In 2022, the UN Climate Conference (COP27) established a Loss and Damage Fund to provide financial assistance to nations most vulnerable and impacted by the effects of climate change. Pledges to the fund added up to around $700 million. In that same year, Pakistan alone experienced climate-enhanced floods causing damages of around $30 billion! Here, Qurat-ul-Ain Shabbir discusses the growing gap between climate ambitions and the reality facing climate-vulnerable nations like Pakistan, and makes a call for a fairer global order that does not treat vulnerability as destiny.
The climate crisis in Pakistan is not just a cautionary tale of the anthropogenic climate change; it is also a glaring example of how global inequality shapes climate-related risk. The dangers of climatic variability are poignant and obtrusive in an agrarian economy like Pakistan which has limited fiscal reserves.
In 2010, floods caused damages worth $43 billion and impacted 20 million people. In 2022, catastrophic floods engulfed one-third of the country, affecting 33 million people and killing over 1,700. The economic toll, costing nearly $30 billion, was staggering; eclipsing the combined costs of decades of developmental gains. The most recent floods in 2025 caused an estimated $1.4 to $2 billion in damages, wiping out over a million hectares of farmland and shrinking GDP growth by nearly one per cent. For a country already facing high external debt and dwindling fiscal resources, these recurring climate-related disasters are becoming an existential threat. The Post-Disaster Needs Assessment that followed the 2022 floods traced the floods to a 1.2°C rise in global temperatures.
Pakistan has developed a National Adaptation Plan 2025-2030 and a Pakistan Climate Resilience financing framework since COP 29. These initiatives are designed to utilize international funds in support of sustainable development. Solar and wind projects are already attempting to increase renewable energy portion of the national energy mix to 60 percent by 2030, which was just 12 percent in 2020. These measures are positive, but integrating climate targets with broader national development priorities remains a herculean task.
Pakistan’s fiscal reality
The tragedy for Pakistan is that the natural disasters occurring every other year are shrinking the country’s fiscal reserves. Pakistan’s economy relies heavily on debt to the IMF to keep it running. Therefore, the government has to priortise debt repayments over climate measures that require hefty finance. Pakistan’s debt to GDP ratio for the fiscal year 2025 is close to 70%. This huge burden does not allow Pakistan to invest in green infrastructure. Furthermore, the critical development issues such as poverty(almost 45% live below poverty line), energy shortage, health and education sector and debt repayment dominate the political discussion relegating climate issues to the background.
According to work bank, Pakistan will need about USD $348 billion in total investment by 2030 which will be about 10 percent of its GDP to adequately deal with the issue of climate. Out of this, USD $152 billion (44) is required to meet adaptation and resilience efforts, and USD 196 billion (56) is required to meet decarbonisation or mitigation efforts. For fiscal year 2025-2026, Pakistan allocated 8% of its development budget and 6.9% of current budget for climate related activities.
The state’s policy framework to absorb, adapt, and respond to these risks is also weak and fragmented. The floods in Pakistan highlight not only ecological fragility but also weak climate governance. Pakistan must consolidate its fragmented climate governance framework in order to cope with recurring extreme weather events. The Climate Change Act needs revision to clarify mandates, separate policy from regulatory functions, and anchor provincial participation. The Planning Commission of Pakistan, on the other hand, should incorporate climate resilience in every aspect of developmental spheres instead of considering it as a fringe part of the environment. Therefore, the increasing global temperatures, the limited fiscal space and the fragmented climate policy system have amplified the climate related risks in Pakistan.
The climate commitment gap
The risks of the climate change are now global, yet the financial resources and capability to minimize those risks are concentrated predominantly in the hands of wealthy nations. The most significant area where all the countries, both the wealthy and the poor can collaborate in combating climate change is the COP process (the Conference of the Parties (COP)), the supreme decision-making body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that meets annually to discuss and negotiate global climate action), which is the highest decision making body of the UN climate structure. But there seems to be a gap between pledges and implementation. Having said that, the way the international climate governance is dealing with the problem of climate change needs to be scrutinized for its lack of systematic consistency.
