“In information warfare, perception is the battlefield. If the news damages the other side—true or false—amplify it. Post it. Share it. Make it viral. Let panic spread across the border. If the news harms us — even if true — bury it. Suppress it. Disarm it before it spreads. This is not journalism. This is war. Every post is a bullet. Never fire one at your own country.”

— Anonymous X user, Indo-Pak conflict, May 2025

“Jung karni ho to 9 baje se pehle kerlena — 9:15 per gas chali jati hai humari.” (If you want to finish a war, do it before 9 PM — our gas goes off at 9:15.)

— Pakistani X user, also during the conflict, May 2025

When Indian missiles struck multiple targets inside Pakistan on May 7, 2025, two wars began simultaneously. One war involved aircraft, coordinates, and competing casualty figures that neither side would ever fully agree on. The other war was fought on X, Instagram and WhatsApp, in Urdu, Hindi, English and meme formats that require no language at all.

The first war ended in four days of contested claims and a ceasefire both sides described as a victory. The second war had a clearer and a far more unexpected result. Our netizens turned the odds in their favour. They not only fought but actually won the narrative battle. It is the question of how it did this that illuminates the direction of information warfare, and who, unexpectedly, is leading it there.

A murder of crows

It shouldn’t have been this outcome. India entered the information war with every structural advantage. Multi-decade disinformation influence operations documented by international watchdogs produced one of the most organised online nationalist ecosystems on the planet. India was coordinated, enormous, and primed for exactly this kind of conflict.

While we might take pride in our fifth-gen warriors or 5Gs, Pakistan entered the infowars with a year-long ban on the platform where most of the battle would be fought, in a country where blackouts (electricity, internet, press freedom) are a condition of daily life rather than a wartime imposition. And yet, we prevailed.

We saw a preview in Balakot, circa 2019, in a brazen act of diplomatic trolling. India’s Mirage jets crossed into Pakistan and, by India’s telling, killed hundreds of militants in a precision counter-terrorism strike. According to Pakistan’s version and that of Reuters reporters who visited the site, India actually killed four trees and some crows. India held a press conference. Pakistan filed an FIR against unnamed IAF pilots for environmental destruction, submitted a formal dossier to the United Nations demanding India be declared an “eco-terrorist,” and moved to strip Modi of the “Champion of the Earth” award the UN had given him. A song was composed in memory of the fallen trees. An annual holiday (Fantastic Tea Day) was established to honour Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, who had been served chai in Pakistani captivity and had called it “fantastic”.

Pakistan did not contest India’s narrative. It replaced it with one so specific, so absurd, and so verifiably grounded that India’s victory claims curdled on contact. This is Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath at work. The giant loses not because David is stronger, but because David refuses to play the giant’s game. India wanted a narrative war conducted on the terms of the powerful—solemn, institutional, credential-heavy. Pakistan showed up with an eco-terrorism complaint and a tea holiday. The giant never recovered its footing.

Beaten to the punchline

Coming back to 2025, India’s information manual against Pakistan was, and usually has been, straightforward (some might even say boring): you are poor, you beg from the IMF, your infrastructure is a humanitarian emergency, you commit rights violations, you’re a terrorist state, your country doesn’t have resources, etc. These are real vulnerabilities which are documented, painful, and definitely not invented. As weapons of narrative warfare, they should have been devastating.

And yet, they were not. Because Pakistan fired them first. At itself. And laughed. When a Pakistani user posted “Jung karni ho to 9 baje se pehle kerlena—9:15 per gas chali jati hai humari,” they weren’t being self-pitying. (If you want to go to war, do it before 9pm, our gas load shedding starts at 9:15pm). They were challenging the Indians to do their worst…what can they do that we haven’t done to ourselves already?

Owning a weakness so completely, so publicly, so cheerfully, neutralised any attempts at damage. You cannot humiliate a country that is already laughing harder than you are. And you certainly cannot humiliate one that has beaten you to the punchline. What is more, we didn’t need a coordinated effort to achieve this, just a shared sense of deprecation. Linguist Steven Pinker, in When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows, calls this common knowledge. It is the public, visible consensus that coordinates collective posture without issuing orders. We don’t need to explain it because everyone gets it. And everyone’s in on it. Every Valima-in-a-heatwave tweet, every transformer-mistaken-for-a-nuclear-strike thread was building a global audience, aligned and laughing in synch.

Pakistan has been rehearsing for this moment for decades. We practised on Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s couplets aimed at military dictators, truck-art commentary running up GT Road and with barely hidden references to Vigo kee sawari and Mehkma-e-Zaraat. In Weapons of the Weak, political scientist James C. Scott called it the “hidden transcript” or the subordinate group’s resistance conducted not through rebellion but through jokes, coded language, and the quiet appropriation of the Master’s narrative. The peasant who cannot challenge the landlord directly learns to challenge him indirectly through foot-dragging, feigned ignorance, and the precise deployment of the apparently innocent remark.

Know your audience

The information war was also lost to myopia. India was talking to Indians. Pakistan was talking to everyone.

India’s digital ecosystem of viral news anchors, coordinated hashtag campaigns and studio generals declaring cities captured was calibrated for a domestic audience already marinated in a decade of Hindutva-inflected media. The claims didn’t need to be accurate, just emotionally satisfying to people watching from Mumbai and Delhi. The international press, the foreign policy community, the undecided global gallery: none of these were the target. They were the collateral audience, and collateral audiences notice when you’re lying.

Pakistan’s memes, by contrast, were legible everywhere and spoke to a global audience. The Vince McMahon escalation meme required no knowledge of South Asian geopolitics. The shrimp karahi tweet from the allegedly bombed waterfront required only the ability to recognise absurdity. The Lowy Institute noted that Pakistan’s memes made it appear “cool-headed and composed, while India appeared reactionary and militaristic”. This was a verdict delivered not by Pakistani state media but by an Australian foreign policy think tank reading the international room. The Columbia Journalism Review called India’s coverage the smog of war (man-made, and known to be so by those making it).

