KARACHI: Pakistan’s Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb on Friday urged the international community to ensure faster and simpler disbursements from a new global fund set up to help vulnerable countries respond to climate-related losses.

The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), established at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in 2022 before being officially operationalized by 198 countries, aims to help developing and least developed countries (LDCs) cope with both economic and non-economic impacts of climate change, such as extreme weather events and slow-onset crises like sea-level rise and droughts.

Aurangzeb made the remarks while addressing a high-level dialogue over the issue, held on the sidelines of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Spring Meetings in Washington.

“Emphasizing that simplicity and agility should be the guiding principles, the finance minister urged the need for speedy disbursements under the fund, unlike the experience of LDCs and other vulnerable nations with existing climate finance mechanisms,” Pakistan’s finance ministry said in a statement circulated after the dialogue.

Aurangzeb also stressed the importance of “the integrity of the whole process with adequate checks and balances,” according to the statement.

He said Pakistan had been among the strongest proponents of the fund, warning that climate change represents an “existential threat” to countries like his own.

Pakistan has experienced increasingly erratic weather patterns in recent years, including heatwaves, droughts, cyclones and glacial melting.

In 2022, record monsoon rains triggered floods that killed over 1,700 people, affecting 30 million more and causing economic losses exceeding $30 billion.