ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said that debt cannot become the “acceptable new normal” in climate financing, as he addressed the challenges faced by developing countries within the global climate finance framework.
His statement came during a Climate Finance Round Table Conference organised by Pakistan on the sidelines of the two-day World Leaders Climate Action Summit, also known as COP29, currently being held in Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku.
“We stand at a crucial threshold where global climate finance framework must be redefined to effectively meet the needs of vulnerable nations,” PM Shehbaz said.He explained that financing in the form of loans increases the debt of developing nations and pushes them towards “mounting debt traps” which he referred to as “death traps”.
He added, “Debt cannot become the acceptable new normal in climate financing which is why we must resume focus on non-debt financing solutions enabling countries to fund climate initiatives.”“Despite years of promises and commitments, the gaps are growing, leading to aggregate barriers in achieving objectives of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).”
PM Shehbaz called climate financing an “urgent need of the hour”, stating that developing countries need to deliver Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and “need an estimated $6.8 trillion by 2030 to implement less than half of their current NDCs.”
The prime minister further urged donor countries to “fulfil their commitment” which is 4.7 per cent of their gross national product (GNP) and capitalise on existing climate funds.“One such commitment is a $100bn annual climate pledge established a decade ago at COP15 [which] is now reported by OECD to have reached only $160bn,” he said.
PM Shehbaz said that Pakistan can relate to the “agony and pain of other vulnerable countries”, highlighting how the country faced two devastating floods.
Pakistan is ranked among the top 10 most climate-vulnerable countries, according to the Global Climate Risk Index 2021. It has faced increasingly frequent and severe weather events, such as unprecedented floods, intense monsoon rains, devastating heat waves, rapid glacial melting and glacial lake outburst floods.
