#Malik Amin Aslam

[rnewsworld]

PAK की एक और फजीहत: सात समंदर पार महिला मंत्री से भिड़े इमरान के एडवाइजर, मैडम क्लाइमेट समिट छोड़कर बैरंग लौटीं

PAK की एक और फजीहत: सात समंदर पार महिला मंत्री से भिड़े इमरान के एडवाइजर, मैडम क्लाइमेट समिट छोड़कर बैरंग लौटीं

Hindi News International Imran Khan Cabinet Minister Zartaj Gul Return To Pakistan After Clash With Amin Aslam At UN Conference इस्लामाबाद32 मिनट पहले कॉपी लिंक पाकिस्तान के मंत्री दूसरे देश में भी अपने मुल्क को नीचा दिखाने या मजाक बनाने में कोई कोर-कसर बाकी नहीं रखते। कुछ दिनों पहले एक मंत्री ने अमेरिका में वीडियो बनाकर बताया था कि वहां कितनी गरीबी है। अब बात और आगे बढ़ गई है। स्कॉटलैंड के…

[newstodaypk]

Malik Amin Aslam talk to media at Islamabad about Billions Tree Project ...

[mariacallous]

The record-breaking floods that left one-third of Pakistan under water have also submerged its already sinking balance sheet. The government estimates it needs more than $40 billion to rebuild from the torrential, deadly rains that began in June and killed over 1,700 people. But while international aid has begun to trickle in, the global north has no plans to freeze Pakistan’s billions of dollars in debt obligations.

Pakistan owes $22 billion in foreign debt payments over the next year to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), China, the World Bank, and other public lenders. Pakistan has contributed less than 0.5 percent of historic emissions yet is among the top 10 countries most affected by climate change, according to Germanwatch’s Climate Risk Index, seen with the country’s severely worsened weather disasters like the recent floods. That’s led many citizens of the former British colony to feel echoes of historic injustice as the world’s top emitters—which are also their creditors—refuse to put debt cancellation on the agenda.

A growing chorus of Pakistani public figures, including influential former Senate chairman Mian Raza Rabbani, are demanding the world waive Pakistan’s debt as a form of direct climate reparations. The government, however, has been cautious. “We’re not asking about reparations,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif recently said, pushing back on calls made by his own climate minister. Pakistan’s new finance minister, Ishaq Dar, has said Pakistan will try to avoid asking Paris Club lending nations for help.

But if Pakistan demands a restructuring or erasure of the debt it owes to wealthy emitters—such as the United States, European Union, and China—on the grounds of climate justice, many experts believe it could set a standard for other vulnerable global south countries seeking relief in an overheating, unequal world. Lower-income countries spend five times more paying debt than they do on climate mitigation and adaptation, the Jubilee Debt Campaign found last year, and extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more severe.

“We’re in new territory,” said Ahmad Rafay Alam, an environmental lawyer and activist in Lahore, Pakistan. “There’s a 100-kilometer lake in a province in Punjab. The water has no place to drain. There’s no way any country can adapt out of that.”

Pakistan will lead the rotating G-77 coalition of developing countries at next month’s United Nations climate change conference (COP27) in Egypt, where it could insist on discussing loss and damage payments from climate change-caused destruction. “This is clearly loss and damage territory. This isn’t a debate,” Alam added. But the government still has “no clear vision” of what debt write-offs would look like, he said.

Creditors are mostly uninterested in the case for relief. The United States and China recently rolled over some debt, but U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has told Pakistan it should seek further relief from Beijing, to whom it owes $14.6 billion. The IMF, which holds its annual meetings this week, announced a $1.17 billion bailout package in August, but it has ignored calls to unlock $650 billion in special drawing rights—international reserve assets—or agree to wider debt freezes. The same goes for the World Bank, whose leader made headlines last month by refusing to acknowledge that fossil fuels are warming the planet.

“We have tried everything,” said Malik Amin Aslam, who served as climate minister under former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Pakistan planted billions of trees, proposed initiatives like nature performance bonds, and tried working with the World Bank on lending based on climate policy, but of those efforts, “none of them has really matured,” he said. “The climate crisis has totally matured.”

