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ISLAMABAD, Nov 19 (APP):Pakistan has pressed the UN climate leadership for a major scale-up in global climate finance and stronger support for adaptation, as senior officials met on the sidelines of the COP30 summit in Belem, Brazil.
In a bilateral meeting with the UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Simon Stiell, Pakistan’s head of delegation and Secretary for Climate Change, Aisha Humera Chaudhry, set out the country’s updated climate commitments and warned that progress under the Paris Agreement risked stalling without substantial financial backing for vulnerable nations.
Aisha briefed Stiell on Pakistan’s newly submitted Third Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 3.0), a revised roadmap laying out the country’s emissions-reduction pathway to 2035.
The updated plan includes an increase in Pakistan’s domestically financed mitigation contribution, rising from 15% to 17%, while reiterating that half of the targeted emissions cuts depend on international assistance.
She said Pakistan would require an estimated US$565bn by 2035 to deliver its full climate ambitions, arguing that previous pledges had not materialised at the scale promised.
“We are meeting our reporting obligations and submitting our NDCs and transparency reports on time,” she said, “but delivery on commitments from developed countries remains far below expectations.”
The Secretary underscored that adaptation must be elevated to equal footing with mitigation, particularly for states already grappling with worsening climate shocks. Even a tripling of adaptation finance, she cautioned, “would not close the gap, given how low the current baseline is”.
Calling for additional, grant-based funding to support national adaptation plans and resilience programmes, Aisha urged the UNFCCC to ensure financial mechanisms — including the Loss and Damage Fund — respond more effectively to developing-country needs.
She also highlighted Pakistan’s fragile mountain ecosystems and the accelerating risks posed by melting glaciers across the Hindukush, Karakoram and Himalayan ranges.
Pakistan, she said, is working to draw global attention to threats to the cryosphere and has hosted a high-level event at COP30 on the issue.
She invited UNFCCC leadership to next year’s Cross-Regional Glacier Resilience Summit in Pakistan.
Stiell welcomed Pakistan’s timely updates to its NDCs and sought clarity on its expectations from the ongoing summit.
The meeting also touched on Pakistan’s collaboration with the NDC Partnership, which is supporting efforts to implement national climate targets.
The devastation caused by the 2025 floods and repeated glacial lake outburst events, Aisha noted, illustrated the scale of the challenge — and the urgency of global action.