For example, Pakistan’s diplomatic efforts yielded little mobilization for its call for climate finance for adaptation initiatives. International forums like COP promised big but in reality could only provide a fraction of what was pledged by the ‘Global North’. The “Loss and Damage Fund” established under COP27 lacks operational clarity and equitable access mechanisms. There were delays in its operationalization. Thereafter, it was placed under the organizational structure of the World Bank. This step granted the historical emitters with veto power. Moreover, the funds’s scope has also remained limited with no reparations for previous climate-related events. The focus of the wealthy nations solely remained on rebuilding rather than taking responsibility of their emissions. The pledges for the fund only added up to $700 million whereas, Pakistan’s 2022 floods caused the damages up to $ 30 billion.
The data review from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) revealed that most of the wealthy countries which includes US, france, Germany and Japan have been garnering billions of dollars from programs meant to provide financial aid and assistance to countries dealing with climate change. The recent escalation of tensions between the United States and China further complicates this picture. The U.S. Trade Representative’s probe into China’s compliance with the Phase One trade deal, launched on October 24, 2025, accuses Beijing of falling short on intellectual property, agriculture, and technology transfer obligations. In response, China, through the Global Times, rejected the allegations and accused Washington of spreading “false narratives.” These tensions threaten to derail COP 30’s focus on climate finance and technology transfers. Pakistan depends on Chinese infrastructure loans worth 62 billion under China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and climate aid from western nations. This increasing rift between China and US pose a serious challenge of balancing economic demands with climate objectives.
The COP 30 is being referred to as the COP of implementation. So what should be Pakistan’s expectations in terms of climate Justice? The operationalization of a Loss and Damage fund, which Pakistan championed in 2022, and technology transfer are the two main expectations. Pakistan cannot find sufficient funds to finance climate adaptation initiatives since the debt repayments are usually greater than its annual climate budget.
This creates a vicious cycle: the extreme weather events have been aggravated by global warming, which creates damage of great magnitude and becomes a huge burden on already limited fiscal space, this in turn leads to the weakening of financial support needed to successfully carry out climate action initiatives. Thus, meeting the aforementioned expectations has become crucial to break this cycle.
Domestic and international recalibration
Dealing with climate change requires both international and domestic recalibration. Domestically, to effectively deal with climate risks and strengthen local governance, there needs to be greater coordination between the federal and provincial bodies, better collection of climate risk data, and investments in local governance structures. All these measures are important to Pakistan.
Adaptation strategies cannot succeed without the assistance of the general population. According to the findings of Pakistan Country Opinion Survey on Pakistan, which was commissioned by the World Bank, climate change and water and sanitation have taken a higher priority in Pakistan. The survey identified that the support on the climate change initiatives had risen by 5 per cent in fiscal year 2021, to 34pc in fiscal year 2025. While recognition of the climate crisis as a serious threat is increasing at both state and societal levels, translating that awareness into action depends on sustained policy commitment and adequate financing.
Internationally, Pakistan’s climate crisis exhibits the moral urgency of climate justice. The instruments of climate justice that may be of use (such as compensation, debt swaps, and climate finance) must be made a reality, we need to move beyond rhetoric. The world system that created climate risk should also contribute to the sharing of the risk. Otherwise, poor nations such as Pakistan will continue experiencing the same fate of constantly rebuilding and never healing.
In a world increasingly defined by shared but unequally distributed risks, Pakistan stands at the intersection of vulnerability and resilience. Its experience reveals not only the limits of global climate governance but also the possibilities for reform.
Pakistan’s challenge, then, is twofold: to reform its internal climate governance and to demand a fairer global order that does not treat vulnerability as destiny. In the age of climate risk, survival itself is political—and justice, not charity, must guide the path forward.
More information: Qurat-UL-Ain Shabbir, annieshabbir341@yahoo.com
Qurat-ul-Ain Shabbir is a PhD scholar and gold medalist in MPhil from Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad. She is a research officer at Center for International Strategic Studies (Azad Jammu and Kashmir). Her academic focus lies in addressing the national and regional security developments with a special focus on hydro-politics.
The views expressed in this article belong to the individual authors and do not represent the views of the Global Water Forum, the UNESCO Chair in Water Economics and Transboundary Water Governance, UNESCO, the Australian National University, World Bank, Oxford University, or any of the institutions to which the authors are associated. Please see the Global Water Forum terms and conditions here.
