Plenary Title: The Challenges of Climate Change for Pakistan
The Challenges of Climate Change for Pakistan
Shafqat Kakakhel*
The establishment of a Task Force on Climate Change by the Planning Commission has encouraged hopes of a serious effort by the Government to assess the adverse impacts of climate change on the economy, health sector and disaster management and to initiate efforts to cope with those impacts.
The success of such efforts will decisively depend on the quality of the studies on the impacts, the formulation of appropriate policies and their effective implementation through the active participation of all the stakeholders. The challenge is huge but the price of inaction is much higher.
* Mr. Shafqat Kakakhel, who is presently associated with the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) as Adviser on Environment, is a former Pakistani diplomat and senior UN official. He has decades of experience in dealing with sustainable development issues.
Mr. Kakakhel joined the Pakistan Foreign Service in 1969 and served in Pakistan missions in Lebanon, Egypt, Germany, and India, apart from holding senior positions at the Foreign Office handling the Middle East, South Asia, policy planning, and SAARC. In 1994, he was appointed the High Commissioner to Kenya and Uganda and Permanent Representative to the UN Environment Programme and the UN Habitat Programme. In 1998, Mr Kakakhel was appointed Deputy Executive Director of UNEP by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan with the rank of UN Assistant Secretary General. He retired from the UN in December 2007.
During his long stints in the Diplomatic Service and the UN, Mr. Kakakhel attended hundreds of meetings on environment and sustainable development issues, including the climate negotiations in 1997 leading to the Kyoto Protocol. The last inter-governmental meetings attended by him were the climate negotiations in Bali in December 2007.
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