Still, the United States has forcefully opposed accords establishing loss-and-damage mechanisms, and the European Union won’t back a climate damage fund at COP27. Aslam said as climate minister, Pakistan “always found a closed door” when discussing loss and damage with developed nations. In the wake of the floods, world leaders like U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres have made convincing pleas for help. “But that’s where it ends, unfortunately,” Aslam said. “What Pakistan needs is solutions, and it needs them urgently.”

“The response has been totally predictable,” said Patrick Bigger, research director at the Climate and Community Project and co-author of a report that advocates debt justice as a form of climate reparations. When Sri Lanka defaulted last year and Ecuador and Zambia before that, its creditors forced them to get IMF emergency funding and cut public spending, leaving them with slimmer budgets to alleviate poverty and combat droughts and flash floods. With Pakistan, they’re “following the same playbook,” Bigger said.

Before Pakistan’s floods, the idea of debt forgiveness for climate change has mostly been kicked around in left-wing circles, evolving from debt resistance by socialist governments in Cuba and Bolivia. That might be changing. “It’s interesting that reparations is [an idea] that’s resonating in Pakistan,” Bigger said, and the expanding discourse around them could add “growing momentum” to more maximalist approaches toward canceling debt.

Bigger argues there’s a real economic argument for wiping out debt—and there are existing models that are successful. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, which began in 1996, wiped out more than $70 billion in debt held by 37 developing countries, allowing them to spend more on poverty reduction. That program had “genuinely positive social and fiscal impacts” on participating countries, Bigger said, though it didn’t “alleviate the structural dimensions that create indebtedness in the first place”—and now, the climate crisis has saddled even more countries with massive adaptation costs.

There are other methods. The IMF could automatically suspend debt payments of countries that suffer climate disasters, Bigger said. Global lenders can attach climate-related conditions to debt relief, which prevents corrupt politicians from pilfering money meant for mitigation projects. And Paris Club lenders have used debt swaps to save failing economies, such as when lenders allowed struggling Latin American countries to convert their bank loans to bonds. “Maybe these sort-of sophisticated debt-swapping tools can be used,” Alam said. “I don’t think a global superpower like the United States needs a nuclear country to go destitute.”

Asking Pakistan to seek help from Beijing could also be dangerous. Washington’s ties to Islamabad have eroded in the past decade, leaving its reputation among Pakistanis in tatters. Playing hardball with debt repayment would only push Pakistan and other global south nations closer to China and Russia, harming Washington’s security goals and creating room for insurgent anti-West populists and Islamist movements.

Khan, Pakistan’s populist former prime minister, is deeply skeptical of global lending institutions and could leverage public anger to fuel his ongoing bid to retake power. And while China’s lending “has been problematic,” Bigger said, they were “much better actors” than most Western governments and private lenders in considering debt suspension.

At last week’s IMF meeting, global leaders blamed China for slowing relief in countries struggling to repay their debts, but as long as they’re forced to pay billions of dollars to the nations whose emissions caused their floods, many Pakistanis are not fond of either power. “I can shoot myself in the foot, or I can cut my pinky finger off,” Alam said.

And refusing to forgive the debt of Pakistan contributes directly to the suffering of millions of people, who face food and water shortages and a growing health emergency, said Ishak Soomro, a journalist and research associate who’s been on the ground in the affected areas of Pakistan’s Sindh province.

Many villages have no potable water, Soomro said, and more people are beginning to contract waterborne diseases. Millions of people are still living on roadsides, without shelter, as winter approaches. Schools are being taught out of tents. “We’re paying debt with dollars,” he said. “And we don’t have any dollars to rebuild our country.”

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

When some 200 scientists convened by the United Nations all but demanded on Monday that the nations immediately band together to cut emissions, they portrayed it as a brief window to avert the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

But as their call ricocheted around the planet, it only underscored the challenge ahead: getting the world’s biggest polluters and its most vulnerable countries to cooperate against a grave global threat.

In unequivocal terms, the new United Nations report said that the world has been so slow to cut emissions, it was certain to miss one of its basic goals to limit warming. It said atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide had not been this high in at least 2 million years, and the past decade is likely the hottest the planet has been in 125,000 years. And in unusually direct terms, it said that human activity — burning oil, gas and coal — was squarely to blame.

The report prompted outrage among some of the world’s most vulnerable countries, whose leaders demanded that rich, industrialized powers immediately reduce their planet-warming pollution, compensate poor countries for the damages caused and help fund their preparations for a perilous future.

