Islamabad 11th September : UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has stated that developed countries are the ones responsible for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere over the course of time.Guterres said the comments on Saturday in an interview with journalists in the port city of Karachi in Pakistan’s southern region of Karachi in the course of a visit to flood-affected zones of Pakistan, Xinhua news agency reported.
“Those impacts are exploding,” he said, noting that “people living in high climate risk zones, such as in South Asia are 15 times more likely to die due to climate-related impacts.”
A majority of humanity is in this category, and the vast majority of people are in the world in need, Guterres said.
In the aftermath of the flood-related catastrophe Pakistan is suffering the Secretary-General urged the world community to come up with an entirely new method of relief from debt for countries affected.
He further advocated a debt swap process which would allow a country instead of paying debt to creditors and creditors, could use the funds to invest in climate resilience and sustainable infrastructure as well as in the green transformation of their economies.
Prior to that, in an event on Friday, addressing Xinhua on carbon emissions from the developed nations for many centuries, Guterres called for effective assistance by the world’s developed countries to assist the poorest developing nations to be resilient and adapt to the changing conditions.
“This isn’t just a question of generosity.It’s an issue of justice,” he said.
The Secretary-General on Saturday together with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and other officials, visited areas affected by flooding of Pakistan’s southern Sindh and southwest Balochistan provinces.
In addition to going to the UNESCO’s World Heritage site of Mohenjo Daro in Sindh which was damaged by the floods he was also able to meet the people who had been displaced in Sindh as well as Balochistan.
The Secretary General also took an aerial view of the flood conditions and damages.
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