The specifics are worth cataloguing. Zee News announced India had captured Islamabad and Pakistan surrendered. Times Now Navbharat declared Indian forces had entered Pakistan. Aaj Tak aired footage from the January 2025 Philadelphia plane crash as an Indian airstrike on Karachi. Major (retd) Gaurav Arya “reported” that the Indian Navy had bombed Karachi’s port—a claim met, in real time, by a Pakistani journalist filing from a restaurant beside the allegedly destroyed waterfront, eating shrimp karahi. An AI deepfake of DG ISPR Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry was circulated as authentic footage of him admitting Pakistani jet losses. India’s military later acknowledged that 15 per cent of operational time had been spent debunking fake news, and most of it was homegrown. The trolls were not operating in a parallel ecosystem but were on primetime television.

India’s information war defeat was largely self-inflicted. The enemy’s most effective psychological operation was India’s own media. According to BOOM Live, India’s leading fact-checking organisation, 68pc of all fact-checks conducted in May 2025 were related to Operation Sindoor. Not 68pc of the defence-and-security fact-checks, 68pc of everything. In a country of 1.4 billion people, with a media ecosystem covering every subject imaginable, two-thirds of all verifiable falsehoods circulating in that month were about one four-day military operation. India’s information war was not undermined by Pakistan. It was undermined by India’s own media infrastructure, operating at full speed, in the wrong direction.

Counting the wins

Pakistan’s most disciplined information operation was also its simplest: 6-0. Six IAF aircraft downed, deployed in press conferences and memes simultaneously, with the consistency of a brand campaign.

The Rafale was the centrepiece. India’s most prestigious military asset, the jet Modi had staked significant political capital on acquiring, was now the subject of a Washington Post report confirming three crash sites in Indian territory. French intelligence acknowledged at least one loss. It was the first Rafale combat loss in the aircraft’s history. Pakistan had shot down India’s most expensive jet with a PL-15, and before the debris had cooled, had put it in a metaphorical tandoor, named the hashtag Operation Tandoor, and was serving it with naan and half a million impressions.

The Defence Minister joined the bandwagon personally and retweeted an AI-generated image of Modi cycling the Rafale wreckage to the Bilal Ganj scrap market. 533,000 impressions. The state and the meme had become a single, grinning entity. Even the Chinese chimed in with their own videos.

Ritual humiliation

India named its operation Sindoor, or the vermilion marker worn by married Hindu women, invoking the widows of Pahalgam, framing its military strikes as masculine national grief made kinetic. Feminist scholars were not impressed, noting that branding a military campaign after a symbol of female marital subservience was a peculiar flex. Pakistan did not miss the opening, albeit with a rather regretful display of misogyny wrapped in jingoism.

Operation Suhag Raat trended within hours, reducing the widow-avenging solemnity to bedroom comedy. AI images of Modi as a Hindu widow (Operation Widhwa) circulated with the confidence of a finishing move. A Pakistan Army soldier applying sindoor to a woman in the Indian tricolour sari, beneath the banner “New Chapter Begins,” completed the inversion: in the ritual, the one who applies the sindoor is dominant.

India had named its operation after what husbands give wives. Pakistan replied by demonstrating who, in this version, was the husband. More work for the feminist scholars here.

The Trump card

Perhaps the coup-de-grace was the ceasefire announcement. US President Donald Trump announced he had brokered the deal, saving (by his own escalating estimate) somewhere between five million and fifty million lives, a figure he has revisited more than eighty times. India firmly rejected any US role, insecure of resolving any issue with Pakistan multilaterally (case in point: Kashmir).

Pakistan not only accepted it, but embraced it, nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Twice. PM Shehbaz Sharif, flanking the US president in Egypt, offered a salute and called him “the man this world needs most at this point in time”. The flattery was extravagant to the point of parody. It was also, as a piece of diplomatic manoeuvring, near-perfect—each nomination costing nothing, purchasing significant goodwill from a man who responds to recognition the way a plant responds to water. And we are all in on it. Common knowledge.

The result? For the first time in a generation, Islamabad is warmer with Washington than New Delhi is. The underdog played the room. The giant, too proud to flatter, paid full price.

The (pr)oxymoron

The lessons of 2025 can be summarised in a paradox we may not dwell on too much. As much as we may want to give credit to the 5Gs and our communications statecraft, the voice that won this information war—irreverent, uncontrollable, brilliantly indirect—is precisely the voice the State has spent years trying to silence, citing electoral disinformation and digital terrorism.

Whenever the bans came, we didn’t stop, thanks to the VPNs. War was, ironically, a welcome relief. Seeing the trends, the ban was lifted overnight, arguably because the same forces who saw this behaviour as a threat, suddenly found its irreverence an asset. The weapon it had spent years confiscating turned out to be the one that critically turned the tide in our favour.

The lesson of 2025 is not that Pakistani trolls were more creative than Indian ones, even though they were. It is that a government which treats free expression as a threat to be managed will find, at the worst possible moment, that it has disarmed its own most effective weapon. We would do well to value the humour and resilience of this expression.

This country’s humour is not decoration. It is load-bearing. It carried us through Balakot, through the IMF, through every blackout of every kind—and when the missiles came, it was the first thing the world heard and the last thing India could answer. The condition is simple: let the people speak. Not when it’s convenient. Always.

Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said on Thursday that Islamabad was hopeful about an agreement between the US and Iran and was expecting it to happen soon.

He said while responding to a question during a weekly FO briefing, adding that Pakistan would welcome a settlement between Iran and the US wherever it may be reached.

“If an agreement is reached in Pakistan, it would be an honour for us,” he said. The FO spokesperson also said he could not say whether the draft of the agreement would be one page or longer.

Andrabi’s remarks came after the US and Iran see­med to inch toward a peace deal on Wednesday. There were reports that Tehran was reviewing a fresh proposal from Washington for a peace following the suspension of ‘Project Freedom’ launc­hed by the US to open the Strait of Hormuz.

The FO spokesperson recalled in his weekly briefing the Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had welcomed the “timely announcement” regarding the pause in ‘Project Freedom’ and noted that Pakistan remained firmly committed to supporting all efforts that promoted restraint and the peaceful resolution of conflict between the US and Iran through dialogue and diplomacy.

He added that PM had also expressed the hope that the “current momentum” would lead to a lasting agreement that would secure durable peace and stability for the region and beyond.

Andrabi further stated that “working with the same spirit of optimism and positive engagement”, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar had remained in contact with his counterparts throughout the last week in an effort to pursue peace, diplomacy and a peaceful settlement between Washington and Tehran.

The latest episode of hostilities between the two sides began with more than two months ago when the US and Israel launched strikes in Iran on February 28.