“What science is now saying is actually happening in front of our eyes,” said Malik Amin Aslam, special assistant on climate change to the prime minister of Pakistan, where temperatures exceeded 122 degrees Fahrenheit last year. “It’s like a hammer hitting us on the head every day.”

Tensions over the report’s findings are likely to course through negotiations taking place ahead of a major U.N. climate conference set for November in Glasgow.

[thekolsocial]

Pakistan's Climate Change initiative During Lockdown

New Post has been published on https://thekolsocial.com/pakistans-climate-change-initiative-during-lockdown/

Pakistan's Climate Change initiative During Lockdown

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Pakistan’s Climate Change initiative During Lockdown

Pakistan’s climate change initiative provides funds to help families during the pandemic could also help prepare for the next big threat: climate change.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”26px”][vc_column_text]When construction worker Abdul Rahman lost his job to Pakistan’s coronavirus lockdown, his choices looked stark: resort to begging on the streets or let his family go hungry. But the government has now given him a better option: Join tens of thousands of other out-of-work labourers in planting billions of trees across the country to deal with climate change threats.

Since Pakistan locked down starting March 23 to try to stem the spread of COVID-19, unemployed day labourers have been given new jobs as “jungle workers”, planting saplings as part of the country’s 10 Billion Tree Tsunami programme. Such “green stimulus” efforts are an example of how funds that aim to help families and keep the economy running during pandemic shutdowns could also help nations prepare for the next big threat: climate change.

“Due to coronavirus, all the cities have shut down and there is no work. Most of us daily wagers couldn’t earn a living,” Rahman, a resident of Rawalpindi district in Punjab province, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. He now makes 500 rupees ($3) per day planting trees – about half of what he might have made on a good day, but enough to get by. “All of us now have a way of earning daily wages again to feed our families,” he said.

The ambitious five-year tree-planting programme, which Prime Minister Imran Khan launched in 2018, aims to counter the rising temperatures, flooding, droughts and other extreme weather in the country that scientists link to climate change.

The Global Climate Risk Index 2020, issued by think tank Germanwatch, ranked Pakistan fifth on a list of countries most affected by planetary heating over the last two decades – even though the South Asian nation contributes only a fraction of global greenhouse gases.

As the coronavirus pandemic struck Pakistan, the 10 Billion Trees campaign initially was halted as part of social distancing orders put in place to slow the spread of the virus, which has infected over 13,900 people in Pakistan, according to a Reuters tally. But earlier this month, the prime minister granted an exemption to allow the forestry agency to restart the programme and create more than 63,600 jobs, according to government officials.

While much of the country is still observing stay-at-home orders, local police and district authorities have been told trucks carrying trees should be allowed to travel and villagers permitted to leave their homes to work with the project. A recent assessment by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics found that, due to the lockdown, up to 19 million people could be laid off, almost 70% of them in the Punjab province.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”26px”][vc_single_image image=”21026″ img_size=”full”][vc_empty_space height=”26px”][vc_column_text]Abdul Muqeet Khan, chief conservator of forests for Rawalpindi district, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the planting project is in “full swing”. Much of the work is happening on 15,000 acres (6,000 hectares) of land near the capital Islamabad, he said, as well as on other tracts of state-owned forest land around the country.

This year the programme is employing triple the number of workers it did in its first year, said Malik Amin Aslam, climate change advisor to the prime minister. Many of the new jobs are being created in rural areas, he said, with a focus on hiring women and unemployed daily workers – mainly young people – who were migrating home from locked-down cities.

The work, which pays between 500 rupees and 800 rupees per day, includes setting up nurseries, planting saplings, and serving as forest protection guards or forest firefighters, he said. All the workers have been told to wear masks and maintain the mandated two metres (six feet) of social distance between them, he added.

“This tragic crisis provided an opportunity and we grabbed it,” Aslam told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview. “Nurturing nature has come to the economic rescue of thousands of people.”

According to Germanwatch, Pakistan reported more than 150 extreme weather events between 1999 and 2018 – from floods to heat waves – with total losses of $3.8 billion. Environmentalists have long pushed reforestation as a way to help, saying forests help prevent flooding, stabilise rainfall, provide cool spaces, absorb heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions and protect biodiversity.

