ISLAMABAD: The chairperson of the Senate Standing Committee on Climate Change, Senator Sherry Rehman, has urged collective climate action to address the cascading polycrisis.
Speaking at the conference on ‘Pakistan’s Final Warning: Climate Calamity or Collective Action’, the PPP senator said that despite unprecedented climate shocks, there was a troubling silence in policy corridors.
“I see no alarm bells ringing anywhere in power corridors. No budgets are being recalibrated for coping better with the crisis,” she noted.
“If there is one priority for collective climate action in Pakistan it has to be water conservation. The water crisis means we have either too much water in the system and rivers at the wrong time, or too little when and where we need it, to sustain food security and livelihoods across the country.
Pakistan, she noted, is deeply underprepared for the scale of climate investment required: “To meet the climate crisis head on, everything will have to be scaled up. Finance is just one part of it. And let’s be clear — it’s not coming in anywhere close to the quantum needed by frontline ecosystems like ours.”
She also reminded the international community of their responsibilities and stressed the importance of public-private partnerships.
Published in Dawn, July 9th, 2025
