Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday appealed to the nations present at the United Nation’s COP27 climate summit, and said that the time to take action was ‘now or never’.
The prime minister during a two-day visit to the summit gave an emotional address in which he urged richer countries to come together and help out poorer nations that were suffering the effects of climate change at a greater level.
“In Pakistan, more than 30 million people have been severely affected; floods caused widespread destruction due to unusual rains; 8-thousand-km-long roads, 3-thousand-km-long railway tracks were affected,” the prime minister said.
He added that the COP27 summit was an ‘alarm bell for humanity’, as it was the only platform where the survival of the human race as a goal still holds promise.
“It is also the forum where we as vulnerable countries take our case to the rich and the resourced to build a road map to crucial policy resets needed in a world that is burning up faster than our capacity for recovery,” he said.
Pakistan is spending billions of dollars out of its own ‘meagre resources’, the premier said, warning that the country could face a ‘debt trap’ if it continued to pay for the damages caused by climate change. “For us, there is no Planet B,” he said.
During his visit, the PM attended the ‘Middle East Green Initiative Summit’ hosted by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Muhammad bin Salman. He also attended a high-level roundtable on the ‘Scaling up Action and Support on Losses and Damages — the Global Shield Against Climate Risks’.
Sky news has reported it as a very impactful speech. So well done showbaz!!!
Proved your critics wrong.
St Anthony’s 1: Aitchison 0