‘Climate change should be part of development agenda’
ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Climate Change Senator Mushahidullah Khan on Wednesday said that mainstreaming climate change into country’s development agenda is necessary to protect Pakistan from fallouts of disasters.
“There is a pressing need for making climate change concern an integral part of socio-economic development policies and action plans, if we want to boost the country’s climate resilience against intensifying impacts of climate change, particularly recurring droughts and floods, shifting and reducing rainfall patterns, glacial melt, depleting river flows and sea-level rise,” the Minister said in a briefing to media persons.
He was responding to a recent Climate Change Profile of Pakistan report published by the Asian Development Bank.
Mushahidullah Khan said the role of policymakers and planners was critical in this regard and urged them to keep themselves abreast of shifting global, regional and national climate change patterns and possible adaptation and mitigation measures being adopted by other nations.
The ADB report says that over last five decades the annual average temperature in Pakistan has increased by roughly 0.5 degrees centigrade, with the number of heat wave days per year increased nearly five-fold in the last three decades.
Besides, annual precipitation has historically shown high variability, but has slightly increased in the last 50 years.