Foreign Affairs Minister Bilawal Bhutto has urged the international community to establish a fund for aiding climate change victims before the COP28 UN climate change summit, which will take place in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2023.
UAE will host the following UN-sponsored Conference of the Parties (COP) in November 2023 while COP27 was held in Egypt earlier this month and took the historic decision to establish and operationalize a loss and damage fund to assist the victims.
Pakistan played a significant role in reaching this agreement despite experiencing severe climate-related rains and floods this summer.
The foreign minister stated that the next goal was to provide answers to questions like “who will contribute to the fund, how we will develop the international financial mechanisms, and how we will get it to those who need it most” in an interview with America’s National Public Radio (NPR) network this past weekend.
Pakistan “succeeded in keeping developing countries united on loss and damage — despite efforts by certain rich countries to separate them,” according to Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, which observed that Pakistan brought the will to combat the negative consequences of climate change to COP27.
“This is a significant victory for everyone who has been affected by the destruction brought on by climate change.”
According to the foreign minister, many of the impacted nations were concerned about the international community’s past failure to uphold some of its pledges and I believe that’s why it was crucial to include the language on the fund, he continued.
Bhutto warned that breaking the agreements will have disastrous repercussions when it was emphasized that there are no penalties if rich countries do not follow through.