While a deal for a complete end to the war is yet to happen, the hostilities have been largely ceased since a the two sides agreed on a Pakistan-brokered ceasefire on April 8.

Following the ceasefire, a first round of historic direct US-Iran talks was held in Islamabad on April 11 and 12, with Pakistan playing the role of a mediator. The talks had ended without an agreement, but also without a breakdown.

With challenges in convening a second round, Islamabad has shifted back to its role as a facilitator and go-between.

But, there were some positive signals on Wednesday, with Trump saying he had had “very good talks” with Iran over the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, Tehran appeared receptive to the fresh US proposal to end the war, saying that it was reviewing the agreement and a response would be relayed to Washington via Islamabad.

US news outlet Axios also claimed that Washington and Tehran were close to agreeing on a one-page memorandum of understanding to end the war and “set a framework for more detailed nuclear negotiations”.

Among main issues that remain a sticking point between the two sides are unrestricted navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and Washington’s demand for long-term commitments on Iran’s nuclear programme, including constraints on enrichment and safeguards against weaponisation.

Repatriations from Cambodia

During today’s briefing, the FO spokesperson also addressed the detention of 54 Pakistanis in Cambodia following a raid on a scamming compound.

Earlier, it was reported that more than 200 Pakistanis were in the custody of Cambodian police in overcrowded facilities and facing a lack of basic facilities.

Andrabi said emergency travel documents had been issued to the detained individuals after ascertaining their nationalities.

“On our embassy’s request, the host authorities allowed all 54 individuals to travel back to Pakistan. And as of today, I understand 49 individuals have returned and three are being are processed. And I understand this complete repatriation will take place soon,” he added.

The second day of the second edition of the Breathe Pakistan International Climate Change Conference, organised by DawnMedia, is currently underway in Islamabad.

Despite contributing minimally to global emissions, Pakistan remains among the most climate-vulnerable nations, underscoring the critical need for coordinated, locally grounded, and globally informed responses.

The two-day conference is bringing together policymakers, experts, and stakeholders from across sectors to examine intersecting challenges and chart a path forward.

On the first day, federal ministers, government officials, business leaders, and agriculture and water experts were among the various speakers who presented their perspectives on tackling the climate crisis.

View the full agenda here.

1:40pm — Lunch break

1:35pm — Solar boom ‘not surprising, but rational’

A representative from the Global Renewable Congress, Ali Gülcegün, addressed the conference in a video message and said that Pakistan’s solar boom was not “surprising, but rational”.

He said that Pakistan’s official electricity registry showed “30,000 net meter solar installations”. However, he added that the “reality was different”.

Gülcegün added, “The vast majority of connections are unregistered,” pointing out that Pakistan’s energy planning “has been working with the wrong numbers”.

He further stated that Pakistan’s solar transition happened as a result of “the grid failing to deliver what people needed as well as soaring prices”.

With load shedding in temperatures of 45°C and reduced solar panel cost, the official said that “with these factors combined, the consumer decision was rational”.

1:28pm — ‘Many factors’, not financing catalysed Pakistan’s energy revolution: expert

Lums Energy Institute Director Dr Naveed Arshad, speaking about Pakistan’s energy revolution, said, “We have not used probably a single dollar of climate financing in all this transition. There were many factors combined together.”

He noted that Pakistan witnessed “a very interesting revolution of the grid that we have not seen in any country”, adding that the transition was from a connected grid to a distributed grid.

1:21pm — Expert notes need for good policies, very smart financing mechanisms

People of Asia for Climate Solutions Founder Tom Xiaojun Wang noted that Pakistan and China have reacted to the fossil fuel prices differently.

“When we talk about energy anxiety, this is exactly where” new and already existing technology can be used, he said, mentioning the recent energy crisis resulting from the oil crisis.

“We are not really in shortage of technology, we are not really in shortage of even financing in many ways […] What we need to do is mobilise very good policies and very smart financing mechanisms,” Tom emphasised.

1:12pm — IRENA official calls for investment in solar infrastructure

Kamran Siddiqui, programme officer for energy and infrastructure at International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), speaking about Pakistan’s solar transition, said there was a “need for investment at the infrastructure level, particularly at the grid side”.

“We need to decide how the energy is going to be deployed, whether it’s behind the meter or net-metering.”

He also noted an increase in the import of solar batteries “over the past three years”. However, he added that the solar boom had also “created challenges for the government as the demand for grid supply has reduced”.

1:05pm — ‘Consistent decline in fossil fuel consumption over last 3-4 years’

Haneea Isaad, energy finance specialist at Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), noted that Pakistan was managing the ongoing situation resulting from the Middle East war relatively well, with no fuel shortages.

“Over the past three to four years, we have seen a consistent decline in fossil fuel consumption, whether its oil, gas or coal,” Isaad pointed out.

She highlighted Pakistan’s “rapid solarisation drive”, adding that the shift took place in 2022 after the Russia-Ukraine war broke out.

12:57pm — Panel talk on clean energy begins

A panel talk, titled “Empowering Pakistan’s Transition to Clean Energy”, is now underway.

National Credit Guarantee Company Limited CEO Ammar H Khan is moderating the session.

12:52pm — Must discuss impact of climate shock on urban poor: NED Pro-VC

Dr Noman Ahmed, Pro Vice Chancellor at NED University of Engineering and Technology, highlighted that since opportunities for livelihood were diminishing in rural areas due to climate risks, people moved to cities, where they “face ruthless evictions”.

“Their plight is not acknowledged,” he added, stressing that “anti-encroachment drives were anti-poor operations”.

He further stated that it was vital to discuss the impacts of climate shocks on the “poor, particularly the urban poor and see what can be safeguarded by the right type of policy and planned intervention”.

12:48pm — Largest cities of Pakistan facing ‘haphazard’ urbanisation

Dr Noman Ahmed noted that locations and hinterlands that were “not supposed to be urbanised” were undergoing urbanisation.

“The largest cities of Pakistan are basically shouldering the load of urbanisation in an extraordinary manner. And these are the cities that are under an enormous amount of duress […] so Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad and all the largest cities of Pakistan are experiencing an extraordinary scale of sprawl,” he said, adding that it was leading to a “very haphazard type” of urbanisation.

12:36pm — Urbanisation not planned, but absorbed: IOM Pakistan official

Sumera Izhar, recovery advisor at IOM Pakistan, pointed out that in Pakistan, urbanisation was “not planned but absorbed”.

