Pakistan has learnt to speak fluently about climate justice abroad, citing colonial emissions, loss and damage, debt, floods, drought and the cruel arithmetic of a country that contributes barely one per cent of global greenhouse gases yet remains among the world’s most climate-hit states. That case is valid and should be made loudly, though the harder truth still lies inside the country: Pakistan cannot credibly demand climate justice internationally while allowing water theft, reckless construction, coal dependence and environmental impunity at home.
The water crisis is now a national-security question. Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal recently warned that per capita water availability has fallen from over 5,000 cubic metres at independence to near the scarcity threshold of 1,000 cubic metres, placing water security alongside food, energy, health, industry and economic stability. Decades of mismanagement, climate stress and expanding drought-prone zones in Balochistan and Sindh have already pushed Pakistan towards a crisis made sharper by India’s illegal suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty. Meanwhile, another research report by Jinnah Institute has cautioned that governance shortcomings and weak systems at the community level continue to hamper Pakistan’s capacity to prepare for and respond to climate-related disasters.
In the past, the government’s anser to every climate-centric challenge used to revolve around building dams (or at least make headlines for plans to do so) holding conferences, issuing statements only to bide time till the next flood or drought exposes the same weaknesses.
Storage matters, of course. No qualms about that. However, Pakistan’s failure is wider than dams because agriculture consumes most of the country’s water while productivity per unit remains weak, and provinces continue to distrust one another.
Cities tell the same story in concrete, where climate risk is no longer produced only by weather systems, but also by approvals stamped in offices, housing schemes built over natural drainage, paved surfaces replacing absorbent soil and building codes that treat heat, water and energy as afterthoughts. Experts are now urging sustainable construction, green financing, tax incentives, modern building systems and mandatory rainwater harvesting, which should embarrass a country, where heavy rains often overwhelm drainage systems, toxic smog periodically forces schools to close, and new housing developments, focused primarily on concrete, turn climate risks into real estate ventures.
Carbon capture appears in climate plans, but it should be treated with caution. The technology remains expensive, technically demanding and vulnerable to becoming a lifeline for coal under a cleaner label. Pakistan does not need another imported illusion dressed as innovation when the World Bank has already argued that solar and wind should be expanded to at least 30 per cent of total electricity capacity by 2030, saving up to $5 billion over two decades. The wiser path is not to bolt expensive equipment onto yesterday’s fuel system, but to put money into solar, wind, storage, grid reform and efficiency. *