Pakistan is no longer dealing with ordinary weather; it is locked in a cycle of disasters that return with every season. When the choking smog of winter clears, floods arrive with merciless force. The country swings violently between one disaster and another, leaving millions without the chance to recover before the next crisis begins. What was once called weather has now turned into a cycle of recurring calamity. Pakistan warms the least but pays the most, ranked among the world’s top climate victims despite emitting under 1% of global greenhouse gases. According to the Global Climate Risk Index, Pakistan has suffered economic losses of more than $35 billion over the last two decades due to extreme weather events. The tragedy is lived by families who, year after year, see their homes, work, and loved ones swept away.
Each winter, cities such as Lahore and Peshawar suffocate under a toxic shroud. Lahore, in particular, has repeatedly topped global rankings as the world’s most polluted megacity, with air quality levels frequently exceeding 400 on the AQI, a range the World Health Organization deems acutely hazardous. Physicians consistently report spikes in asthma, respiratory infections, and even tuberculosis linked to this prolonged exposure. According to the Air Quality Life Index, residents in some regions of Pakistan are losing an estimated three to four years of life expectancy to polluted air. What was once mistaken for harmless seasonal fog has revealed itself as a silent executioner, eroding health and shortening lives with relentless precision.
To tell citizens to ask what they can do for their country while the state fails them is not patriotism, it is cruelty.
When winter fades, the monsoon returns, offering only a fleeting pause before the next disaster. The rains, with growing ferocity, swell the Indus and its tributaries, drowning vast stretches of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Gilgit-Baltistan and Kashmir. These very regions were devastated in 2010, then again in 2022, and now in 2025, the waters have returned with even greater force. What was once a once-in-a-generation calamity has become a relentless cycle, its frequency accelerating, its devastation multiplying. Already this year, over a million people have been affected, with hundreds dead and tens of thousands displaced. The cumulative losses since 2010 now exceed $50 billion, wiping out homes, farms and infrastructure with each wave.
The tragedy is compounded by poverty. Around 46 percent of Pakistan’s population already lives below the poverty line. Families struggling to afford food and clean water are the same ones whose homes collapse during floods, whose children fall sick during smog, and whose livelihoods vanish when fields are destroyed. For them, climate change is not a debate of international conferences, it is the air they breathe and the water that rises in their streets. What makes the crisis more unbearable is governance failure. Waste management remains broken, allowing garbage and crop residue burning to fuel winter smog. Urban expansion continues unchecked, replacing natural drainage with concrete, turning rain into urban flooding. Riverbeds remain encroached, floodplains inhabited, and forests stripped bare. Provincial and federal governments set up relief camps when disaster strikes, but little investment is made in long-term prevention. Climate adaptation funds trickle down slowly, and rebuilding often prioritizes roads over resilient housing or health systems.
Pakistan’s geography leaves it vulnerable: the Himalayas feed rivers that swell unpredictably, while the Arabian Sea pushes cyclones further inland. Yet vulnerability need not equal helplessness. Bangladesh, facing similar risks, has reduced cyclone deaths dramatically over the last 30 years through early warning systems and community shelters. Pakistan by contrast, continues to rely on last-minute evacuations and international aid appeals. The absence of a consistent national climate resilience strategy leaves citizens at the mercy of the next downpour, the next dry spell, the next smog-filled winter.
The burden of climate injustice is clear. A nation contributing almost nothing to the global carbon footprint bears some of its heaviest costs. Yet waiting for the world to change is no longer enough. Domestic urgency must rise to meet the scale of the threat. Cleaner public transport, crop management incentives, urban green belts, stronger drainage infrastructure, and empowered local governments could all blunt the impact of disasters. What is missing is not knowledge but political will. Our people are resilient but resilience has its limits. To endure constant cycles of destruction is not resilience, it is exhaustion. Families cannot be expected to rebuild endlessly on their own. Without systemic reform, the pattern of smog followed by floods, of sickness followed by displacement, will continue until it hollows out both the economy and the spirit of the nation.
The choice is stark, either remain prisoners of recurring climate misery, or turn disaster into the spark of change. Clean air, safe homes, children free from fear, these are not favours, they are the state’s most basic duty. To tell citizens to ask what they can do for their country while the state fails them is not patriotism, it is cruelty. Responsibility runs both ways, but it begins with power honouring its end of the bargain. Until then, every winter and every monsoon will return like a curse, reminding us of a nation that cannot protect its own.
The writer is a Ph.D in Political Science and a visiting faculty member at QAU Islamabad. His area of specialisation is political development and social change. He can be reached at zafarkhansafdar @yahoo.com and tweet@zafarkhansafdar.