes standards for safety, pollution prevention and legal matters surrounding global maritime operations.
“Pakistan fully complies with IMO regulation,” Federal Minister for Maritime Affairs Qaiser Ahmed Sheikh said at the opening session of Thursday’s conference. 
“We are striving to reduce the global [carbon] footprint and make greater use of green technology. Such measures must be taken in every institution to deal with climate change.”
The minister said Pakistan was invested in ensuring the protection of biodiversity and the oceans and would work to make ship recycling “safe and environmentally friendly.”
“We are ready to work with global organizations to promote ship making, ship recycling and the blue economy,” Sheikh added.
Addressing the conference, IMO chief Arsenio Antonio Dominguez Velasco said his visit to Pakistan would give him the opportunity to “come back in the future and assess and evaluate all the promises and the conversations and the challenges that we are going to put toward each other, from Pakistan government as well as from IMO in order to work better in the different aspects of shipping.”
He said he looked forward to working with Pakistan on decarbonization and ship recycling, where Pakistan is one of the leading nations in the world.
In a statement shared with media on Wednesday, the foreign office said Velasco’s visit would afford an opportunity for Pakistan and the IMO to exchange views on the maritime sector and the blue economy:
“As a founding member of IMO, Pakistan is deeply committed to IMO’s vision of safe, secure and efficient shipping on clean oceans … Pakistan has served for five terms on the IMO Council and has consistently contributed in upholding the IMO objectives.”
The foreign office said Velasco would be in Pakistan from September 12 to 14 and would hold meetings with Pakistani leaders and senior government officials.
He is scheduled to attend IMSEC, which began in Islamabad on Thursday and will continue in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi over the next two days.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN: Ali Amin Gandapur, the chief minister of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, said this week he would hold direct talks with Kabul to take action against Afghanistan-based militant groups that Islamabad says launch attacks inside Pakistan.
Pakistan has seen a rise in militant attacks in recent weeks, with many of them taking place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where groups like the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have stepped up attacks, daily targeting security forces convoys and check posts, and carrying out targeted killings and kidnappings of law enforcers and government officials.
Over 75 policemen have been killed in ambushes and target killings in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2024, according to police data. In the latest killing, unidentified gunmen on Thursday shot dead a policeman in Domail, a town on the outskirts of Bannu district. Police, joined by representatives of civil society and political parties as well as tribal elders and members of the public, are currently holding protests in a number of districts of the province against the spike in militancy and attacks on officers.
Islamabad says militants mainly associated with the TTP frequently launch attacks from hideouts in neighboring Afghanistan, targeting police and other security forces. Islamabad has even blamed Kabul’s Afghan Taliban rulers for facilitating anti-Pakistan militants. Kabul denies the charges.
“My [Khyber Pakhtunkhwa] police has lost trust, my people have lost trust, where are you [federal government, army] taking my youth, my people?” Gandapur said as he addressed a ceremony on Wednesday evening.
“I am saying let me send a representative to Afghanistan to talk to them. Afghanistan is our neighbor, we speak the same language, we have a longer than 1,200 km border. Let me talk to them that what is happening in Afghanistan.
“I announce here … I will talk to Afghanistan myself, I will talk to them as a province. I am telling you as the representative of this province, I will send an emissary and arrange a meeting, I will sit with them and talk and Inshallah I will solve this issue through talks.”
Islamabad says it has consistently taken up the issue of cross-border attacks with the Taliban administration, which denies allowing Afghan soil to be used for attacks.
The matter has led to clashes between the border forces of the two countries on multiple occasions in recent months, including on Sunday when security forces in Pakistan killed eight Afghan Taliban fighters in a border clash following what Islamabad described as “unprovoked firing” on Pakistani checkpoints.