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PAKISTAN READER

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CWA # 1969, 31 December 2025
Pakistan in 2025
Pakistan's Climate Change Challenges

  Lekshmi MK

2025: A brief review
Pakistan and climate change emerges against the backdrop of three key developments in late 2025. These key developments together foreground Pakistan’s deepening climate vulnerability and policy challenges.

From 10–21 November 2025, Pakistan’s Prime Minister participated in COP30 held in Belem, Brazil. It brought renewed international attention to the country’s climate crisis. At the summit, Pakistan’s leadership highlighted the disproportionate climate impacts faced by the country despite its minimal contribution to global emissions, and underscored the urgency of adaptation finance and loss-and-damage support. These interventions framed climate change as a persistent development and governance challenge rather than an environmental shock. At COP30, Pakistan’s official position and public narrative strongly emphasised climate justice, arguing that countries of the Global North bear historical responsibility for emissions while Pakistan faces disproportionate consequences. The delegation repeatedly called for predictable adaptation finance, grant-based support, and operationalisation of loss-and-damage commitments. It also framed climate finance not as aid but as an obligation owed to vulnerable states.

Pakistan’s engagement in FAO Rome Water Dialogue reflected growing concern over the climate-water nexus. Discussions at the dialogue emphasised escalating water stress, flood risks, and the vulnerability of agrarian livelihoods, situating climate change within broader debates on food security, water governance, and regional stability. This engagement underscored the centrality of water-related climate risks in Pakistan’s adaptation discourse.

Recent reports documented recurring floods, heatwaves, displacement, and humanitarian stress in Pakistan. Assessments by international organisations and sustained news coverage pointed to widening adaptation gaps, constrained climate finance access, and persistent governance and implementation challenges.

Together, these three developments indicate that Pakistan’s climate crisis in 2025 is not an isolated or episodic phenomenon, but part of a structural trajectory shaped by governance constraints, adaptation deficits, and financial vulnerability.

What is the background?
First, geographical and ecological exposure. Pakistan’s climate vulnerability is fundamentally shaped by its geographical location and ecological characteristics, which expose the country to multiple and overlapping climate hazards. Stretching from the glacier-fed Hindu Kush-Karakoram-Himalayan region in the north to the Indus river basin, arid and semi-arid plains, and a long Arabian Sea coastline, Pakistan faces risks from glacial lake outburst floods, erratic monsoons, riverine flooding, heatwaves, droughts, and coastal erosion. Accelerated glacial melt has altered river flows and increased flood risks, while changing monsoon patterns have intensified both extreme rainfall and prolonged dry spells. Rising temperatures have further amplified heat stress, water scarcity, and agricultural vulnerability, particularly in already fragile regions. This combination of high exposure, climatic variability, and ecological stress forms the environmental baseline of Pakistan’s climate crisis and explains why climate impacts recur across different regions and seasons.

Second, unplanned urbanisation. Unplanned urbanisation has significantly intensified Pakistan’s climate vulnerabilities at the provincial and city levels. In major urban centres such as Karachi, Lahore, and Peshawar, riverbanks, floodplains, wetlands, and natural drainage channels have been systematically encroached upon due to unregulated construction, rapid real-estate expansion, and weak municipal enforcement. The degradation of natural buffers such as the Ravi riverbanks in Lahore and the Lyari and Malir riverbeds in Karachi has severely restricted water flow, leading to recurrent urban flooding even during moderate rainfall events. When combined with increasingly intense rainfall and inadequate drainage infrastructure, these urban ecological disruptions significantly amplify flood risks. This pattern underscores that Pakistan’s climate crisis is structural at the national level but acutely manifested at provincial and urban scales.

