Record Greenhouse Gas Emissions in 2010:

Wake-up Call for the World

Latest estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA) showing that greenhouse gas emissions from world energy generation reached record levels in 2010 are a stark warning to governments to provide strong new progress this year towards global solutions to climate change, according to a press release of United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

UN Climate Chief Christiana Figueres said in Bonn, the city of Germany on Monday, "This is the inconvenient truth of where human generated greenhouse gas emissions are projected to go without much stronger international action now - and into the future," said the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

"Governments are meeting next week in Bonn to prepare for the next major international climate conference to be held in Durban at the end of the year. It is clear that they need to push the world further down the right track to avoid dangerous climate change," the UN's top climate change official said. "I won't hear that this is impossible. Governments must make it possible for society, business and science to get this job done," she added.

The latest IEA estimates published on Monday show that energy-related CO2 emissions in 2010 were at their highest level in history, following a brief dip in 2009 due to the economic impacts of the global financial crisis.

The Paris-based organization also estimated that 80% of all projected 2020 greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector are already locked into the global system of power generation by plants that already exist or are under construction.

Dr. Fatih Birol, Chief Economist at the IEA who oversees the annual World Energy Outlook, has called the latest estimates a "wake-up call" for the international community.

Pakistan is also facing the climate change challenges especially in North and South of the country. The forests of Himalayan range in the North West of Pakistan and the timber and firewood and making clearings for agriculture; for the ever-increasing population pressure and in the south the Indus basin and dying species of the Indus River and delta are the climate change affects.

Being one of the eight member countries of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Pakistan has actively engaged in its macro level land cover assessment in collaboration with UNEP Environment Assessment Programme for Asia and the Pacific (UNEP/EAP.AP)

The conference on climate change in Bonn is a platform of serious concentrations for the government and non-government organizations of Pakistan to draw out a comprehensive plan regarding the climate change challenges.