ISLAMABAD:Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rahman on Tuesday said scores of initiatives are being taken to make Pakistan a climate resilient country. She was virtually addressing a meeting of the Ministers and Representatives of the agencies concerned of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member countries.

Giving details of some of the initiatives, Sherry Rahman said we are moving to finalize National Hazardous Waste Management Policy, enabling the country to play a responsible role for meeting its international commitments. The Minister said Pakistan is also at the last stage of introducing the Plastic Regulation at the Federal level to reduce plastic consumption.

She said Pakistan is in middle of launching the New National Parks and Expansion of Protected Air Initiative to conserve and promote nature-based solutions to environmental sustainability and climate resilience. Sherry Rehman said we have created five thousand green jobs for indigenous community in the protected areas and under this initiative, seven and a half thousand kilometers of land will come under protection. She said we are witnessing restoration of wild habitat because of the success of this initiative.

She said the Clean Green Pakistan Program is also one of the flagship initiatives that includes extensive work on environmental conservation. She said the Green Pakistan Program is another great initiative which was launched in 2016-17 and is aimed at planting over ten billion trees and restore on million hectares of degraded forest. The Minister said we are also promoting Climate Smart Agriculture Program in drought-hit areas to enhance sustainability of the agriculture sector.