Antalya (GNP): Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has called on the international community to provide climate finance in the form of grants rather than loans. He said vulnerable countries cannot be expected to confront climate disasters while taking on more debt.
He made the appeal in his address to the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Türkiye, on Thursday. Delegates from nearly 200 countries are attending the gathering.
The prime minister said Pakistan is taking its own steps towards clean energy, but national effort alone cannot make up for an unfair global response to climate change. He asked for a significant increase in resilience and adaptation funding, which he described as survival funds for struggling economies. He also said such finance should include public-private partnerships.
To show the human cost, Shehbaz pointed to the 2025 flash floods in Buner district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. A young man was two days away from his wedding when floodwaters swept through his village, and the prime minister said the family’s celebrations turned into mourning. He described this as the experience of millions of people in Pakistan and across the developing world.
He then returned to the catastrophic floods of 2022, which killed more than 1,700 people, displaced millions and caused economic losses above $30 billion. Recalling his United Nations General Assembly address that year, he said he had warned the consequences would not stay within Pakistan’s borders. In his view, that warning has now become reality.
Shehbaz said Pakistan has not waited for outside help to act. Clean energy sources now meet nearly 55 percent of the country’s energy needs, he said, and Pakistan is advancing electric mobility. It has also set a target of cutting projected emissions by about 50 percent by 2035.
On Tuesday, he addressed a high-level dialogue on clean energy transition titled 35 by 35: Powering the Future. He said Pakistan added nearly 22 gigawatts of rooftop solar capacity in just two years, driven largely by ordinary citizens seeking affordable power. He also reaffirmed Pakistan’s support for the 35-by-35 Global Electrification Pledge, which aims to raise electricity’s share of total final energy consumption to around 35 percent by 2035.
The prime minister also raised water security. He said water must not be used as an instrument of political pressure, and that countries sharing river systems must honor their agreements.
He argued that climate change cannot be tackled by countries acting alone, and he thanked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for Türkiye’s support during the floods of 2010 and 2022. Shehbaz urged world leaders to judge the success of the negotiations by results delivered to affected families, not by promises made at the summit.
On the sidelines of the summit, Shehbaz met General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, president of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council. According to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office, he reaffirmed Pakistan’s longstanding ties with Sudan and its support for the country’s sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity.
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The two leaders also exchanged views on how climate change affects developing countries. They agreed that continued coordination at multilateral forums remains important.
The talks come as governments face mounting pressure to speed up the move away from fossil fuels and cut greenhouse gas emissions. The United States, the largest historical emitter, has skipped the summit for a second consecutive year after withdrawing from international climate cooperation.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned leaders that the global response remains dangerously slow, while negotiators work on measures to raise electricity’s share of global energy consumption and revive efforts to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
Shehbaz Sharif said, “National effort cannot replace a fair and just global response.”
Managing Editor at Global News Pakistan (GNP), with a Bachelor's degree in International Relations from Riphah International University, graduated with a Gold Medal. Reach out at sabahtareengnp@gmail.com
