Punjab University all set to establish Climate Research lab as HEC approved Rs.100 m funding

The University of Punjab is going to construct Remote sensing, Climatic Research, and GIU laboratory to perform the research on the accelerated climatic change in the country, The Higher Education Commission or HEC Pakistan has approved the 100 million rupees funding for the laboratory.

The lab will run under the supervision of Principal Investigator and Director of the Department of Space Science Ziaul Haq. Sahida Adeela Batool will act as the co-principal investigator along with faculty members such as Khalid Mehmood and Salman Tariq.

While explaining the sole purpose of the establishment of this lab Ziaul Haq said Pakistan is ranked among the countries which will shortly be facing high climatic risk. Pakistan unfortunately does not possess high technical, professional, and financial capacity to adapt, prevent, and mitigate the adverse impact of the climate.

Ziaul Haq further told that climatic change would likely trigger the social inequalities and also increase the social factors which lead to conflicts, displacement, changes in the migration pattern, and instability in the country. If proper measures aren’t taken in time the extreme weather events like temperature rise, flooding, drought, yield reduction, the spread of infectious diseases, deforestation, and water scarcity can be observed in Pakistan.

The Director also said that with the Satellite data and GIS analysis can provide cheap easy to adopt alternatives for the locals to adapt so that the climatic changes can be prevented in due time. The whole team was thankful to Vice-Chancellor Niaz Ahmad for the continual support and encouragement during the academic competition process for the lab. Ziaul Haq thanked the HEC too for the adequate fundraising regarding the construction of the lab.