RAWALPINDI, Nov 22 (APP):The climate change risk remains a major impediment to human security, depicts the outcome of symposium on Climate Change Risk and Human Security held here on Tuesday at Fatima Jinnah Women University (FJWU).
The symposium was based on Higher Education Commission (HEC) funded National Research Program for Universities (NRPU) Project awarded to project team at Department of Economics. The symposium was moderated by Ms. Khudeeja Nadeem, student of BS Economics while Prof. Dr. Bushra Yasmin, Project PI, presented the project overview.
Prof. Dr. Bushra Yasmin elaborated that project is grounded on people’s perception-based measure of climate change and offers wider information on exposure, sensitivity and adaptability of household towards climate change risk.
The project helped in suggesting indigenous policy solutions and providing rationale for introducing awareness campaigns to help people in developing resilience and mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on human security.
She expressed her hope that the project findings and outcome of the awareness campaign would be long-lasting and fruitful in guiding the stakeholders to take effective measures to tackle the climate change risk at community level.
Expressing her gratitude to HEC for project funding she hoped that HEC would keep supporting such research endeavors of the universities in filling the academia-industry and policy makers’ gap.
This was followed by the display of an introductory video of the project. The project Co-PIs, Ms. Iffat Irshad and Ms. Sadia Sherbaz presented the methodology and findings of the research project and explained climate change risk has significantly negative impact on human security and all its constituents. Though the adaptation has significant impact on human security, the level of adaptation is quite low when compared to the levels of exposure and sensitivity to climate change, she added.
Guest speaker, Ms. Afia Salam, Environmental Journalist & Member of National Climate Change Council addressed the audience regarding Climate Change Research: Need of the Hour.
Ms. Salam discussed that climate change risk was not considered as an important factor affecting human security until recently.
She appreciated the efforts of the project team in carrying out evidence based research on the pertinent issues and expanded that without the complimentary role of the government in terms of strengthening institutions, improving governance and community engagement, the mitigation and adaptation to climate change risk related adversities would remain elusive.
