Daily Times

On March 1st, 2019, under Resolution 73/284, United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2021–2030 as United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. The UN Decade Strategy 2021-2030 promises to strike a heavenly balance between the object of Nature with the subject of Man. Pakistan being amongst the first seven countries threatened with the calamities of climate change has a lot in the offing to strike out from this global strategy.

Ecosystem Restoration Strategy of the UN shall lay over a decade ending in 2030 with its sister initiative of SDGs. The Strategy maintains that it will directly support SDG 14 Life below Water, and SDG 15 Life on Land. Assuming these two are achieved, it will have effects on other SDG goals as well such as climate change (SDG 13), Improve health of societies in rural/urban environments (SDGs 3, 11), Increase supplies of clean water (SDG 6), and ensure sustainable food (SDG 2, 12).

The strategy identifies certain barriers to achieving its goals which are Public Awareness and Societal Mindsets, Political Will and Technical Capacity. While the three pathways devised to make through these barriers include generating participatory global movement of restoration, fostering political support for the global movement and catalyzing research and development to build up technical capacity for ecosystem restoration.

The strategy calls on the world leaders to express acumen for protecting the state of nature. This makes them liable to shift policies on ‘fast and fair’ basis such as policies in the national investments, sectoral tax regimes, subsidies, market regulations and other policies such as land tenure and usage as to control the mal-effects of such policies on the state of nature. Ecosystem Restoration theme shall be included in the curricula with an aim to educate children for ten years on ecosystem restoration by 2030.

The subject of environment and climate change is now a devolved subject which is seriously compromising a synergized approach as demanded by the subject of Environment and Climate Change. With devolution, the institutions have oscillated poles apart from the center and this disbranching has already produced major gaps in the policy and institutional covenants.

The world leaders, decision makers, states, people with marginal ends, thinkers, musicians, women, poets, philosophers, singers, media icons, and youth will be mobilized to champion restoration. Youth will be of immense worth as being the real models for change and the ones well webbed in media, especially the social media. The UN alongwith FAO will establish a Digital Hub of information where big data from across the planet Earth will be stored regarding ecosystem restoration activities.

Similarly, a lot is embedded in the Strategy to enhance technical capacity of states to accomplish the strategic goals of the UN Decade. It identifies certain research and development initiatives to be undertaken and such other scientific adoptions to build upon the capacity. The keeping up with other global conventions, commitments and protocols shall proceed in parallel with this strategy.

The strategy will be coordinated globally by a Joint Core Team of UNEP and FAO with an Advisory Board to provide it technical support. Different Task Forces will be established to develop guidelines on cross cutting themes to assist countries implementing various activities under the Strategy. Humans in Nature panel of ideologues will build a valued based imperative to recognize, patronize and appreciate the values of ecosystem restoration.

A Multi Partner Trust Fund will be raised which will support initiatives on the three specific outcomes of the three pathways mentioned earlier. A special task force dedicated to mobilizing finance globally will be set up. Finance will be mobilized through changes in government subsidy regimes, taxation systems, national budgets, international financial institutions, multi-lateral development banks, national development banks, commercial banks, micro-finance institutions, impact investments, philanthropic capital, local community investments, landowner commitments etc.

Pakistan’s readiness to respond to the UN strategy seems sketchy. The country fails to provide an institutional structure to actualize the strategic goals set out by the United Nations. The subject of environment and climate change is now a devolved subject which is seriously compromising a synergized approach as demanded by the subject of Environment and Climate Change. With devolution, the institutions have oscillated poles apart from the center and this disbranching has already produced major gaps in the policy and institutional covenants.

The subject of environment and climate change is seen through stereotypic public sector institutes with technical and technological capacities at great abyss. Though the National Climate Change Policy 2012 still provides the liberty to the center to unite the provinces, from least to nothing is seen done by the centre in this behalf. The Climate Change Act 2017 which promised to establish the Pakistan Climate Change Authority, Climate Change Council and Climate Change Fund remain idle that need to be fully activated now. A National Plan of Ecosystem Restoration and sub national plans at every provincial level based on the UN Decade Strategy must fast be hatched to express responsiveness to the global action-sets.

The writer is a civil servant based in Quetta