Global Risk Modelling Alliance (GRMA), a German funded agency, is a public-good service proposed by V20 members in the 1st Climate-Vulnerable Finance Summit in 2021, co-developed with the Insurance Development Forum, and subject to an agreement between the IDF and the V20 Group of Ministers of Finance at CoP26 in Glasgow.
On 8th and 9th December 2022 GRMA organized a workshop in Islamabad. The objective of the workshop was to engage key officials and subject matter experts in Pakistan to develop the work program proposed within the request by Pakistan’s ministry of climate change.
GRMA is also a key resource for Global Shield Initiative which was launched at COP27 and provides pre-arranged financial support designed to be deployed during climate disasters. The GS representative at the workshop spoke about the importance of climate risk and growing need to address climate adaptation, mitigation, and resilience in vulnerable countries like Pakistan.
From Pakistan side, different stakeholders participated in the workshop mostly from Federal and the province of Punjab. They included Punjab Local Government, Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD), National Disaster Management Authority (NMDA), National Disaster and Risk Management Fund (NDRMF), Ministry of Climate Change (MoCC), Asian Development Bank (ADB), United Nations etc. Centre for Climate Research and Development (CCRD) at COMSATS University Islamabad was represented by Dr. Zainab Khalid.
During the 2-day workshop, the participants belonging to Federal and Punjab governments, engaged in discussion sessions where different hazardscape of Pakistan were discussed along with most recent floods of Pakistan 2022.
In breakout sessions, groups comprising of professionals were assigned the task to discuss and brainstorm the potential project domains that they would like to have technical and financial assistance from the GRMA. The session particularly proved to be fruitful as it provided a platform for different stakeholder to showcase their respective understandings, perspectives, and learnings. The presentations from breakout groups helped the GRMA team to gain improved understanding of existing risk information, technical capacity and analytical activities in Pakistan.
The most commonly emergent themes were
1. Flood simulations and management system
2. Air quality monitoring and Smog detection system
3. Automatic and community based early warning systems
4. Climate smart agriculture practices
5. Climate modelling and forecasting