LAHORE:The Punjab Local Government & Community Development (LG&CD) Department in collaboration with Frederick Nauman Foundation (FNF) Pakistan arranged a conference titled “The role of local governments in mitigating climate change and providing a conducive environment”, here on Tuesday.
A large number of members of the Provincial Assembly, officers from the LG&CD and Environment departments, academicians, journalists and students participated in the event.
Addressing the conference, Secretary Local Government Department Syed Mubashir Hussain highlighted the role of his department in reducing the risks of climate change and said, “We need to make the local government more powerful and fully functional in the country.” In particular, local governments were active and playing a role in controlling smog. In this regard, he requested the public to avoid burning garbage. This conference would have positive results regarding climate change and help in improving the policies at the local government level, he added.
Speaking on the occasion, Development Consultant Zubair Faisal Abbasi said that there was a possibility of climate change and its severity, as a result of which the risk of disaster would increase especially for the vulnerable and poor groups. He said that more research was needed in this regard so that effective measures could be taken to reduce the risk of disasters. Local governments had to play an important role with regard to climate change, he added.
Earlier, the Project Manager Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI) Moazzam Ali Janjua emphasized the need to formulate a climate change policy at the local level to reduce the climate crisis. He maintained that there was a need to promote coordination in the field of climate change. “It is not the work of a single institution or department, it should also involve the public-private sector”, Janjua added.
Former Mayor District Narowal Ahmed Iqbal stressed the importance of the role of local governments with reference to climate change and said that almost every year the citizens had to deal with problems like smog, extreme heat and monsoon floods, if the current level of the index remained, every child born in Lahore would lose 10 years of life expectancy, which was 5 to 7 years 5 years ago. Only an empowered and stable local government system could prepare cities, towns and villages to cope with the negative impacts of climate change.
Director General Grievances and Inquiry Department of Local Government Mehmood Masood Tamna said that greenhouse gas emission in Pakistan was 0.8 percent of the world’s total, but Pakistan was the 8th most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. “It is necessary to make changes at the policy level to deal with the issue of climate change, in this respect the local governments have to be progressive.”, he added.
MPAs Kanwal Liaquat, Uzmi Kardar, Kanwal Parvez, Sania Kamran and Chairperson Environmental Science Department, Lahore College for Women University Professor Dr. Arifa Tahir also addressed the conference.