Third, poor governance. Poor governance remains a central factor shaping Pakistan’s climate crisis, manifesting through institutional constraints and a persistent adaptation deficit. Climate governance is fragmented across federal, provincial, and local levels, with weak coordination, overlapping mandates, and limited administrative and technical capacity. Policy responses have largely prioritised reactive disaster relief over proactive risk reduction, resulting in limited progress on long-term adaptation planning. This reflects a deeper weakness in disaster preparedness, where state institutions remain more oriented toward post-disaster response than anticipatory risk reduction. Early warning systems, evacuation planning, resilient infrastructure, and community-level preparedness remain underdeveloped despite repeated climate shocks. Consequently, investments in climate-resilient infrastructure, early-warning systems, urban drainage, water management, and climate-smart agriculture remain inadequate and uneven. This governance failure has produced a sustained adaptation deficit, leaving communities repeatedly exposed to climate shocks and turning climate change into a chronic governance challenge rather than a manageable environmental risk.

What are the major issues?
Pakistan’s climate crisis in 2025, can be explained through three interlinked structural issues. First, persistent governance gaps that undermine planning and implementation; Second, a deepening adaptation deficit that leaves communities exposed to recurrent climate shocks; and third, climate finance vulnerability, which constrains recovery and long-term resilience. These issues are not independent, but mutually reinforcing.

First, governance gaps. Pakistan’s climate governance is marked by uneven institutional capacity and weak coordination across national and provincial levels, which limits the translation of climate risk awareness into effective action. While national institutions have developed policy frameworks and international commitments, technical capacity to design and implement complex adaptation and climate finance projects remains limited. Coordination across climate, water, agriculture, planning, and finance ministries is fragmented. At the provincial level, where climate impacts are most acutely felt. Constraints are more pronounced due to shortages of trained personnel, inadequate data systems, and weak monitoring and implementation mechanisms. This vertical disconnect between national policy ambition and provincial execution capacity reinforces a governance model focused on post-disaster response rather than anticipatory, long-term resilience building. This pattern highlights the limited preparedness of disaster management institutions, where readiness for future climate shocks remains inadequate despite clear historical experience with floods, heatwaves, and displacement.

Second, adaptation deficit. Pakistan faces a significant adaptation deficit due to a combination of bureaucratic barriers, structural inefficiencies in climate finance, and resulting implementation gaps. Administrative constraints limit the country’s capacity to prepare highly technical, “bankable” project proposals, which require detailed data, modelling, and financial justification, slowing access to urgently needed climate funds. This raises two deeper questions within Pakistan’s adaptation challenge: Whether the state possesses the institutional intention to systematically integrate climate adaptation into development planning? and whether it has the technical and administrative capacity to do so? While policy documents acknowledge adaptation priorities, translation into integrated planning across water, agriculture, urban development, and disaster management remains limited by capacity constraints and bureaucratic fragmentation. Even when proposals are submitted, multi-year procedural processes, slow disbursement cycles, and predominantly loan-based funding further constrain timely adaptation. These challenges translate into real-world consequences: water-resilient infrastructure is deployed too slowly, communities remain highly vulnerable, and available funds are often underutilised. As a result, Pakistan’s exposure to floods, droughts, and food insecurity continues to rise, widening the gap between climate risk and adaptive action and undermining long-term resilience planning. The adaptation deficit, therefore, is not only a matter of finance but of integration of aligning climate risk with development planning in a way that current institutions struggle to achieve.

Third, climate finance vulnerability. Pakistan’s climate finance vulnerability stems from limited access, weak absorptive capacity, and structural fiscal constraints. Even when international funds are available, bureaucratic and technical limitations reduce the country’s ability to prepare competitive proposals, slowing the flow of resources. Multi-year approval processes, fragmented internal review systems in funds like the Green Climate Fund (GCF), and predominantly loan-based financing further exacerbate delays and increase debt burdens. These financing constraints reinforce existing governance and adaptation challenges, as institutions are overburdened with compliance and reporting requirements rather than proactive resilience-building. Consequently, Pakistan’s high climate vulnerability does not translate into timely, effective, or adequately scaled adaptation interventions, perpetuating a cycle of reactive management rather than long-term climate resilience.

