KARACHI:Participants in a workshop stressed the need to incorporate climate change and the environment into the curriculum, build capacity and coordination among all stakeholders, and pool technical and financial resources to ensure effective responses to the impacts of climate change.
The workshop titled ‘Education, Training, and Public Aareness on Climate Change’ held here on Thursday was organized by WWF Pakistan as part of activities being carried out for the preparation of Pakistan’s Third National Communication on Climate Change.
Representatives of different government departments and agencies, national and international non-governmental organizations, civil society activists, media persons, and other stakeholders participated in the workshop.
Director of the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA), Sindh Imdad Hussain Siddiqui, said that Pakistan was contributing to global efforts to combat the impacts of climate change, which include extreme weather events like the melting of glaciers, high temperatures, droughts, and floods.
PDMA has initiated various measures to deal with disasters and natural calamities, and standard operating procedures were formulated for all the relevant departments, while identification of vulnerable areas was also made.
He said that Flood 22 affected a population of millions across the province, resulting in losses of billions of dollars and heavy damage to infrastructure.
Director General of the National Institute of Oceanography, Dr. Samina Kidwai, said that there were two specific Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) about climate change and life below water, which emphasize urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts and conservation and sustainable use of oceans, seas, and water resources.
She informed me that the earlier weather pattern in the region was less than 200 mm of annual rainfall and 4 years of drought followed by a year of flooding, but climate change has entirely changed it, and now there is no pattern at all and the weather has become unpredictable.
She informed me that the satellite-derived sea level estimates show a rapid rise in sea level and sea surface temperature over the North Western Indian Ocean that could affect the coastal belt of Pakistan. If inundation of the coastal belt of Sindh continues to rise at the current level, Pakistan may lose the entire Indus Delta in the coming years, she warned.
Additional Director, Sindh Education and Literacy Department, Dr. Fouzia Khan, referring to the vast scale of floods in 2022, particularly the damages inflicted on 50% of schools in the province of Sindh, said that the impacts of climate change were adding to the miseries of the rural population of Sindh, which was already deprived of various facilities.
She said that the school education department, in collaboration with the private sector, was working on early childhood education in emergency situations, while teachers were also trained in life skills development, which also included dealing with disaster situations.
She stressed coordination among all the stakeholders and relevant organizations to deal with emergency situations.
Dr. Masood Ahmed and Nazifa Butt of WWF-Pakistan highlighted the objectives of the workshop and briefed that Pakistan was among the top 10 countries in the climate change risk index as it is vulnerable to different risks caused by climate change, including weather extremes, floods, GLOFs, and droughts.
They urged the need to identify gaps in the public and private sectors pertaining to preparedness and disaster risk reduction and said that national communication will consist of national-level challenges, constraints, and ways forward, with a special focus on gender perspectives. They also stressed climate change and environmental issues in developmental planning and policy, with a special focus on gender equality and women’s empowerment.