Director General of SACEP DR. Abas Basir addressing COP 25 High Level Segment, UNFCCC COP 25, Madrid, stated that the South Asia region is facing daunting climate-related challenges, causing huge economic, social, and environmental damage to South Asian countries, compromising their growth potential and poverty reduction efforts.
He added that according to the Global Climate Risk index 2019, among the countries most affected in 2017, Sri Lanka was placed in the second place and Nepal was ranked the world’s fourth, while Bangladesh was ranked ninth.
Dr. Basir said: All South Asian countries are party to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Implementation of the agreement is largely anchored in the Nationally Determined Contributions which provide an overarching national framework and political mandate for climate action. He added that South Asian countries making significant progress in implementing their ambitious NDCs. However, full implementation of the NDCs and the development of integrated, comprehensive, long-term, low-emission development plans and strategies requires further bold and innovative steps from the countries as well as from the developed country partners to assist the South Asian countries in implementing their NDCs.
Director General of SACEP, therefor, called for Improved access to climate fund and enhanced international support for capacity-building. He emphasized on the need for Increased financial as well as technical support for adaptation vis-à-vis the ongoing and highly concentration on mitigation finance and expressed SACEP’s commitment to continue to work with its member countries to meet their needs through capacity development, exchange of best practices/lessons learned and leveraging including private-sector engagement, in the context of NDC implementation.
The High-Level Segment of the UNFCCC COP 2019 started its work on 10th November with the statements by presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers, environment ministers and heads of international organizations and will continue till 11th December 2019.