She noted that in the past, the main factor for migration was better job opportunities, but “now it is changing to climate-shock-induced” migration. She added that in Pakistan, “more than 13 million people were migrating internally due to climate shocks”.

She further added that the issue was being looked at as a “humanitarian one,” rather than through the lens of “climate mobility”.

12:29pm — Having data alone not enough: Urban Unit CEO

Urban Unit CEO Muhammad Omar Masud noted there was now a “political economy of urban planning”, terming it an issue.

He noted that about 45pc of Punjab’s population was urbanised. Masud added that data alone was not enough, observing that there was a need for governments to start sharing data with the public.

“You need to have those institutions that are going to transmit it all the way to policy.”

12:21pm — UN-Habitat official decries lack of urban planning

UN-Habitat Pakistan Senior Advisor and Programme Manager Jawed Ali Khan decried the lack of urban planning, which he said is “triggered more intensely by climate change”.

“Our planners have to be conscious; they must study the challenge and build necessary safety zones,” he said, recalling urban flooding in Islamabad and Lahore last year as well as Karachi’s heat island effect.

He stressed that urban planners must “design the infrastructure keeping in mind the challenges we are facing”.

12:14pm — Panel discussion begins

A panel talk, titled “Are Climate-Smart Cities Possible in the Developing World?”, has begun.

Climate adviser Dawar Hameed Butt is moderating the session.

12:10pm — UNEP official notes cities not directly engaging with financiers

Mirey Atallah, head of adaptation & resilience at United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), noted that often, there was not a lack of funding, but rather accessibility of funding.

“Cities are not directly engaging with financiers. It’s always through the Ministry of Finance of the federal government,” she noted.

The UNEP official pointed out that countries like Pakistan, which have high indebtedness, were faced with barriers because the ministry may not be willing to give an NoC to cities for more loans to manage the overall debts.

12:06pm — Opportunity to ‘leapfrog’ through indigenous solutions: Mirey Atallah

UNEP Head of Adaptation & Resilience Mirey Atallah highlighted that there exists an opportunity to “leapfrog” through “innovation, creativity, and indigenous solutions”.

However, she noted that the opportunities were “challenged by speed,” adding that the “speed” was related to population increase and expansion.

12pm — Tariq Alexander Qaiser calls for Karachi’s islands not to be turned into ‘high-rise communities’

Architect Tariq Alexander Qaiser said, “The days of mega corporations and globalisation are dying. It is and has to be about local benefit.”

He called for more mangrove plantation work to be done on Karachi’s coastal islands and its western delta.

Qaiser called for the preservation of Karachi’s coastal islands, mainly Bundal Island and Khiprianwala. “The city requires them to be covered in mangroves, not human commercial enterprises,” he added.

“These islands should not be developed into high-rise communities or industrial zones. They need to become protected areas for nature reserves and inter-title biodiversity,” he asserted.

“For our progeny to live healthy, productive lives, we need our cities to exist in this intersection — the nexus of man and nature. That is the only way forward,” Qaiser added.

11:56am — ‘Cities divided into those with access to clean water and those who don’t’

Qaiser spoke of the effluent being washed away into the sea, stating that it was not going “into treatment plants or solid waste facilities”.

“Draining systems get clogged; they are built upon [..] disease vector spread,” he added, stressing that the city was divided into “those with access to clean drinking water and those who did not”.

“Our cities, our lives suffer from deep inequity; this is overwhelming, and it should be for all of us.”

11:49am — Environmentalist notes need for new laws with ‘holistic understanding’

Tariq Alexander Qaiser, an architect and founder of TAQ Associates, underscored the need for new laws. “New ones are needed, ones that will be accepted by all.”

He noted that science and humanities had been separated and were studied in silos, wondering why philosophy had been “put aside”.

Qaiser emphasised the need for a “holistic, integrated and deeply sensitive understanding of issues” in today’s world.

11:40am — Punjab ‘case study’ for rest of world

Marriyum Aurangzeb said that with the provincial government’s interventions, Punjab has become a “case study” in terms of environmental protection for the rest of the world.

“A lot of countries have approached us,” she said, adding that the government was working in collaboration with the “environment sector, legislative lawyers”.

“We have the test policies, test legislation, it is just time to act, bring them together and make them work,” she added.

11:36am — Punjab minister underscores importance of collecting data

The Punjab senior minister underscored the importance of collecting data, saying, “We can’t govern what we can’t measure.

“We have mapped the entire industry, we have mapped the sectors. We have data now available with us and that is being used in our spatial planning,” she added.

11:31am — About 35pc of PM2.5 reduced over past 1.5 years: Punjab minister

Marriyum Aurangzeb mentioned various steps and initiatives being undertaken by the Punjab government, including a smog mitigation plan.

She said, “With all what we have done in a year and a half or two years, about 35 per cent of PM2.5, according to the international website, we have reduced over the last year and a half.

“So whatever we are doing seems to be working and having an impact, but a lot needs to be done, of course, in other areas and sectors also,” the minister acknowledged.

Aurangzeb said that the launch of a climate observatory was also being planned, which would have satellite offices across Punjab.

11:20am — Environmental protection, urbanisation not opposing forces: Marriyum Aurangzeb

Punjab Senior Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb spoke of Punjab’s actions on moving from “a vulnerable province to more of an environment, climate-resilience leadership”.

Aurangzeb said she did not see environmental protection and urbanisation as opposing forces.

She maintained that if the decision-making takes into account the protection of ecological balance, climate resilience, and infrastructure, “urbanisation can be made inclusive, sustainable and responsible”.

She emphasised that Punjab had taken a “more of an ecosystem approach”, using a multisectoral lens.

The minister mentioned the launch of public buses and the environment protection force as some of the steps to transition towards an environment-friendly urban city.

11:12am — Climate crisis demands solidarity: Maldives’ envoy to Pakistan

The Maldives’ high commissioner called on the Global South to go beyond negotiations and focus on sharing knowledge, technical cooperation and capacity-building.

“Climate crisis demands not only urgency, but solidarity,” he emphasised, affirming that the Maldives remained committed to working with Pakistan and the Global South on the issue.

11:09am — Maldives, Pakistan ‘stand on the frontline of climate vulnerability’

Mohamed Thoha, High Commissioner of the Maldives to Pakistan, spoke about climate challenges faced by his country.

