The Frontier Post
Published Date: Dec 17, 2013
Mushahid for revival of Ministry of Climate Change
Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, Chairman of the
Senate Defence Committee, has called upon the government to immediately
revive the Ministry of Climate Change given the importance of this
issue, which has security implications as well. Mushahid was addressing
a conference on climate change organized by the Sustainable Development
Policy Institute (SDPI) as guest of honour here on Monday.
Talking to the parliamentarians of Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives,
Afghanistan as well as representatives of India who attended the
conference, Senator Mushahid Hussain said that climate change was an
issue not only confined to Pakistan but this is an issue of South Asia
as a whole as well as the entire Asia.
In this connection, Senator Mushahid Hussain referred to his recent role
as Chairman of the Organising Committee of the Asian Parliamentary
Assembly (APA), which was the biggest parliamentary conference in the
history of Pakistan with 30 countries participating.
The Islamabad Declaration has also focused on the issue of climate
change and environmental degradation through a collective responsibility
of Asian Parliaments, he said. Mushahid said that the Senate Defence
Committee has already defined climate change as a security issue since
it has implications on our relations with India giving the emerging
water dispute as well as the dislocation of a huge number of population
caused periodically by floods and torrential rains in Pakistan.
He said that during the last floods in Sindh province, over 20 million
people were affected and there had been deforestation in Pakistan to the
extent of 33 percent.
He said that those living on the coastline of South Asia were at risk
because of global warming and rising temperature, so it was necessary
that there should be a regional South Asian approach to this problem as
well.
The Senator referred to a recent conference organised by the Communist
Party of China on ‘Green Development & Building a Beautiful Asia’
and said China’s President Xi Jinping had also announced that
‘ecological red lines must not be crossed’.
At the same conference, held in the Chinese City of Xian, a Global
Alliance of Political Parties on Climate Change was announced to promote
awareness and focus on this all-important issue.
Senator Mushahid Hussain announced that in cooperation with the SDPI,
the APA would hold a workshop on climate change for Asian
Parliamentarians in 2014, and in this regard, he also requested the SDPI
to prepare a special Asia vision policy document on climate change
which the Senate of Pakistan as host of the APA would circulate among
all member parliaments so that a collective Asian strategy on climate
change can be formulated and implemented.