Pakistan needs to rely on local resources, skills for overcoming pressing challenges: Naveed Qamar

ISLAMABAD, Dec 8 (APP):Federal Minister for Commerce Syed Naveed Qamar said on Thursday Pakistan needs to rely on local resources and skills for overcoming pressing challenges like climate change, economic crisis, and devastating flood losses.

He was speaking as chair at the closing plenary on the fourth day of 25th Sustainable Development Conference (SDC) of Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) jointly held alongside UNESCAP’s 6th South and South-West Asia High-level Political Forum and Policy Dialogue on SDGs. The 4-day conference was held in Islamabad from 5-8 December.

Qamar said Pakistan is in the eye of a storm after catastrophic floods and in many ways at present it will be starting from the scratch in building forward better.

However, he said SDPI is a primary think tank that has grown over the years under the leadership of Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri.

The Minister noted that the country in 2010 and 2011 witnessed floods but after a decade the same occurred whereas if we had to repeat the same things then it was wrong with the governance model.

“The world helps us or not we will have to support our people within our limited resources. The flood losses estimates by Pakistan accounts for $32 billion and the world estimates $16 billion but no one knows how much will be gathered. The most of the funding will be coming from within,” he added.

Commenting on the rising global warming, he said the world had to change its behavior and stop overeating the planet and cut its galloping carbon emissions.

He said the country has pledged to convert its energy mix over renewables which is ambitious and rightly decided as it cannot afford power generation on import based resources.

The Minister underlined that the country has quit reliance on import based power and have to adapt to the new flood and drought cycles.

“Sustainable growth is the need of the hour as there’s no progress without manageable solutions and policies. We will have to rely on our people’s skill as it never failed rather our policies failed them”, Naveed Qamar said.

The minister called for restoring trust and confidence of the people over all our institutions observing their constitutional roles. We need to give preference to rule of law and merit. Above all we need to opt for the Charter of Economy and Climate Change in line with the Agenda 2030- SDGs. If we did not look beyond 75 and baggage of the past, we cannot ‘Build Future Better”, the minister added.

Naveed Qamar said governance and resilience is a big challenge which we can only address through strong cooperation as we have shown at the COP27 in Sharm EI Sheikh.

He said, “We cannot ignore the impacts of climate change which have heightened socioeconomic crises in terms of extreme meteorological events causing disasters and Pakistan is the worst among hardly hit countries”.

The minister said the region has good news in terms of setting up of the Loss and Damage Fund at the COP27. He said, “I have been part of Pakistan’s team led by the Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif which played a key role along with the countries hailing from the G77 plus China group to push for setting up of the Fund,” he added.

The commerce minister said that when we talk about Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and say that ‘no one is left behind’ then the rich countries should not leave the developing countries on the mercy of the climatic hazards and economic shocks.

The minister appreciated the SDPI for completing 25 years of its inception and said, “I am delighted to know that 350 speakers from 17 countries presented their papers and thoughts during the last four days in various sessions.”