Speaking at the Middle East Green Initiative Summit in Riyadh, the Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan said climate change is one of humanity's "biggest crises", prompting the country to plant billions of trees and shift its energy towards clean sources. Imran Khan said: "Humanity faces probably one of its biggest crises. Unfortunately this crisis was quite visible 20 years ago, but somehow we were all in self-denial. No one thought that this would actually happen, that the temperature was getting warmer. No one believed there would be effects of this. "Once you alter the balance of nature, there are always going to be implications. Just in the last two years, we have seen fires in Siberia, in California, in the Mediterranean and Australia. He highlighted the action Pakistan is taking to combat climate change and emissions, including planting billions of trees and converting coal projects to hydroelectricity. He said: "We will shift 60% of all our energy into clean energy by 2030. 30% of all transport will be shifted to electric vehicles by 2030. "We already shelved 2,400 megawatts of coal projects, and replaced them with 3,700 megawatts of hydroelectricity, and then committed there would be no new coal projects in Pakistan. "The only energy through coal will be gasifications and that's using local coal that is in Pakistan. "We also focused on nature-based solutions. We have invested in planting 10 billion trees, and have already planted 2.5 billion. Pakistan is the only country where mangrove carbon is growing. Mangroves absorb the highest amount of carbon emissions — we plan to plant 1 billion more of these trees by 2023." Earlier, Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman announced a series of regional programs for climate action to an audience of dozens of heads of state at the event. On Saturday, the Crown Prince also revealed that Saudi Arabia is aiming to achieve net zero emissions by 2060 through the Carbon Circular Economy approach. The Middle East Green Initiative called for intensifying coordination and joint action to preserve and develop the importance of the environment and vegetation cover in Africa, in addition to establishing the Green Initiative Foundation as an independent non-profit entity to support the summit and raise the level of coordination. — SG
