After two years of delays due to the devolution of the Ministry of Environment and just weeks before the current assemblies will be dissolved, Pakistan’s first ever National Climate Change Policy (NCCP) was launched at an official ceremony held in Islamabad this week.

Better late than never was the view of many experts since in the last two years, Pakistan has topped the list of the Global Climate Risk Index produced by Germanwatch, an NGO that works on global equity issues.

In 2010, Pakistan was listed as the number one country in the world affected by climate related disasters; in 2011 it was ranked as number three.

Pakistan was, of course, hit by devastating floods during the monsoon season in both 2010 and 2011.

The NCCP was launched jointly by UNDP-Pakistan and the Federal Ministry of Climate Change (that came into being after devolution last year).

The policy document that was handed out at the launch ceremony was the result of a long and expensive process, supported by the UNDP.

This involved extensive consultations with national and provincial government officials, academics and civil society members before the policy was finalised.

At the launch, it was labelled a “living document that will adapt to the changing needs and priorities of the country” with a focus on both adaptation and on a low carbon development pathway.

This climate change action framework, it was hoped, would lead to plans of action at the national and provincial levels.

Despite the delays in its launch (the NCCP was approved by the federal cabinet in principle in March 2012) it reflects the high priority accorded to climate change by the current government.

However, with elections due in a few months, it remains to be seen whether the next government will continue with this “over-arching policy” whose goal is to ensure that “climate change is mainstreamed in the economically and socially vulnerable sectors of the economy and to steer Pakistan towards climate resilient development”.

“Our job was to help the government’s Ministry of Climate Change create the policy document after consultations with all the various stakeholders – now it is up to them to implement it,” said an UNDP official after the launch.

The Director General Environment, Jawed Ali Khan, seemed confident that the NCCP would in the near future “showcase Pakistan as a climate resilient country and Islamabad as a model climate resilient capital”.

The main thrust of the NCCP is on adaptation and mitigation measures in the following sectors: water resources, agriculture and livestock, forestry and biodiversity, energy, transport, mountains and other vulnerable ecosystems (like wetlands and coastal and marine areas) and cross cutting themes like disaster risk reduction, human health and gender etc.

Under water resources, activities like local rainwater harvesting, water storage and recycling of wastewater were proposed while under agriculture and livestock, more energy efficient farm mechanisation and introduction of climate resistant crops and better breeds of livestock were advocated.

Under forestry and biodiversity, better research and area specific adaptive plans were called for, in addition to ways of arresting soil erosion.

The involvement of local communities in the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity was also stressed upon.

Under disaster preparedness, a strategic flood forecasting and an early warning systems were advocated and under human health the call was given for educating and training health personnel about the outbreak of new diseases caused by climate change (dengue for example).

For mitigation measures, energy efficiency and conservation was highlighted along with mass transit systems in all the big cities and fuel-efficient standards for cars.

Carbon sequestration in forests was also stressed upon and finally the need for capacity building, awareness raising and international cooperation (especially for technology transfer and climate finance) was underlined.

There was also a call for the establishment of a “National Climate Change Fund” although it was not clear where the money was going to come from.

A representative from the Planning Division at the launch hinted that Public Sector Development Programme money could be used for this fund.

The NCCP clearly hopes to provide strategic direction to cope with the rising threat of climate change and it is an ambitious document.

However, there are many questions about its implementation, with critics calling it a “long wish list” that lacks clearly defined action plans and programmes with proper costing and timeframes.

According to Deputy Secretary Mujtaba Hussain from the Ministry of Climate Change, various implementation arrangements have been made for the NCCP.

At the launch, he described how “technical committees will develop action plans and oversee projects”.

These provincial implementation committees will include provincial heads and civil society members and will report to a National Implementation Committee, which in turn will report to the Prime Minister’s Committee on Climate Change that was set up a few years ago.

“It will be a collaborative approach and it will not be top down,” he assured the audience, given the post-18th amendment scenario.

There will also be district level plans that will feed into the provincial and national action plans.

He was hopeful that climate finance to pay for all these activities and future projects could be accessed from international funds like the Green Climate Fund and the Global Environment Facility fund.

However, given the global financial crisis, it seems increasingly unlikely that rich countries are going to give poor countries the kind of money they had promised in the past to deal with the impacts of climate change.

The international climate change negotiations are currently in a deadlock and are not expected to yield any positive results any time soon.

Pakistan has to look for other ways like public private partnerships to “mainstream climate change into the national development process”.

The NCCP also requires ownership by other ministries, especially the Planning Division whose current head, Nadeemul Haque, is a US-trained economist focused on growth and is known not to take climate change seriously.

While the country waits for elections and a new government to come into power, the Ministry of Climate Change, which should be lauded on at least launching this long-awaited and comprehensive climate change policy, should focus on building its own capacity.

With just half a dozen officers who are even sidelined by the highly trained Foreign Ministry officials during the international climate change negotiations, it is today one of the weakest federal ministries.

Clearly it needs all the help it can to turn it into a robust body that can spearhead the mainstreaming of climate change in Pakistan.