ISLAMABAD: Chairman Federal Flood Commission and Chair Adaptation Committee Ahmed Kamal on Tuesday said Pakistan was among the nations using largest volume of its surface water in agriculture sector for irrigation and cultivation of crops.
The Chairman FFC was addressing the two-day national training workshop held here on Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) System for GHG Inventory and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) Adaptation Tracking System for Ministry of Climate Change.
Kamal said agriculture sector was rightly chosen for piloting M&E System for adaptation and it was necessary as investment in adaptation could help the country save US$21 billion lost due to various natural calamities due to climate change and other associated risks bore by the sector.
He emphasized the importance of building partnerships for research and sharing best practices, lessons learnt on climate change adaptation and mitigation.
The training was organized by Global Change Impact Studies Centre (GCISC) and CITEPA, with support from GIZ Pakistan, NDC Partnership, Ministry of Climate Change, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), ACTERRA and Office International de l’Eau (OIEau).
The second day of the workshop focused on the development and implementation of a Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) Adaptation Tracking System, specifically for the agriculture sector of Pakistan.
Head of Agriculture and Coordinator-GCISC Arif Goheer welcomed the audience and explained the Adaptation M&E system project that was managed by GCISC with GIZ support.
Later on, Mr Goheer told reporter that the M&E System was an innovative step in the right direction where stakeholder intervention and collaboration for future planning and development with target oriented approach in agriculture sector was adopted.
He added that it was going to be a bilateral platform where provincial and federal stakeholders could share and collate data based on emissions released by various sectors. It would help in informed decision making, planning and execution to mitigate and adapt with the climate change impacts, he added.
“M&E system has already been enforced in various countries like Ghana and has a positive response and promising outcomes, ” Goheer added.
The objectives of the project were to strengthen the national adaptation M&E system in Pakistan by developing a road map for its future setup, based on a pilot project of agriculture sector, capacity building of national institutions on M&E adaptation systems and developing an adaptation module under RISQ reporting platform to track progress on adaptation actions and their impact.
Climate Change Coordinator, GIZ Pakistan Baptiste Chatré addressed the participants and discussed Pakistan’s climate change issues and importance of adaptation and mitigation.
Coordinator National Adaptation Plan, Ministry of Climate Change Mazhar Hayat highlighted the policy, institutional, technical and financial challenges for the implementation of M&E systems.
The guests and different stakeholders were divided into various focus groups for further debate on institutional arrangements for national M&E system, information and reporting platforms and adaptation for M&E for agriculture sector.
The M&E adaptation system is a steppingstone to empower government and national institutions such as Ministry of Climate Change, GCISC, and others to be self-reliant, robust, data-driven, and transparent regarding climate data.
The workshop was participated by diverse stakeholders from national and local organizations from academia , research think-tanks, donors and government institutions such as NUST, Comsats Islamabad, University of Agriculture Peshawar, Asian Development Bank, WWF, Pakistan Council of Research and Water, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), and others.