“Both our countries are different in geography and scale, but we have to stand on the frontline of climate vulnerability,” he said.

Thoha explained that Maldives faced rising sea levels and coastal erosion, threatening long-term sustainability. He added that the Maldives was committed to transitioning 33pc of its energy consumption to sustainable and clean resources.

10:58am — Melting glaciers ‘shared vulnerability’ for countries like Nepal and Pakistan: envoy

Rita Dhital, Ambassador of Nepal to Pakistan, noted that melting glaciers were a “shared vulnerability” for countries like Nepal and Pakistan.

She highlighted that Glofs hampered tourism, agriculture and hydropower generation in Nepal, recalling that her country has experienced “major Glofs” since 1970s that resulted in significant loss of lives.

Dhital spoke about Nepal’s actions to tackle glacial melting, including using engineering to lower lake levels and identify lakes that pose a potential threat of outbursts.

10:51am — Opportunities lie in Global South: private sector adviser

Seed Advisory Group Principal Seema A. Khan, speaking about the private sector’s role, explained the concept of “patient capital”.

She highlighted that it was the Global South where opportunities were present.

“Patient capital is in negotiations with the people who are around this group to discuss where the intersection is between money, policy and national development, because that’s the most profitable,” she said.

“One of the areas that I have found to create the most resilience is the evolution of sovereign capital to look at all of these resources as ways to create banks that then benefit the people,” Khan further said.

10:38am — Romina Alam notes ‘nothing happened’ on Loss and Damage Fund

“What about the Loss and Damage Fund? Where is that fund? Nothing happened,” Romina Khurshid Alam pointed out.

She called for everyone to work together, including the development and private sectors.

“Justice is right now very much important, but more important is survival,” the PM’s coordinator said.

“No blame, no shame. Just take action,” she said.

10:31am — PM’s coordinator highlights need for ‘regional solution’

Romina Khurshid Alam, coordinator to the Prime Minister on climate change, stressed the need for a “regional solution” rather than a global one, as every region had its different issues.

“This region is suffering. Our children are suffering. We are not in the state of crisis. We are in the state of war from climate change,” she said.

“The developing countries’ people are resilient nations. If you talk about Pakistan, we have proved in the floods that we are not looking for aid; we are looking for trade because this is not something we created.”

10:20am — Goal is to advance resilience in development: climate expert

Renato Redentor Constantino, international policy adviser at Climate Vulnerable Forum, noted that many people think of climate change as an environmental issue but “we are in the middle of a development crisis”.

He stressed, “Our goal is not to reduce emissions, per se. Our goal is to advance resilience in development.”

10:08am - Expert highlights concept of ethical leverage

Dr Erum Sattar, a water law and policy expert, said, “Pakistan sits where the transboundary water-sharing is very, very complex. There is India in the East and the Kabul River.”

She said that Pakistan sat at the intersection of complexities that affected many nations. She also referred to the concept of ethical leverage.

“Pakistan can experiment at all of these scales,” she said.

10:06am - UN official says Pakistan’s experience not unique

Mohamed Yahya, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Pakistan, said,” Pakistan’s reality is unmistakable; from floods to prolonged droughts to glacial melts. This experience is not unique to Pakistan. It reflects a reality across South Asia.”

He said that the panel’s discussion would be how South Asia can help itself, saying that regions had to work together.

10:00am - IFAD official says climate change shaping agriculture in Pakistan

Lamichhane said that climate change is already shaping agriculture in Pakistan. “There’s no denying it, we have to act on it. But this is also a chance to modernise and build resilience,” she said.

She went on to say that resilience was achievable when solutions were integrated, financed and designed for scale. She also said that partnership was a multiplier effect.

9:50am - IFAD official says climate ambition not constrained by ideas

Lamichhane has said that the Asia Pacific is IFAD’s most dynamic and largest portfolio. She said that across the region, five things were given priority: climate resilience; technology and productivity; strong value chains and private sector engagement; inclusion of youth, women and indigenous communities; and a shaded approach that matches solutions to country context.

“Pakistan, facing high climate risk, sits at the intersection of these priorities. We cannot dissect climate from other priorities; it has to go hand in hand,” she said.

“Climate ambition is not constrained by ideas … it is constrained by finance and delibery systems,” she said.

9:50am - IFAD official says Pakistan on the frontline of climate change

Anupa Rimal Lamichhane — the International Fund for Agricultural Development lead for regional climate change — has said that Pakistan is on the frontline of climate change.

“Agriculture contributes 23pc to GDP,” she said. Agrifood systems and farmers are not just the victims but they are also a major part of the solution, she said.

“Yet, globally, only 0.8pc of climate financing reaches farmers,” she said.

9:50am - 7th session begins

The seventh session, titled ‘Collaboration of the Global South Towards Climate Action’ has now begun.

9:46am - 2nd day of climate conference begins

The second day of the Breathe Pakistan International Climate Change Conference has begun in Islamabad.

The PTI on Thursday expressed concern and anger over reports of Imran Khan’s wife Bushra Bibi being “suddenly and secretly” taken to the hospital in the middle of the night and then taken back to jail.

“The entire matter is shrouded in unusual secrecy, a lack of transparency, and serious human rights violations, which have raised countless questions in the minds of the nation,” the party said.

The statement came after media reports emerged on Wednesday night alleging that Bushra Bibi, who is currently incarcerated at Adiala jail, was taken to a hospital under tight security for a follow-up examination of her eye.

Last month, Bushra Bibi underwent eye surgery at a Rawalpindi hospital. According to prison authorities, she was diagnosed with retinal detachment in the right eye, and doctors had advised surgery.

“Why is the nation not being informed about her illness, if her condition deteriorated to the extent that she had to be urgently taken to the hospital in the middle of night?” the party asked.

“Which hospital was she taken to? What tests were conducted? Which doctors examined her? And on what basis was the decision made to transfer her back to jail? The silence of the government and jail authorities is making the entire matter even more suspicious,” it said.

“Bushra Bibi has been facing solitary confinement, mental stress, and inhumane treatment for several months, while serious concerns regarding her health have repeatedly been raised. Despite this, denying access to her personal physicians, obstructing meetings with her family, and keeping medical information confidential are clear indications that something is being concealed from the public and her family,” the party said.

