Pledge to make Karachi sustainable and energy efficient

KARACHI: Ensuring availability of relevant scientific data on the major sources of carbon and other Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and improve the existing knowledge on the drivers and impacts of climate change, the experts emphasized on the need to take serious efforts in city. It was also committed by the representatives of relevant government departments and other organizations to extend all possible support in registering Karachi to the One Planet City Challenge – a global initiative of WWF that recognizes and rewards cities that are busy making themselves climate friendly. The two-day workshop was organised by the World Wide Fund for Nature-Pakistan (WWF-Pakistan) in collaboration with K-Electric at a local hotel in Karachi on Friday. Speaking on the occasion, Pamela Cabacungan, Project Officer – Mitigation, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability Southeast Asia Secretariat (SEAS), the lead trainer of the workshop said that Pakistan ranks seven in the most affected countries by climate change in last two decades as reported in the Global Climate Risk Index of 2017. She also shared that critical climate change impacts in country include reduction in freshwater availability, increase in social inequalities that could lead to instability, displacement of people and conflicts on use of local resources. She also said that all relevant stakeholders including key government departments should come forward and develop a common understanding in establishing a climate change agenda. The various issues city is experiencing right now could worsen in immediate future due to climate change. ‘Development and implementation of effective action plan is the need of hour for Karachi’, she added. Zehra Mehdi, Deputy Director Sustainability and CSR at K-Electric said that this is an important step towards shifting Karachi to a renewable energy platform. Muhammad Moazzam Khan, Technical Adviser Marine Fisheries WWF-Pakistan said that Karachi being located in the coastal belt, has immense potential to produce renewable energy through tidal flow, waves, wind and hydro-heilography resources. He informed that from environmental perspective, Karachi used to be the best city in the British Empire due to its 100 per cent treatment of the sewage and recycling of the water for the production of vegetables. Housing in 1950s and 1960s used to have septic tanks and wind catchers. These measures help in reducing GHG emissions and dependence on electricity. He also pointed out that if the present government and all relevant stakeholders take adequate measures, Karachi could become the most energy-efficient city of the world. ‘Karachi should shift to energy efficient transportation and mobility including fishing vessels which use huge quantity of petroleum products’, he added. Marvin T. Lagonera, Project Officer – Mitigation, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability Southeast Asia Secretariat (SEAS), said that completing the city wide inventory would allow to understand the breakdown of its emissions that come from specific activities such as transport, waste and energy sector among others. This would help identify the priorities in terms of climate change adaptation and mitigation. He further said that essential part of this process is to engage the relevant stakeholders and partners in raising awareness, developing capacity and is to ensure that these processes are institutionalized. The workshop was organised as part of the project titled ‘introducing renewable energy solutions to enhance energy security and build climate resilience in Karachi,’ which is being implemented by WWF-Pakistan in collaboration with WWF-Sweden and K-Electric in selected union councils of Karachi. The overall aim of this project is to enhance energy security and climate resilience of the city through promotion of renewable and alternate energy options. The workshop aimed to build capacity of relevant government departments and other stakeholders on Greenhouse Gas (GHG) inventory development, its reporting as well as highlight the efforts of climate change adaptation and mitigation related initiatives of the Karachi city to a global platform – carbonn Climate Registry .     Published in Daily Times, August 5th 2017.