4. What are the implications?
First, climate risk is structurally embedded in Pakistan’s geography and also produced domestically. For Pakistan, climate change is not an episodic shock but a permanent risk condition shaped by geography, hydrology, and ecological exposure. This means climate stress will recur regardless of short-term policy responses, requiring structural, not ad hoc solutions. Beyond geography, Pakistan’s vulnerability is amplified by institutional limits, urbanisation patterns, and governance choices. This underscores that climate outcomes are mediated by domestic policy and capacity, not climate exposure alone. For Pakistan, climate change is not an episodic shock but a permanent risk condition shaped by geography, hydrology, and ecological exposure. This means climate stress will recur regardless of short-term policy responses, requiring structural, not ad hoc solutions.

Second, climate vulnerability does not automatically translate into resilience. Pakistan’s experience in 2025 shows that high exposure to climate risks does not guarantee effective adaptation outcomes. Without strong governance capacity and institutional readiness, climate vulnerability tends to produce repeated humanitarian crises rather than long-term resilience.

Third, climate shocks are becoming development reversals. Pakistan’s repeated climate disasters increasingly function as development setbacks rather than temporary emergencies. Floods, heatwaves, and water stress disrupt livelihoods, infrastructure, food security, and fiscal stability, diverting scarce public resources from long-term development to short-term relief. This means climate change is no longer a parallel policy challenge but a central constraint on economic and social development.

Fourth, Pakistan’s case reflects a broader Global North-South divide. Pakistan’s climate experience reflects a deeper Global North-South divide in climate governance and finance. While countries in the Global South face the most severe climate impacts despite contributing least to historical emissions. Their responses are constrained by limited fiscal space, weaker institutional capacity, and dependence on external financing. In contrast, Global North countries possess greater technological, financial, and administrative capacity to adapt and recover, even when exposed to similar climate risks. International climate finance mechanisms, largely designed and governed by Northern institutions, prioritise complex project requirements, risk-averse funding structures, and loan-based instruments, which disadvantage highly vulnerable Southern states. As a result, climate vulnerability in the Global South often leads to repeated crises rather than resilience, reinforcing structural inequalities in global climate governance.

5. What are the trajectories?
First, continuation of reactive climate management. If current governance and financing constraints persist, Pakistan is likely to remain locked in a reactive cycle of disaster response and recovery, with adaptation measures implemented episodically after major shocks rather than through anticipatory planning.

Second, increasing sub-national divergence in climate outcomes. Pakistan is likely to witness growing disparities across provinces and cities, as regions with relatively stronger institutions or donor engagement adapt better, while others remain highly vulnerable. This uneven resilience could deepen political, social, and economic asymmetries within the country.

Third, normalisation of climate-induced displacement and humanitarian response. Repeated floods, heat stress, and water scarcity may lead to the normalisation of internal displacement, temporary settlements, and recurring humanitarian interventions. Over time, displacement risks becoming a semi-permanent feature of Pakistan’s socio-economic landscape rather than an exceptional crisis.

Fourth, growing dependence on external climate finance. Pakistan is likely to become more reliant on external climate finance and humanitarian assistance, often under restrictive conditions, which may limit domestic policy autonomy and reinforce short-term project-based adaptation rather than systemic resilience.

References
“Pakistan calls for urgent grant-based climate finance at COP30 as Losses Mount,” Press Information Department, 23 November 2025
https://pid.gov.pk/site/press_detail/31078

“Pakistan urges grant-based, predictable climate finance for vulnerable countries at COP30,” Profit, 24 November 2025
https://profit.pakistantoday.com.pk/2025/11/24/pakistan-urges-grant-based-predictable-climate-finance-for-vulnerable-countries-at-cop30/

Betsey Joles, “Can Pakistan Adapt to Climate Disaster?,” Foreign Policy, 02 December 2025
https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/12/02/pakistan-climate-finance-gap-funding-cop30-adaptation/

“Rome Water Dialogue 2025,” Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, 17 October 2025
https://www.fao.org/events/detail/rome-water-dialogue-2025

“Pakistan continues to grapple with persistent socioeconomic and environmental challenges: Report,” Hans India, 16 November 2025
https://www.thehansindia.com/news/international/pakistan-continues-to-grapple-with-persistent-socioeconomic-and-environmental-challenges-report-1023847

About the author
Lekshmi MK is pursuing postgraduation in the Department of Political Science, Madras Christian College, Chennai. She is also a Research Assistant at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru.

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