“It is regrettable that a female prisoner, who is also the wife of a former prime minister, is being deprived of basic human and medical rights,” the party said, adding concerns regarding her health were increasing with every passing day.

The party demanded that if the government had nothing to hide, an independent and transparent report on Bushra Bibi’s health should be provided to her family and the nation.

It also called for her personal physicians to be granted immediate and unrestricted access and for her to be allowed to meet her family. The PTI also demanded that she be immediately shifted to Shifa International Hospital, and human rights organisations and an independent medical board be permitted to examine her health.

The party warned that if any harm came to her health, the current rulers, prison authorities, and relevant institutions would bear complete political, moral and legal responsibility.

PTI Chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan also posted on X that he had been informed about Bushra Bibi being taken to hospital last night “for eye laser treatment” and then being “shifted back”.

“I have requested for a family meeting today. Awaiting that — we have grave concerns about Khan sb and Bushra Bibi’s health,” he added.

Gohar further stated, “ We demand that they be shifted to hospital for treatment and medical tests in the presence of their family members under the supervision of their doctors.

“It is time to change this seek and hide [sic] approach to their health issues. Concern is growing. Immediate attention is required,” he stated.

PTI leader Omar Ayub, meanwhile, said, “Bushra Bibi was taken to the hospital late last night without informing family members. This act by the jail authorities is strongly condemned.”

Bushra Bibi’s health has deteriorated to such an extent that she had to be rushed to the hospital for treatment, and instead of admitting her, she was taken back to Adiala jail,” he said.

Ayub said that Imran was also not being allowed to meet his lawyers, family members, or party colleagues and was also not being taken to Shifa International Hospital for treatment.

“Both PM Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi’s eyesight has suddenly deteriorated whilst incarcerated at Adiala Jail. Both were absolutely healthy and had no medical problems before being jailed. This fact in itself is extremely serious,” he said.

The PTI leader called for both to be taken to Shifa International Hospital for treatment, and for their family members and doctors should to be given access.

“The regime is constantly violating PM Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi’s constitutionally protected human rights, whilst Pakistan’s judiciary remains a silent spectator,” he said.

Doctors Without Borders on Thursday accused Israel of having deliberately restricted food and aid in Gaza, creating a “manufactured malnutrition crisis” with particularly devastating impacts on infants and pregnant and breastfeeding women.

The report also examined the harm done by the US- and Israeli-backed private organisation set up last year to largely replace UN distribution of aid in Gaza.

The medical charity, known by its French acronym MSF, based its case on an analysis of the situation between late 2024 and early 2026 at four health facilities it supports in the Gaza Strip.

That analysis showed significantly higher levels of prematurity and mortality among infants born to malnourished mothers, and spikes in miscarriages, it said.

MSF linked these outcomes with Israel’s blockade of essential goods and attacks on civilian infrastructure, including medical facilities.

“Insecurity, displacement, restrictions on aid, and limited access to food and medical care have had devastating consequences for maternal and newborn health,” the charity said in a statement.

The situation remained “extremely fragile”, despite a ceasefire in place since last October after two years of devastating conflict, it warned.

MSF called on the Israeli authorities to allow the unhindered entry of assistance and supplies into Gaza immediately.

“The malnutrition crisis is entirely manufactured,” Merce Rocaspana, MSF’s medical referent for emergencies, said in the statement.

Before the war in the Palestinian territory erupted, “malnutrition in Gaza was almost non-existent”, she said.

Malnourished women giving birth

MSF said it had collected data from more than 200 mothers and newborns receiving treatment in neonatal intensive care units at hospitals in Khan Yunis and Gaza City between last June and January.

Its analysis found that more than half of the women were affected by malnutrition at some point during their pregnancy. A quarter of them were still malnourished during delivery.

The impact was clear: 90 per cent of the babies born to malnourished mothers were born prematurely and 84pc had low birth weight, the analysis found.

“Neonatal mortality was twice as high among infants born to mothers affected by malnutrition compared with those born to mothers without malnutrition,” MSF said.

The medical charity also examined data from 513 infants under six months of age admitted to outpatient therapeutic feeding programmes in Khan Yunis between October 2024 and December 2025.

Of them, “91pc were at risk of poor growth and development”, it said.

By last December, 200 of the infants were no longer in the programme, but fewer than half had been cured, it found. Seven per cent of them had died, it added.

‘Militarised and deadly’

Infants are not the only ones going hungry.

Between January 2024, when the first cases of child malnutrition were reported in Gaza, and February 2026, MSF said it had admitted 4,176 children under 15 years old — 97pc of them younger than five — for acute malnutrition programmes.

During the same period, 3,336 pregnant and breastfeeding women were enrolled in ambulatory programmes, it said.

Thursday’s analysis also highlighted the impact of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — a US- and Israeli-backed private organisation set up last year to largely replace UN distribution of aid in Gaza.

MSF pointed out that by late May 2025, food distribution points in Gaza had dropped from around 400 to four under GHF, which disbanded last November.

The food distribution points were “militarised and deadly”, warned Jose Mas, head of the MSF emergency unit.

During the period GHF was functioning, MSF said that facilities it supported in Gaza had seen “a sharp increase in patients seeking care due to violence perpetrated at food distribution points and malnutrition linked to deprivation of food”.

MSF teams had also observed a high number of miscarriages during this period, it said.

Gunmen on motorbikes in India’s West Bengal ambushed and killed a political aide from the ruling Hindu-nationalist party days after it swept state elections, police said Thursday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a resounding victory on Monday in the eastern state of more than 100 million people, taking 207 of the 294 assembly seats, for its first-ever state victory in West Bengal.

Chandranath Rath, 41, a close aide of West Bengal’s BJP chief Suvendu Adhikari was shot dead late on Wednesday near his home in Kolkata.

Adhikari, the leader of the opposition in the state assembly, now tipped to become the state chief minister, called it “cold-blooded murder”.

Motorbikes blocked Rath’s vehicle, before the attackers opened fire in a barrage of around a dozen shots, hitting Rath multiple times in the heart.

“The shooting happened at about 11 pm on Wednesday — the bikes that stopped Rath’s car have been seized,” West Bengal police chief Siddh Nath Gupta told AFP.

“The bikes had fake registration numbers, and we are looking for the assailants.”

Pritam Sengupta, a doctor at Apollo Hospital told AFP, that Rath was “brought dead with multiple bullet injuries in his chest.”

