Kathmandu, Aug. 25
Finance Minister Dr. Prakash Sharan Mahat is elected
vice-president of the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
He is elected to the post by the plenary session of the 7th
World Conference of the GEF being held in Vancouver, Canada, Ministry of
Finance (MoF) informed in a press statement on Friday. The conference will
conclude on August 26, Saturday.
FM Dr. Mahat is elected as the vice-president with the
proposal of the Republic of Panama and the support of the Netherlands at the
ongoing meeting of the assembly on Thursday.
Earlier, while addressing the assembly meeting of the World
Wildlife Fund, he said that Nepal has expanded total land covered by forests to
45 per cent, and has flowed clean oxygen for the entire human community.
He also said that Nepal is making sincere efforts to protect
biological diversity, as well as protecting rare and endangered wild animals
and species. As a result, the number of tigers and rhinos has increased
significantly. Dr. Mahat mentioned that such forest and wildlife resources are
not only for Nepal but have remained as resource for the world human community,
but despite these efforts, Nepal is at high risk in terms of climate change.
"Nepal is the 10th most disaster risk-prone
country in the world and in recent days, the risk of floods, landslides,
excessive rainfall and drought as well as avalanches has also increased,"
he said.
He drew the attention of the world delegation gathered in
Vancouver to the fact that Nepal's temperature is expected to increase by 0.5
to 2.0 degrees Celsius by 2030 and that more than 50 billion US dollars of
investment is needed by 2050 to deal with its effects and impacts.
FM Dr. Mahat emphasised the effective implementation of the
programmes run by climate finance and requested to focus the resources
including the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund approved by this assembly on
the most affected countries. He opined that increasing the size of the fund
alone will not be effective as expected unless it is implemented in an
integrated and comprehensive manner.
Representing the countries with high climate change risks,
Dr. Mahat emphasised that the quality of investment projects should be enhanced
in a way so that it could bring about positive changes in the living standards
of the local people.
He stated that environmental sustainability cannot be
achieved unless significant investment is made in the field of human
development. According to him, the environmental fund programmes should be
implemented through the national system. Concrete and identified activities
should be included in the project and investment should be focused on the main
activities of the project. Likewise, FM Dr. Mahat maintained that high-level
cooperation and contribution of all is necessary to address the multifaceted
effects of climate change.
Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 26 August 2023.
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