Afridi proposes regional task force to counter climate change
Afridi proposes regional task force to counter climate change
* Experts press on use of organic fertilisers, saving water
By Atif Khan
ISLAMABAD: Environment Minister Hameedullah Jan Afridi on Wednesday proposed a regional task force and an intergovernmental panel regional centre (IPRC) on climate change in South Asia.He was addressing concluding session of two-day regional conference titled ‘Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities for South Asia’, jointly organised by the Environment Ministry and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).He said industrialised countries should be kept pushing for meeting their commitments and reduce emissions of poisons. He said Pakistan also needed to develop a policy response to climate change. “We need to see this challenge as a serious threat and also as an important opportunity for a change in general to counter climate change,” he said. Earlier, participants of the conference discussed effects of climate change on water, agriculture and disaster management. They discussed opportunities for earning credit carbon by local industrialists. They lamented that little practical work was done to reduce effects of the climate change for which no authentic data was available in the country.Dr Ainun Nishat, IUCN country representative for Bangladesh, warned that changes in water quantity and quality would occur due to climate change, also affecting availability, stability, access and utilisation of food. “Close to 17 million people (15 percent of population of Bangladesh) and 22,000 sq km (16 percent of the country’s land) are likely to be hit by climate change in the near future,” he said.He said rural communities were already feeling effects of climate change, reporting excessive and erratic rainfall, an increase in number of flash floods, temperature variation, changes in seasonal cycles, and increased occurrence of drought and dry spells. Dr Adil Najam, a professor of global public policy at Boston University, USA, warned that climate change would hit the poorest first and the hardest. He said, “Climate policy is predominantly energy policy, but it will become water policy.” He said there was a need for more policy coherence, but the problem of climate change could not be tackled by policy alone. He said developing countries should generate their own resources instead of waiting for aid from developed countries. He feared that developed countries were having no intention to give any grants to developing countries as per their promises to counter climate change.Dr Zafar Altaf of the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council highlighted the potentially devastating effects of climate change on agricultural production. He suggested that measures like saving water in rice production, switching to aerobic rice, shifting to new cash crops, and finding ways to improve yields, were required to meet challenges of climate change.He stressed that the use of fertilisers had degraded the soil. He said, “We should shift to organic fertilisers as chemical fertilisers have weakened the seeds and made them vulnerable to diseases.”Malik Amin Aslam, a former minister of state for environment, also addressed the workshop.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\01\15\story_15-1-2009_pg11_2
* Experts press on use of organic fertilisers, saving water
By Atif Khan
ISLAMABAD: Environment Minister Hameedullah Jan Afridi on Wednesday proposed a regional task force and an intergovernmental panel regional centre (IPRC) on climate change in South Asia.He was addressing concluding session of two-day regional conference titled ‘Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities for South Asia’, jointly organised by the Environment Ministry and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).He said industrialised countries should be kept pushing for meeting their commitments and reduce emissions of poisons. He said Pakistan also needed to develop a policy response to climate change. “We need to see this challenge as a serious threat and also as an important opportunity for a change in general to counter climate change,” he said. Earlier, participants of the conference discussed effects of climate change on water, agriculture and disaster management. They discussed opportunities for earning credit carbon by local industrialists. They lamented that little practical work was done to reduce effects of the climate change for which no authentic data was available in the country.Dr Ainun Nishat, IUCN country representative for Bangladesh, warned that changes in water quantity and quality would occur due to climate change, also affecting availability, stability, access and utilisation of food. “Close to 17 million people (15 percent of population of Bangladesh) and 22,000 sq km (16 percent of the country’s land) are likely to be hit by climate change in the near future,” he said.He said rural communities were already feeling effects of climate change, reporting excessive and erratic rainfall, an increase in number of flash floods, temperature variation, changes in seasonal cycles, and increased occurrence of drought and dry spells. Dr Adil Najam, a professor of global public policy at Boston University, USA, warned that climate change would hit the poorest first and the hardest. He said, “Climate policy is predominantly energy policy, but it will become water policy.” He said there was a need for more policy coherence, but the problem of climate change could not be tackled by policy alone. He said developing countries should generate their own resources instead of waiting for aid from developed countries. He feared that developed countries were having no intention to give any grants to developing countries as per their promises to counter climate change.Dr Zafar Altaf of the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council highlighted the potentially devastating effects of climate change on agricultural production. He suggested that measures like saving water in rice production, switching to aerobic rice, shifting to new cash crops, and finding ways to improve yields, were required to meet challenges of climate change.He stressed that the use of fertilisers had degraded the soil. He said, “We should shift to organic fertilisers as chemical fertilisers have weakened the seeds and made them vulnerable to diseases.”Malik Amin Aslam, a former minister of state for environment, also addressed the workshop.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\01\15\story_15-1-2009_pg11_2
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