JAVED KHAN
PESHAWAR
The coalition government in the centre had slashed its annual allocations for climate change by 34 per cent in the budget 2022-23.
According to budget documents, climate change’s allocation in the outgoing financial year totaled Rs 14.6 but they had been significantly reduced to Rs 9.6 billion in the next.
Despite the high vulnerability of almost all sectors to environmental degradation, the climate change division would now receive fewer funds for its Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP).
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government 2020-21 allocated Rs 6 billion million whereas in the year 2019-20, the allocation stood at Rs7.5 billion.
These budget allocations for the ministry of climate change were unmatched when compared with petty allocations set aside by the previous governments of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) to help fight the worsening issue of climate change.
The PPP government in its last tenure made a total paltry budget allocations of Rs185 million to fight the climate change whereas, the PML-N government lagged behind by allocating merely about Rs1778 million in its five years term.
The federal government has earmarked Rs749 million for ‘Research & Development Environment, Rs 187 million for ‘Administration of Environment Protection (WasteWater Management) in the budget 2022-23.
The remaining amount of the total environment protection budget has been allocated for current expenditures.
Local and international media outlets and climate scientists have strongly condemned the cuts imposed by the incumbent federal government on funds flow for the environment sector. They warned that the spending cuts may be felt on the ground very.
The Germanwatch’s global climate index 2021 has ranked Pakistan in the top ten countries most affected by climatic changes in the past two decades.
Pakistan’s Nation Climate Change Policy has also identified a number of threats to various sectors and recommended more finance for combating climate change.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its sixth report on ‘impacts, adaptation and vulnerability’ revealed that Pakistan in coming decades would face greater consequences of climate change.
The findings of IPCC latest report carried out by Resilient Future International (Pvt) Ltd (RFI), an Islamabad-based research and training outfit, said that Pakistan was among the top ten countries where in future people living in rural and urban areas would face greater impacts of environmental degradation.
Dr Habib Jan, Deputy Director, Environmental Protection Agency Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (EPA-KP) said “It is unfortunate that the federal government has imposed a cut on the climate change budget.
We need to approach international bodies to get funding to mitigate the effects of climate change”.
He said that the government should take pragmatic steps to face the challenge of climate change, adding that there should be awareness programs and climate change should be included in the national curriculum.
