GLASGOW: Developed countries, which bear the historical responsibility for the climate crisis, should “show climate action, not just climate illusion,” Minister for Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam said.
“We come to this conference with a lot of hope that the countries who are responsible for this issue should bear up to their responsibility and assist countries like Pakistan to face up to the consequences which are not their own doing,” Aslam told Xinhua in a recent interview.
Aslam made the remarks in Glasgow, Scotland as negotiators met for the second week at the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The minister said Pakistan, as a developing country, has contributed little to the world’s carbon emissions but is facing the grave impact of climate change.
“We are a country which faces glacier melt. We face horrendous heat fears. We had the hottest place on Earth in Pakistan last year. And then in the south, we have the cyclones and the hurricanes which are coming with increased frequency and intensity,” he said.
“They are impacting our economy, and they are hurting Pakistan’s development for the future,” he noted.
The minister pointed out that the rich countries — which built their wealth by burning fossil fuels and accounted most for the climate crisis — have failed to deliver their promise of $100 billion a year to help lower-income nations to tackle climate change by 2020, among other pledges.
“I think it’s really a shame that you have the hundred-billion-dollar pledge, and we have a decade of disappointment,” said Aslam, noting the pledge by the rich countries was made 12 years ago at the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen.
“Here we are standing in 2021. and It’s still not there. They are pushing into 2023, which I think is really not fair. It’s not equitable. And as I said, it’s really a shame that they have not been able to live up to this,” he added.
As developed countries failed to honour their commitments, some developing countries are taking robust action with ambitious goals to cut emissions.
China has announced that it would strive to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.
Meanwhile, the country has also announced green action initiatives that encourage green infrastructure, energy, transportation and finance under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) framework.
Aslam praised the collaboration between the two countries on a range of projects involving hydropower and tree planting in northwest China’s Gobi deserts.
He also noted the leaders of the two countries have announced a commitment to making the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) a green corridor.
“This represents the shift to clean energy,” he said.
Aslam applauded China’s decision not to build any more coal-fired power stations overseas as “a huge announcement, a very bold announcement.”
China has become the world’s largest market for renewable energy, with renewable power accounting for 29.5 percent of overall electricity consumption, according to official statistics.
The country is also the world’s biggest manufacturer of renewable energy equipment, ranking first in installed capacity of hydroelectric, wind and solar power generation, and has the largest nuclear power generating projects under construction.
“China is a country which has taken probably the biggest U-turn in the world by shifting towards this concept of eco-civilization, which is based on low carbon development, which is based on nature-based recovery,” Aslam said.
“What China is doing and you know the whole concept of eco-civilization is not talk. It is action,” he said.
