“The government should thoroughly reviews its decision to devolve especially the Environment Ministry as the climate change needs a central and compact approach,” opined various speakers at the SDPI seminar titled "Institutional Arrangement for Climate Change: Role of the Ministry of Environment" held here last week.
Arshad H Abbasi, Advisor, Water and Energy, while opposing the idea of transferring Environment Ministry to provinces, said that according to a World Bank report environmental protection agencies in provinces are only ceremonial so it is not feasible to leave this responsibility to them.
“Pakistan is a lower riparian country as compared to India in South Asian Region and for this task Ministry of Environment and Pak-EPA has to play a pivotal and central role in this regard,” he said.
Shakeel Ahmed Ramay, Head of Climate Change Study Centre, presented the cost of damages to environmental and natural resources in Pakistan and said that estimated costs were as follow: $1867 million for water, sanitation and hygiene, $1,167 million in terms of soil erosion and salinity, $2200 million in terms of air pollution. He said that actual cost of damages to environment and natural resources was even higher than that.
He suggested that there should be climate wings in all the relevant ministries and it needs to be integrated in developmental policies, inter-ministerial co-ordination needs to be improved, all the organs related to climate need to be strengthened, economic policy for climate is needed.
http://www.technologytimes.pk/mag/2011/feb11/issue01/environment_ministry.php
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