Daily Times

The experts at a media training on Loss and Damage Fund and climate finance mechanisms Saturday called for expedited climate action with localisation of climate finance instruments, and enhanced community engagement in rolling out policy interventions to establish projects to benefit international funding facilities.

The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) organised a one-day journalist capacity development workshop on Climate Action at the launch of four thematic policy papers.

Deputy Executive Director, SDPI presentated a detailed account of the four thematic policy papers shedding light on climate finance, Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction, capacity issues and institutional shortcomings and Pakistan’s case on loss and damage fund reparations.

Dr Shafqat Munir said climate action is a shared responsibility and demands a collective response from all as a whole of society approach. “We as humans needs to take stock of our carbon footprint that impacts the earth due to our actions and activities,” he added.

He explained that climate action is needed everywhere as Pakistan is the fifth highest livestock producer in the world that has made it among the biggest methane emitters.

Commenting on the research papers by SDPI, he said access to climate finance is difficult to access globally, whereas the best way is to provide a bankable project against our nationally determined contributions (NDCs) with a policy framework made on it.

“We need to club the three initiatives Resilient Recovery, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Framework (4RF), National Adaptation Plan and NDCs and develop a project on it to tap climate finance for targeted interventions,” he added.

He also noted recommendations stating engagement of climate investment funds (CIFs) and significant bilateral multilateral funds in addition to already engaged avenues, and alignment, coherence and synergy of existing policies at national and international level.

He also underlined that the country had technical and human resource capacity issues, whereas transparency in utilisation of funds was a major priority area for international climate finance institutions that needs to be focussed by the government.The SDPI paper focused on community based disaster risk management engagement and the key sectors lacking proper actions.

He said major challenges to institutional capacities are enforcement and evaluation in project implementation whereas public awareness and institutional coordination also needed due attention of the quarters concerned.