Water feared to go scarce in Pakistan by 2025: senator

Pakistan is feared to face acute shortage of water, among other food-related challenges by 2025 due to adverse impact of climate change on the country, local media on Wednesday quoted a senator as saying.

Concrete efforts at state level are needed to address the challenges of climate change, as the issue is getting serious by the day, and if it is not tackled on emergency basis, it may result in an utter disaster for the country, Senator Sherry Rehman said.

Pakistan was ranked as the 5th most vulnerable country to climate change by the annual report issued by the Global Climate Risk Index in December 2019. According to the report, Pakistan suffered economic losses worth 3.8 billion U.S. dollars and witnessed 152 extreme weather events from 1999 to 2018.

The senator stressed that due to climate change effect, about 60 percent of locals are likely to suffer from food insecurity, and the repercussion of the climate change coupled with demographic boom in the country may aggravate the economic crisis of the country, if urgent measures to control the both issues are not taken.

Pakistan has recently started taking climate change as an issue of serious concern, and in this regard the current government has taken the initiative to plant a large amount of trees in the country during its five-year tenure, in a bid to lessen the hostile effects of climate change.