Climate change remains one of the defining threats to Pakistan’s future. Yet as we confront another difficult summer, it is worth remembering that not every climate shock is born of climate change alone. El Nino is a naturally occurring climate cycle, not a human-made one. Meteorologists continue to study whether a warming planet is making these events more frequent or more intense. That debate will continue. What should not be debated is our preparedness.
When natural climate cycles play out against the backdrop of a hotter world, the consequences are amplified. Heatwaves become more intense, droughts last longer, water shortages deepen, crops come under greater stress, and the economic fallout spreads rapidly. Pakistan has already paid a heavy price for underestimating climate risks. We cannot afford to make the same mistake again.
A strong El Niño is currently developing, and according to the World Meteorological Organisation and our own Meteorological Department, there is an 80 per cent certainty that this climate pattern will dominate our weather through late 2026. If La Nina in 2022 drowned us, El Nino’s primary weapon is thirst: a severe monsoon deficit, blistering heatwaves and prolonged drought. For an economy that is deeply indebted, structurally fragile and heavily dependent on predictable weather patterns, any climate shock is a systemic emergency. Agriculture employs one-third of our workforce and contributes over 23 per cent of GDP. Monsoon deficits threaten to slash yields of key Kharif crops, while Pakistan’s 7.5 million food-insecure people could face even greater hardship. The resulting grain imports would further drain our already fragile foreign exchange reserves.
Meanwhile, our livestock sector, which represents nearly two-thirds of agricultural value and serves as the primary savings account for rural families, faces severe heat stress and critical fodder shortages. In the arid zones of Sindh, Balochistan and southern Punjab, pastoral communities will watch their herds dwindle along with their livelihoods.
Our energy infrastructure also faces a serious threat. Hydropower accounts for 24 per cent of Pakistan’s electricity generation, but reduced rainfall is projected to cut Indus basin river flows by 15-20 per cent, reducing generation at Tarbela and Mangla. The result could be prolonged summer power outages, crippling industry, fuelling inflation and forcing costly liquefied natural gas imports to bridge the deficit.
Compounding this crisis is a geographical paradox. While the plains endure drought, Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa face an elevated risk of Glacial Lake Outburst Floods. The Karakoram-Hindukush-Himalaya region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, and the NDMA has identified 33 hazardous glacial lakes that threaten more than seven million people.
This nightmare scenario of simultaneous drought and flash floods would overwhelm Pakistan’s disaster-response systems, trigger large-scale internal migration, deepen economic hardship and increase the spread of malaria, waterborne diseases and child malnutrition beyond the capacity of our healthcare system.
Navigating these concurrent disasters exposes a fundamental, structural vulnerability: Pakistan currently operates entirely without a sovereign climate insurance net. Unlike wealthier nations, we do not have parametric insurance pools or major contingency reserves to draw upon when a climate shock hits. This means we are entirely dependent on borrowing or reallocating already stretched domestic budgets to survive. This is where our international donors and lenders must be sensitised immediately, as we are currently bound to demonstrate fiscal consolidation, tight spending controls, and a high primary surplus.
While these measures are intended to stabilise the economy, they leave us with tight fiscal space to manage a multi-billion-dollar climate disaster. Our lenders must understand that spending on early warning systems, strategic grain reserves, and temporary cash transfers is not ‘fiscal indiscipline’ but essential human survival. We cannot be placed in a position where we must choose between meeting debt-service targets and saving our citizens from starvation. We need direct, non-debt-creating grant funding and immediate spending leeway to build our defenses before the peak of the El Niño window arrives between October and December.
Yet, our primary obstacle to building robust defences is not just international finance but the fractured internal climate governance. Following the 2022 floods, we produced a world-class Post-Disaster Needs Assessment. But four years later, we have failed to define clear outcomes, set measurable milestones, or effectively monitor recovery workstreams. Our level of preparedness varies from province to province.
Under the 18th Amendment, authority and fiscal resources for managing agriculture, water, and disaster mitigation have been devolved to the provinces. However, the provinces have consistently failed to translate this devolved power into administrative reality. This failure is compounded by a chronic, systemic lack of functional, empowered local government bodies – the very frontline institutions that should be held accountable for implementing and monitoring crisis plans at the grassroots level. Because we lack this local administrative infrastructure, we are left with an execution vacuum.
If the provinces cannot, or will not, establish the local mechanisms necessary to implement these critical climate adaptation plans, they must transcend political gamesmanship and allow the federation to help prioritise and redesign disaster and crisis management frameworks and projects that bind service delivery to outcomes to accountability. Funding can be made available under the World Bank Group’s $40 billion 10-year Country Partnership framework, which includes a dedicated portion parameterised for Outcomes to improve resilience to climate change.
Another option also ought to be considered – rather than allowing relief efforts to fragment along partisan provincial lines, our provincial representatives must coordinate with the federal government to contribute financially to a centralised National Crisis & Disaster Management Cess for example. This dedicated fund would pool resources to prioritise national relief, pre-position food reserves and systematically manage rehabilitation through a strengthened, fully empowered NDMA, in coordination with the Climate Change & Environmental Protection ministry. Climate does not respect provincial borders, and a drought will not spare a district because of its political alignment. We must establish this collective financial shield now, or we will watch our systems fail when the dry heat arrives or another calamity occurs.
Whether the next crisis is driven by El Nino, climate change, or an interaction of both is ultimately of little comfort to the communities that bear the brunt of it. Our responsibility is clear: prepare early, strengthen resilience, protect the most vulnerable, and invest now in prevention rather than paying a far higher price for recovery later.
The writer is an adviser to the federal minister for finance and revenue. He is a seasoned banker with over 30 years of expertise. He can be reached at: [email protected] The views expressed are the writer’s own.