According to green group WWF, Pakistan is a “forest poor” country where trees cover less than 6% of the total area. Every year thousands of hectares of forest are destroyed, mainly as a result of unsustainable logging and clearing land for small-scale farming, the group said on its website.

With 7.5 billion rupees ($46 million) in funding, the 10 Billion Trees project aims to scale up the success of an earlier Billion Tree Tsunami in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where the government has been planting trees since 2014.

About 30 million indigenous saplings have been planted in Punjab since the start of the 10 Billion Tree Tsunami – including mulberry, acacia and moringa – said Shahid Rashid Awan, project director for Punjab province. This year, the project hopes to hit 50 million trees, he said.

Planting season usually ends in May, Awan noted, but programme organisers plan to extend the initiative to the end of June, to keep workers employed for longer. “We can absorb all the unemployed labourers and workers who have fled the cities and returned to their villages in the past few weeks. This is unskilled work,” he said.

Rab Nawaz, of WWF-Pakistan, said the government’s move is “a very good idea to create green jobs and get people employed.” But he cautioned that planting trees is just one tool in the fight against climate change, saying there also needed to be investment in improving the ability of farmers and city dwellers to adapt to the effects of a hotter planet. “The government should be very selective on how it spends money, and focus on resilience,” he urged.

For Aslam, the green jobs initiative is a way to help Pakistan’s workers recover from the coronavirus crisis “with dignity and avoiding handouts”. “This has taught us the valuable lesson that when you invest in nature it not only pays you back, but also rescues you in a stressed economic situation,” he said.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column fade_animation_offset=”45px” width=”1/2″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row padding_top=”0px” padding_bottom=”0px” content_text_aligment=”” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no”][vc_column fade_animation_offset=”45px”][vc_empty_space height=”26px”][vc_column_text]

News: Thomson Reuters Editing by Jumana Farouky and Laurie Goering Image: Shahid Rashid Awan

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[awesome-qb-news-5-us]

Federal cabinet reshuffle: Portfolios of Shahzad Akbar, Malik Amin changed

Federal cabinet reshuffle: Portfolios of Shahzad Akbar, Malik Amin changed

[ad_1]

ISLAMABAD: The portfolios of Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Accountability and Interior, Shahzad Akbar, and Adviser to PM on Climate Change, Malik Amin Aslam, have been changed in the latest reshuffle in the federal cabinet, ARY News reported on Wednesday.

Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Accountability and Interior, Shahzad Akbar, has been appointed as an adviser on…

[udarofficial]

Met Climate change minister Malik Amin Aslam regarding. #Youth Green Pakistan Program. : UD Digital Team

[cropforlife]

A Gift Of 7,000 Trees From China Reflects Friendly Ties: Amin

A Gift Of 7,000 Trees From China Reflects Friendly Ties: Amin

ISLAMABAD: On Wednesday, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam welcomed China’s participation in the flagship Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Plantation (TBTTP) project and hailed the gift of 7,000 trees plantation to commemorate 70 years of Pak-China friendly ties. The SAPM and Chinese Ambassador Nong Rong kicked off the plantation by plantation a pine tree…

[infozonepk]

CEO CBD Imran Amin signed MOUs in Punjab International Business Conference at Dubai

CEO CBD Imran Amin signed MOUs in Punjab International Business Conference at Dubai

Punjab Govt is taking part in Dubai Expo 2020 to portray and highlight business investment and tourism potential of Punjab.  Punjab International Business Conference is being held to highlight this potential. On 2nd day of the event, Minister for Industry and Commerce Mr. Mian Aslam Iqbal, Finance Minister Punjab Mr. Hashim Jawan Bakht, Minister for Punjab Housing & Public Health Mr. Malik Asad…

[csrstories]

MoU signed to restore 50,000 degraded forest land

MoU signed to restore 50,000 degraded forest land

Islamabad : Special Assistant to PM on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam said that the private sector can play a vital role in restoring the country’s degraded forest landscape for achieving environmental and economic sustainability. While addressing a press conference here on Wednesday on the occasion of MoU signing for forest restoration and carbon offset programme, the PM’s aide further said…

[fastworldnews1]

PM performs Umrah; prays for peace and prosperity of Pakistan, Muslim Ummah

Prime Minister Imran Khan here on Saturday night performed Umrah along with his accompanying delegation on the first day of his three-day visit to the Kingdom.

