Climate Change:Pakistan to be among the worst hit countries

New Delhi, Feb 7 (UNI) Pakistan will be one of the worst-hit countries by climate change, its Foreign Minister Syed Wajid Hussain Bukhari told the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit here.

He said climate change was causing irrevocable damage like glacier melting, reduction in crop yield, shortening of growing cycle of crops, increased evapotransiration and surge in insects, pests and diseases.

The indirect effects may include water logging, salinity, desertification etc.

Mr Bukhari said that despite low emissions ( 0.43 per cent of the global emissions), Paksitan wanted to end its dependence on fossil fuels as a major source of energy and requires new options to explore.

''The developing countries may be contributing the least to emission of greenhouse gases but they are the most vulnerable to climate change,'' he said.

Mr Bukhari said Pakistan considered the Summit an opportunity for the Asian and global leadership to take account of the efforts made so far, identify the bottelnecks and carve a way forward.

''Paksitan aslo considers this an opportunity to get an insight in looking at transboundary environment related issues all over the globe,'' he said.

A workable plan of action to combat climate change was the need of the hour, but this plan should be based on equitible and ethical burden sharing fraemwork.

He said there were some important questions related to the ethical burden sharing like what was the responsibility of developed countries, how much assistance they should make available for developing countries and how they should share the burden of assitance, and how the assistance be distributed between countries and societies.

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