ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on Climate Change undertook an extensive review of Pakistan’s climate governance architecture on Tuesday, as the committee chairperson Senator Sherry Rehman questioned the institutional rationale and additional value of the Pakistan Climate Change Authority (PCCA) calling for a fundamental reconsideration of an Authority that substantially duplicates the mandate, functions, expertise and personnel of the Ministry of Climate Change and Environmental Coordination.
During a detailed briefing on the PCCA at the committee meeting, Senator Rehman expressed serious reservations about the Authority’s institutional necessity, particularly at a time when the ministry itself was operating under constrained and declining budgetary resources.
She noted that the climate ministry’s total allocation had fallen to Rs2.478 billion in PSDP, after it had been reduced from Rs3.5 billion to Rs2.7 billion in the previous fiscal year. She questioned why a separate authority had been established and 24 posts sanctioned when its core functions substantially overlap with the responsibilities already vested in the ministry.
“The question is what additional value is this Authority creating when the functions listed under its mandate are already the responsibility of the ministry?” Senator Rehman questioned. She also asked why new institutional structures were being maintained while the ministry’s budget was being reduced and officers were being moved to the Authority on deputation.
“It’s another SOE with no defined goal that continue to place a staggering burden. Losses of SOEs in Pakistan reached Rs832.848 billion in FY2025, with cumulative losses now standing at Rs6.563 trillion. Yet another Rs451 billion has been allocated to SOEs in the budget,” she said.
Sherry Rehman stressed that her concerns were not directed at individual officers, but at institutional duplication and the repeated movement of the same expertise between government structures.
The committee was informed that many technical experts associated with the Authority had previously served within the Ministry. Senator Rehman questioned the rationale for moving the “same faces” from one institutional structure to another, including the appointment of retired officers, when the stated justification for the Authority was to provide additional technical capacity.
The committee was informed that the PCCA had originally been conceived primarily as a mechanism for enhanced technical support. Ms Rehman questioned whether such capacity could instead have been strengthened within the ministry itself, asking whether the Authority was creating genuine additional capacity or merely replicating functions, personnel and expertise already available within the federal climate governance structure.
When informed that coordination with provincial governments formed part of the Authority’s mandate, she pointed out that the ministry already possesses a clear mandate to coordinate with the provinces. She observed that provincial governments would not necessarily engage with a separate authority without the direct involvement of the ministry’s secretary, raising further questions about the PCCA’s independent institutional relevance.
A key area of scrutiny was the Authority’s ability to mobilise international climate finance, including financing through the Green Climate Fund (GCF). The committee did not receive a satisfactory response regarding the PCCA’s contribution to mobilising such resources. Senator Rehman observed that the Authority’s own presentation raised fundamental questions about its institutional distinctiveness. “The presentation speaks volumes. If the same mandate, the same expertise and, in many cases, the same faces are being moved from the ministry to an authority, then where is the additional capacity?” Senator Rehman remarked.
She further questioned the absence of substantial international linkages and upgraded institutional mechanisms within the Authority, stressing that any new climate institution must demonstrate genuinely specialised, internationally competitive and demonstrably additional capacity rather than reproduce functions already available within the federal climate governance structure. Senator Rehman directed the secretary to return to the committee fully prepared to explain the institutional movement of officers, particularly where the ministry’s resources were declining while similar expertise and functions continue to operate under a separate institutional umbrella.
The committee also received a briefing on the latest developments concerning glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), Pakistan’s increasingly endangered cryosphere and the emerging risks faced by vulnerable communities living in glacial and high-mountain regions.
A UNDP official informed the committee that Pakistan has more than 30,000 glaciers and that climate change was contributing to accelerated glacial melt. The committee was also informed that 108 disaster events had been handled through early warning systems, including two GLOF events. Senator Sherry Rehman expressed dissatisfaction with the briefing, noting that substantially the same presentation had been given to the committee last year without adequately demonstrating what had changed on the ground or what concrete measures had been undertaken since then.
She questioned why the presentation did not sufficiently capture the scale and pace of glacial melting, including reports that around 16 per cent of glaciers had melted, as well as the vulnerabilities of communities living in affected areas and Pakistan’s forward-looking strategy for managing an escalating cryosphere crisis.
Senator Rehman stressed that the GLOF briefing should not be treated as an isolated climate-sector issue and called for the presentation to be integrated with the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD).
She observed that PMD was the appropriate technical institution for critical information relating to weather, climate and glacial conditions, while NDMA must be fully integrated into preparedness, response and disaster-risk management.