The Prime Minister prayed for peace and prosperity of Pakistan as well as Muslim Ummah.

Earlier, soon after his arrival in Madinah Munawara in the evening, he proceeded to Masjid-e-Nabawi, paid his respects at Roza-e-Rasool (Peace Be Upon Him), offered Nawafil and prayed for the progress and prosperity of the country.

The Prime Minister, upon arrival in Jeddah was received by Prince Badar bin Sultan Al Saud, Deputy Governor of Makkah region, while in Madinah Munawara he was welcomed by Prince Saud Bin Khalid Al-Faisal, Deputy Governor of Madinah Region.

The Prime Minister arrived in Saudi Arabia on a three-day visit of the Kingdom to attend the launch of Middle East Green Initiative (MGI) Summit being held in Riyadh.

The Prime Minister, who was visiting the Kingdom at the invitation of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, besides attending the Summit will also participate in Pakistan-Saudi Investment Forum and meet Saudi leadership.

He is also expected to have a meeting with Pakistan community members in Saudi Arabia.

The Prime Minister was accompanied by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Energy Minister Hammad Azhar, Special Assistant for Environment Malik Amin Aslam.

  https://ift.tt/3vDGjCH

[estatelandnews]

Margalla Hills leopard conservation zone ordered by PM. Due to the expanding leopard population in the Margalla Hills range, Prime Minister Imran Khan ordered the creation of a conservation zone on Wednesday.

The PM also approved the Wildlife Information Centre at Marghazar Zoo. The decisions were made by the Prime Minister’s Climate Change Committee.

The Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB) reported increased leopard sightings in the Margalla Hills, particularly on trails 4 and 6.

The IWMB is working with the CDA to build fences and gates around trail 4, which will be closed at dusk. Trail 4 was opened earlier this month to reduce crowding and illicit wood cutting.

“The protected leopard zone will provide a healthy eco-system to predators permanently inhabiting the hills,” the PM Office cited him as saying.

Prime Minister Khan approved the National Climate Change Policy 2021 and the National Wildlife Policy 2021 in concept.

He established a think group to coordinate efforts among ministries and create innovative ideas to combat climate change. Also, he noted, the KPK government’s signature “Ten Billion Tree” campaign had established Pakistan as a “Green Champion.”

Mr. Khan said the international community recognized Pakistan’s realistic and tangible actions to reduce climate change consequences and asked the Ministry of Climate Change to review targets and develop new goals to expedite environmental preservation.

A qualified workforce and advanced technology are required to preserve the country’s national parks, he noted.

The PM praised Special Assistant to the PM on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam’s efforts to protect the environment and promote Pakistan’s efforts in this subject.

Amin Aslam had earlier informed the group on country contributions, climate change, national wildlife policy, and green climate diplomacy.

[realgypsymama]

Green Stimulus - Trusting in Nature | Malik Amin Aslam | TEDxIslamabadStudio

Green Stimulus – Trusting in Nature | Malik Amin Aslam | TEDxIslamabadStudio

In this talk Federal Minister of Climate Change in Pakistan shares the efforts made by government to fight for a Continue reading

[islamabadscene]

UK to help Pakistan mainstream valuing natural resources into policymaking

UK to help Pakistan mainstream valuing natural resources into policymaking

Pakistan and United Kingdom have pledged to work together to introduce the concept of the natural capital accounting system and its implementation for conservation and protection of natural resources, biodiversity and ecosystems. Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam has said that the and the British Higher Commissioner in Pakistan Dr Christian Turner witnessed…

[msaqibjaved]

Prime Minister Imran Khan pays a visit to Haripur

Prime Minister Imran Khan pays a visit to Haripur

Prime Minister Imran Khan today visited the Haripur region and attended a ceremony related to the ten billion tsunami program. Special Assistant for Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam briefed the Prime Minister on the success of the tsunami program for ten billion trees. The prime minister planted a tree and raised an event. He also informed about the UN Environment Program’s “Natural Capital of…

[lahoreherald]

Prime Minister Imran Khan pays a visit to Haripur

Prime Minister Imran Khan today visited the Haripur region and attended a ceremony related to the ten billion tsunami program.

Special Assistant for Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam briefed the Prime Minister on the success of the tsunami program for ten billion trees. The prime minister planted a tree and raised an event. He also informed about the UN Environment Program’s “Natural Capital of Pakistan” report.