Prime Minister Kakar wants Loss and Damage Fund used on merit

DUBAI: Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar on Thursday stressed the need to immediately operationalize the Loss & Damage Fund, ensuring its utilisation on merit to cope with the issues of climate change.

He said the utilisation of Fund should not be linked with the development funds and loans from multilateral financial entities, but the funding should be additional and tangible.

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Prime Minister Kakar, in an interview with CNN on the sidelines of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP28, said that currently Pakistan’s focus was on transformation from the coal-based power plants to renewable energy projects to contribute towards minimising the climate change impacts in the region and beyond, the official news agency reported.

“This is the area which could attract interest of countries here in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the settled economies and democracies on the Western side, so it is an opportunity for all of them and all of us,” he added.

He said the climate change was no more a fashionable point to discuss as it hit Pakistan very hard last year.

Prime Minister Kakar pointed out that Pakistan was not primarily responsible for contributing to the climate disaster in which the country’s two provinces Sindh and Balochistan faced historical devastation.

“Everyone knows who have been contributing in last one century so it is more of a question of an honest conversation rather than passing judgment on countries and economies,” he remarked.

Therefore, Pm Kakar said, the responsibility shown by the wealthy nations themselves would be a welcome step.

To a question whether the Fund should be operationalised through a United Nation framework, the prime minister said, “If we wait for a UN framework it will take years of years. Therefore, initially it is possible to operationalise it under the World Bank and other multilateral entities.”