Long-term SLCP Planning Accumulates Benefits for Pakistan

Pakistan’s experience of developing a national methane action roadmap is instructive of many of the common challenges faced by developing countries. This includes the need to engage multiple levels of government, the need for long-term consistency in planning, and linking different mitigation and planning projects to create a larger aggregate effect. 

Pakistan’s experience in mitigating SLCPs began with an assessment of SLCPs and air pollutant mitigation, which identified the major sources of methane and other SLCPs. This assessment informed the development of Pakistan’s first National Clean Air Policy, and its associated priority actions, as well as feeding into the methane roadmap. Using the same technical analysis and methodologies across these projects has helped Pakistan to create more coherence in resulting climate and clean air policies.  

“Rather there being tradeoffs between different actions, the priority measures for clean air in agriculture and waste are in line with actions that are likely to be in the methane roadmap on best practice landfill management,” said Chris Malley, Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute, one of the project implementing partners. In addition, several priority measures to mitigate methane emissions already exist included in existing policies and served as the base for LEAP prediction analysis and methane roadmap.  

Pakistan’s methane roadmap has also benefitted from the use of the CCAC’s methodology for the development of methane roadmaps, which consists of five core building blocks and provide consistency between countries to enable transparency and also to be comparability with other countries. Tailoring this methodology to Pakistan’s context and needs has also been an important step however. This includes making each building block in the roadmap action oriented, with a clear set of actions needed to enhance that building block this extra level of specificity allows funding organisations to fund specific projects because they are already in the roadmap. This has already allowed Pakistan to attract funding for a project to improve the standard at which it reports methane emissions to the UNFCCC.  

Pakistan’s SLCP and methane planning process has also engaged provincial level governments as important stakeholders since it’s last NDC revision, by engaging NDC focal points at both ministerial and provincial levels. This has helped build institutional capacity over the long-term, and has helped provincial level governments adapt to the changes their greater responsibilities in the agriculture and waste sectors since the 18th Amendment to Pakistan’s Constitution. The process for coordinating among these stakeholders has resulted in nearly 30 different inputs to the draft methane roadmap from provincial and national planners, as well as independent experts.

Pakistan’s methane management in the past has faced some challenges in financial resource mobilisation however, as some government agencies, particularly at the local government level are inexperienced in the process of mobilising finance in this area. Municipal governments responsible for waste management are not traditionally engaged with international mechanisms related to climate and clean air mitigation and have sought help from the methane roadmap planning teams to develop technical knowledge.

“Now provincial and local governments have an understanding that they need to have their own sectoral targets or action plans to be able to mobilise finance and they need to have a rationale to convince the national government that this kind of money is needed at local level. That policy and provincial action plans sets a rationale for the provinces to put their case to the entities making decisions on budgets and climate finance– because majority of the climate finance that is coming into the country does not go directly to the provinces,” said Leena Aftab, Climate Change Policy and Planning Specialist with project implementer Clean Air Asia. 

Waste is traditionally a difficult sector to assess and plan around due to its fragmentation and high level of informality in developing countries. However, while Pakistan has a large informal sector in waste there has been a lot of progress, such as in the Clean Green Pakistan Index, of which waste is a huge component. As a result, many cities have started  to identifying the potential of managing this waste as a potential source of revenue and employment opportunities.  

In agriculture, Pakistan’s challenges are less to do with coordination and more related to enabling alternative practices and creating solid value chains with markets for upcycled materials. Agricultural burning is a huge priority for Pakistan. Increasingly worse burning seasons, combined with transport pollution and black carbon from brick kilns has led to the closure of schools and other facilities in recent years. Pakistan’s air pollution challenges are also complicated by shared transboundary pollution affecting all of south Asia.

In the oil and gas sector, the methane roadmap development project engaged the Ministry of Energy and provincial energy departments, during three different rounds of engagement.  The first one introduced the project, then second conducted a gap assessment and a presentation why the methane roadmap is important for Pakistan. The final meeting presented the draft roadmap, which is currently undergoing review with stakeholder feedback from the Ministry of Energy, provincial energy departments and energy experts.

One of the key features of Pakistan’s methane roadmap planning process has been the dynamic of engaging with unfamiliar stakeholders. “This is one thing we have seen across many countries,” said Miko Cosep, Air Quality Specialist at Clean Air Asia. “Initially some stakeholders are very hesitant, but once they understand the material and the benefits they are very enthusiastic to join.” 

“There is not a lack of knowledge. Regional stakeholders have lots of projects in mind. But financing is the main barrier, passion is certainly not lacking,” said Cosep.