The killing brings the total killed since the results were announced on Monday to at least five.

West Bengal had been ruled by Modi’s fierce critic and adversary, Mamata Banerjee, as chief minister since 2011.

Banerjee, leader of the regional All India Trinamool Congress (TMC), also lost her seat in the polls and has rejected the results.

Analysts say the BJP’s victory in the largely Bengali-speaking state is one of its most significant since Modi was first elected prime minister in 2014, expanding its dominance beyond the Hindi-speaking heartland of north and central India.

The killing has added to political tensions in the state, with the BJP and TMC trading accusations over the deaths since the results.

“It was a planned murder,” BJP’s West Bengal president Samik Bhattacharya said.

“This is expected from Trinamool Congress,” he alleged. “They are responsible for this death”.

The TMC rejected any role in the shooting, but accused the BJP of targeting their supporters.

“We strongly condemn the brutal murder of Chandranath Rath,” the party said in a statement, adding that it also condemned attacks on TMC members “allegedly carried out by BJP-backed miscreants”.

The BJP said it will swear in its leader as chief minister on Saturday.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) has directed all deputy commissioners to take precautionary measures ahead of heatwave conditions that are slated to begin from May 8 (Friday).

In the letter sent, a copy of which is available with Dawn, the PDMA said heatwave conditions were likely to develop over the province’s plain areas from May 8 to May 10.

It said that daytime temperatures may rise to 43–47°C in Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, Bannu, Karak, and Lakki Marwat. It also forecast daytime temperatures between 39–43°C in Peshawar, Nowshera, Charsadda, Mardan, Swabi, Haripur, and Kohat.

“Afterward, a shallow westerly wave is likely to affect most parts of the province on 10th (evening/ night) and likely to persist in the upper parts till May 13. This system is likely to bring relief from the prevailing hot conditions in the province,” it said.

“It is therefore requested to kindly take all precautionary measures to avoid any loss of life, damages to crops and livestock,” the department said.

The department directed the concerned authorities to launch awareness campaigns to inform the public about the heatwave conditions. This also included ensuring that the general public, especially senior citizens and children, were aware of the situation and avoided direct exposure to sunlight during peak hours.

This also included ensuring the general public was made aware of using water judiciously for drinking and cooling off, and encouraging individuals with underlying health conditions to remain especially vigilant and ensuring they had the necessary medical supplies readily available.

It also directed to educate the public about the signs of heat-related illnesses and the steps that should be taken in this regard.

Further, the health department, in coordination with the local administrations, were directed to mobilise resources to establish heatstroke centres, cooling points, and mobile cooling stations at high-traffic areas.

They were also told to ensure the facilities were equipped with adequate cooling equipment and drinking water, and had the necessary trained personnel available to provide immediate medical assistance if needed.

Farmers are advised to manage their crop activities while keeping in mind the weather conditions and to take care of their livestock. Emergency services were told to remain on alert against possible possible fires and undertake preventative measures.

A day earlier, the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) announced a forecast of heatwave conditions across the country this week.

At least 10 people died across Karachi on Monday due to intense heat as the mercury surged to 44.1°C — the highest temperature recorded since 2018 — accompanied by gusts of continental winds that persisted throughout the day, officials said.

The same day, the Nati­onal Disaster Manage­ment Authority (NDMA) issued sweeping emergency protocols and placed hospitals on alert as extreme, above-normal summer temperatures threatened millions across the country.

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) announced on Thursday that the Australia men’s cricket team will tour the country for a three-match one-day international (ODI) series.

In a press release, the cricket board said that the visitors would arrive in Islamabad on May 23 and take on the Green Shirts in the first ODI scheduled at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium on May 30.

The second and third ODIs of the series will be played at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore on June 2 and 4, respectively, it said.

“All three ODIs are scheduled to begin at 4:30pm local time, with the toss taking place at 4pm,” the press release said.

It went on to say that the upcoming bilateral ODI series would be Australia’s first in Pakistan since 2022.

It also highlighted that Australia last visited Pakistan earlier this year to participate in a three-match T20I series, which the hosts won 3-0 at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore.

It further said that Australia also featured in ICC Champions Trophy 2025 matches in Pakistan, including a five-wicket win against England at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore on February 22.

LAHORE: An anti-corruption court (ATC) on Wednesday discharged the daughter and son-in-law of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif from a case of alleged irregularities in the Punjab Saaf Pani Company.

Special Court Judge Javed Iqbal Warraich heard two separate acquittal applications filed by the prime minister’s daughter, Rabia Imran, and her husband Ali Imran Yousaf. The judge observed that no evidence had been found linking the applicants to the alleged offence.

The judge further observed that the anti-corruption establishment (ACE) had submitted its investigation report, declaring both applicants innocent and that the case against them was not prosecutable.

He said the prosecution also stated that an accountability court had, on Jan 31, 2022, discharged other accused in the same matter without framing charges.

The judge remarked that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had failed to present evidence at that stage and even after the case was transferred to ACE and no new evidence was produced.

The judge ruled that the applicants were not required for arrest in this case and their matter would be considered in light of the accountability court’s earlier decision. The judge disposed of the acquittal pleas for being infructuous and acquitted the couple from the charges.

Previously, the couple was declared proclaimed offenders for avoiding the court’s proceedings against them. The trial court suspended their perpetual arrest warrants after they surrendered before the law last month.

The accused acquitted during 2022 included Saaf Pani Company’s former chairman Raja Qamarul Islam and former chief executive officer Waseem Ajmal besides 14 others.

Both Islam and Ajmal were arrested by NAB in June 2018 and were later released on bail granted by the Lahore High Court in January 2019.

A day before his arrest, Islam was awarded a ticket by the PML-N for the 2018 election against former interior minister Ch Nisar Ali Khan, the disgruntled leader of the party, from NA-59, Rawalpindi.

Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2026

• CDA mulls tourism development at key water source
• Critics cite past controversies and ecological risks

ISLAMABAD: City managers are planning to develop water sports and recreational facilities near Simly Dam, a move that may pose environmental challenges for residents.

The dam, built in 1983, is located 30 kilometres east of Islamabad in the foothills of lush green mountains and is considered a main source of clean drinking water.

The other dam in Islamabad, including Rawal Dam, which supplies water to Rawalpindi, is already heavily polluted, mainly due to uncontrolled contamination in its catchment area.

