Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif underlined the need for practical measures to protect glaciers to safeguard livelihoods, agriculture and the environment.
In a message to the World Day for Glaciers observed on March 21, he said that glaciers were a guarantee of life on earth, because they maintain the environmental system in its natural form and provide the supply of significant natural resources, in particular clean water.
He said: “In 2025, we are celebrating World Day for the Glaciers for the first time.”
“Today, we recognize the need for immediate steps to protect important reservoirs from clean water,” he said, “Pakistan has more than 13,000 glaciers. This number is more than the glaciers present everywhere, except in the polar regions of the earth,” he added.
The Prime Minister said Pakistan was one of the main countries affected by climate change.
Due to climate change, time changed and the average temperature increased, causing a rapid fusion of more than 10,000 glaciers, he noted.
Consequently, he said that because of floods and drought, rivers, agriculture and millions of people working in the sector faced dangers. He said that due to the melting of glaciers, thousands of new lakes have formed, increasing the danger of devastating floods. He said that the floods of 2022 had clearly indicated that Pakistan was facing serious dangers of climate change.
These floods caused a devastation among the population living along streams and rivers and in the plains causing global economic losses of $ 30 billion, he added.
As one of the most affected countries, the Prime Minister said that Pakistan needed additional cooperation in various fields, including the program to monitor glaciers, the early forecasting system, for the adoption of agricultural practices to protect itself against the harmful effects of climate change and to attract investments for alternative solutions for storage stores.
He said: “We must promote environmental tourism at the international level according to the guidelines defined in order to put an end to the destruction of precious tourist assets of toxic substances and pollution.”
He said that everyone had to take practical measures for the protection of glaciers, because in case the glaciers disappeared, the livelihoods linked to them are also destroyed.
