Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Climate Change Senator Sherry Rehman on Friday said the world must ensure urgent actions and adequate resources for the developing countries’ post-pandemic recovery and protection of the most vulnerable poor masses.

The minister expressed these views while addressing to Leadership Dialogue 2: Achieving a sustainable and inclusive recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic at Stockholm+50 Day 2 on behalf of G-77 plus China Group.

In her opening remarks, she said,  “At the outset, allow me to appreciate the coaches of this leadership dialogue Germany and Indonesia as well for their hard work”.

Sherry presented the seven recommended actions proposed by the G-77 plus China group.  “First, we must take urgent actions in key COVID-19 affected sectors such as food, energy and tourism and manufacturing sectors to protect the poor and most vulnerable living in the developing countries”, she added.

The Minister continued to state that secondly, it was important to mobilise adequate financial resources to enable recovery and for that an additional US$45 trillion were needed to finance recovery in the developing countries. “So far only a fraction of these has been made available. We should utilize all possible channels to mobilise finances this includes official development assistance (ODA), debt relief, rechanneling of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), expanding of the financial facilities of the MDPs”, she mentioned.

Thirdly, she said that the global community must rethink our patterns of consumption and production. “We can certainly produce with greater respect for nature. We can stop the pollution of our lakes, rivers and oceans. We can produce more with less water and without dangerous chemicals”, she underlined.

Sherry further mentioned that transfers of technology and technical assistance were also key to achieving these goals, adding, “And we must also recall the harmful aspects or impacts of agricultural subsidies and protectionist policies among sustainable systems”.

Fourthly, the recovery efforts should also address the widening technology and digital gaps that existed between the developing and the developed countries, the Minister highlighted.

In the Fifth proposed action, the Minister said the world must work towards promoting the alignment of the business practices with the sustainable development goals (SDGs), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Paris Agreement.

In the Sixth recommended action, she said the pandemic has highlighted the need for better foresight capability and resilience planning in national and international governance. “We need to market access as well for the developing countries and promote their inclusion in the global supply chains,” she added.

At the end, the Minister mentioned the final action that proposed to develop an international hub of global best practices and experience sharing for result oriented actions. “There is a lot that we can learn from each other and need to establish a global repository of successful practices”, she said.