United Nations Secretary General António Guterres on Saturday said that the damage caused by the super floods in Pakistan were caused by climate change and that helping Pakistan was not about generosity but about justice and that the massive loss and damage in the country has created ground for a serious discussion about this topic at the upcoming global climate change conference, COP27.
He said this while speaking after receiving a briefing by Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah at Sukkur. Guterres is visiting Sukkur today along with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and the Sindh administration to meet with flood victims and survey, first-hand, the damage caused by the floods.
Guterres said that from what he has seen and heard so far, there may have been a great loss of lives and infrastructure, but there was no loss of hope.
“Humanity has been waging war on nature and that nature is now striking back,” he said.
“Nature strikes back in Sindh, but it is not Sindh that made the emissions of greenhouse gases that have accelerated climate change so dramatically,” he said adding that the level of destruction in Sindh today was a “very unfair situation.”
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The UN chief said that it is essential for the international community to understand three things:
“First is that Pakistan, including Sindh, needs today massive financial support to overcome this crisis,” he said, adding that “it is not a matter of generosity, it is a matter of justice.”
“Second, we need to stop the madness with which we are treating nature,” he said, noting that the scientific community we need to cut down emissions by 45% by 2030.
“I am not talking about the end of the century, not talking about 2050. I am talking about now, now is the time to reduce emissions,” he said, adding that this will become part of essential discussions in Cairo at the COP27.
“The fact is that we are already living in a world where climate change is acting in such a devastating way.,” he said, adding that there must be massive support for adaptation.
“Pakistan is one of the 15 hotspots for climate change,” he said adding that it was important for the world to realize that and to “be able to prepare for the next disaster and to be able to resist the next disaster.”
To be able to do that Pakistan and other countries like it require huge investments for building resilient infrastructure and communities.
“These investments needs to be provided and that is why we are asking for a strong increase in the financing of adaption of resilient infrastructure,” he said.