Localizing climate action in Pakistan

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Abdul Aleem Chaudhry / Dr. Farrukh A. Chishtie

Climate impacts, with their tragic consequences ultimately require local action informed by communities and best practices, rather than empty rhetoric and sloganeering.

"We didn't think the water would come this high," remembers Zahida Bibi, a five-time mother from Dadu district, Sindh. Even years following the devastating 2022 floods, she continues to search through the ruins where her house used to be. Disasters such as hers are not remote possibilities for families like hers, but a reality.".

From record heatwaves in Punjab to premature glacial melts in Gilgit-Baltistan and unusual pre-monsoon showers in Sindh, Pakistan's climate crisis gets more severe in 2025. These are not individual events, they are systemic, cascading, and destructive. But while global and national leaders dicker over carbon markets and make green promises, an urgent question goes unasked: Who is getting our neighborhoods, our towns, our villages ready for today's and tomorrow's climate calamities?

The answer mostly lies in enacting effective local governance—a vital, yet consistently neglected, layer in Pakistan's climate response.

Pakistan still ranks among the most climate-vulnerable nations: the Germanwatch Climate Risk Index and the Global Climate Risk Barometer similarly place it year in, year out, among the most affected ones. But while elite policy discussions center around climate finance and high-level adaptation frameworks, the frontlines of the crisis are far more immediate: collapsing embankments, dry wells, overwhelmed hospitals, and failing drainage systems. For Zahida Bibi, it wasn’t national policy that failed her; it was the absence of a stormwater system and any local warning mechanism.

These realities reinforce a simple truth: climate change is global, but its consequences are deeply local.

The 18th Constitutional Amendment (2010) devolved environmental functions to the provinces. Yet, 15 years on, local governments remain politically marginalized, underfunded, and largely disconnected from climate planning. Several provinces, including Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, still operate without fully empowered local governments. In places where local bodies do exist, climate responsibilities are vague or missing altogether.

A 2024 review by Pakistan Institute for Development Economics (PIDE) established that fewer than 12% of local administrators received any kind of climate adaptation training, and fewer than that had risk assessment tools at their disposal or allocated budgets. Without effective local institutions, even the most effective climate plans are trapped on paper.

Pakistan’s example is not rare in this regard; other developing nations are progressing:

• Kenya’s County Climate Change Fund (CCCF) continues to empower rural counties to develop and fund their own adaptation priorities.

• Bangladesh’s Union Disaster Management Committees proved critical during last year’s floods, deploying resources in hours rather than days.

• India’s Climate Resilient Cities mission in 2024 expanded village-level climate action plans across 13 states, directly engaging gram panchayats.

  
  

The common denominator? A recognition that local governance is not an administrative formality, it’s a survival mechanism.

To localize climate action effectively, Pakistan must act on five fronts:

1. Legal empowerment: Amend provincial Local Government Acts to include climate risk management, resilience planning, and disaster preparedness as core functions.

2. Fiscal devolution: Create dedicated adaptation funds at the district and union council levels, with transparent access criteria for local communities.

3. Capacity building: Invest in the training of tehsil and municipal officials in conducting vulnerability assessments, early warning system management, and local adaptation planning.

4. Inclusive planning: Institutionalize community-led planning focused on women, youth, persons with disabilities, and indigenous knowledge producers.

5. Regional coordination: Since climate impacts transcend borders and are increasing in intensity and frequency, regional coordination by provincial authorities, including communication across tehsils would help adapt better and enhance implementation of plans. 

6. Technology integration: Increase access to low-cost technologies such as GIS-based hazard mapping, mobile apps for early warning, and community dashboards for real-time alerting.

   
   

Some recent projects offer a glimpse of what is possible. The Urban Resilience Project (UNDP, 2023–25), piloted in Quetta, Hyderabad, and Peshawar, has begun to build disaster preparedness units in city administrations. However, these are still pilots—scaling them nationally will require robust provincial and federal cooperation.

Think about it - if each union council had a climate focus person, each tehsil had a resilience fund, and each district identified its own vulnerabilities through citizen participation. It is not idealism, it is a cost-efficient, practical way of reducing risk.

In April 2025 alone, Punjab recorded over 16 heat-related deaths and multiple crop failures, yet most local governments had no heat action plans in place. This inertia is not due to lack of knowledge, but a lack of local empowerment.

Zahida Bibi does not need climate jargon. She needs a system that warns her in time, guides her evacuation, and helps rebuild her life. She needs a climate-ready council, not just a climate strategy in Islamabad. If Pakistan is going to survive the next decades, the time to invest in local climate leadership is now, not after the next flood, not after the next heatwave, time is now.

Because the climate battle will be won and lost not in international summits, but in the last mile, where individuals reside.