Simly Dam, located in a less-visited area, remains a source of clean drinking water. However, the federal government and the Capital Development Authority (CDA) now plan to introduce recreational activities in the area.

Recently, the CDA board approved a summary for hiring former chairman Kamran Lashari as a consultant (city curator) for the “preparation of a comprehensive citywide culture and tourism vision for Islamabad” at a salary of Rs2 million per month.

Although the official notification has yet to be issued, Lashari was recently seen briefing Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi at Simly Dam, and it is likely he will prepare a plan for the promotion of water sports and tourism near the reservoir.

Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry on Wednesday issued a press release stating, “Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi has directed authorities to prepare a workable plan for the expansion of Simly Dam, which currently supplies 40 per cent of Islamabad’s water, and to develop the surrounding area for tourism and water sports.”

During a detailed visit to the dam, Naqvi was briefed on its capacity and informed that expansion would ensure an abundant water supply to the capital. He asked officials to present a comprehensive plan for the project soon.

The interior minister also reviewed the area around the reservoir and sought a separate plan to promote recreational activities.

“There are immense opportunities for recreational activities in the area adjacent to Simly Dam. Water sports and other facilities would drive local development,” he said, adding that the initiative would create jobs for local residents and provide citizens access to “world-class recreational facilities”.

The press release noted that the reservoir is already used informally for boating and picnics but lacks formal infrastructure, safety measures or CDA-managed facilities.

It is relevant to note that Lashari served as CDA chairman from 2003 to 2008. During his tenure, the city witnessed significant development and beautification works, along with the launch of several controversial projects.

Some of the major works during his tenure included the construction of 7th and 9th avenues, three underpasses on 7th Avenue, including one at China Chowk, widening of the Expressway, the Zero Point Interchange, reconstruction and widening of several roads, development of dozens of parks and playgrounds, sit-out areas in commercial centres, installation of signage, construction of public toilets and passenger shelters at bus bays.

However, the CDA also launched several controversial projects during his tenure. Many of them faced inquiries by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and some still remain abandoned, raising questions about the efficiency of the civic agency.

In 2005, the CDA leased out a 13.5-acre plot (One Constitution Avenue) for the construction of a five-star hotel for Rs4.8 billion but handed over possession after receiving only Rs800 million. The issue has resurfaced recently as the CDA seeks to take over the twin towers due to default and non-delivery, as the developer constructed around 250 residential apartments instead of a hotel.

Similarly, during Lashari’s tenure, the CDA set up restaurants in the Margalla Hills and expanded roads with the installation of lights, attracting heavy traffic to the area, which disturbed the environment and ecosystem. The Supreme Court later ordered an end to commercial activities on Pir Sohawa Road.

During the same period, the city also lost one of its historical landmarks, a single-storey inward market designed by a British architect. It was demolished in 2007 after the CDA controversially amended bylaws to allow a multi-storey plaza, though residents and courts later intervened, citing infrastructure constraints in the area.

Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2026

WHILE the United States continues to dismantle the international climate architecture it once helped build, wars from Ukraine to the Middle East are generating unaccounted emissions, consuming the fiscal space that wealthy nations pledged to climate finance, and returning fossil fuels to the centre of global strategy.

Meanwhile, 2024 was the first calendar year to go above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial level; the critical 1.5°C threshold. The tipping points have arrived. What climate models warned would happen by 2080 is happening already.

At the receiving end stands Pakistan, a country that caused less than 1 per cent of the problem and is living with an outsized share of the consequences.

Its glaciers are melting. Its monsoon no longer arrives on schedule, bringing, instead, either punishing drought or catastrophic flood. Its rivers are caught between a warming mountain range above, and hostile neighbours below.

This is not a collection of separate crises. It is one crisis, with many faces, bearing down on us. And time is running out.

In January this year, the United States withdrew from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the foundational 1992 treaty ratified by the Senate by a vote of 92-0 and upheld by every administration since. It simultaneously withdrew from the Paris Agreement, the IPCC, and the Green Climate Fund.

No country had ever done this before.

The decision was taken in a world already destabilised by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, by a Nato rearmament that has absorbed the fiscal space European governments once directed at climate finance, and by a Gulf energy crisis that has returned fossil fuels to the centre of global strategic thinking.

The Trump administration’s fossil fuel revival and Europe’s sharp turn towards defence spending reflect the same underlying judgment: that security, defined narrowly, takes precedence over survival defined broadly and over time.

Developed countries are choosing to strengthen themselves in the short term at the cost of planetary health and their economies at the cost of the ecosystems that underpin them.

Pakistan did not make this judgment, but it is living with its consequences.

The diversion from climate finance to military spending has dwarfed commitments made at global forums. Pakistan is getting what it does not deserve, stresses Ali Tauqeer Sheikh

The wars generating political realignment are also generating emissions that dwarf the reductions governments have pledged.

The Ukraine war has produced an estimated 230 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent over three years.

The first 15 months of Israel’s war on Gaza generated at least 31 million tonnes. Global military spending reached a record $2.7 trillion in 2024.

Treated as a country, the military sector would rank fourth in the world by emissions, accountable to no climate framework and invisible in every NDC submitted to the UNFCCC.

Military emissions remain exempt from Paris Agreement reporting, a loophole never closed.

The $300 billion climate finance pledge of COP29 is being dismantled by the same governments that signed it.

The UK cut real-terms climate finance by roughly 50pc to fund defence spending.

Germany and several other EU countries have made equivalent choices.

The US has cut international climate finance to zero, and is actively working to dismantle both its own domestic climate commitments and the global agreements it once helped build.

Closer to home, Pakistan’s military standoff with India in May 2025 distracted focus from the regional climate agenda at the precise moment NDC 3.0 implementation needed to be consolidated.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has exposed how shallow the global energy transition remains beneath its headline numbers.

When the Strait closed, the response of major Asian economies was to scramble for alternative fossil fuel supply, reactivate mothballed coal plants, and sign emergency LNG contracts at premium prices.

India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and the Philippines increased coal-burn during the crisis. Japan and South Korea extended the operational life of coal and gas plants they had pledged to retire. Across Asia, coal is not a relic of the past.

It is the backstop that governments reach for the moment energy security is threatened, and the Hormuz closure was a reminder of how quickly that moment can arrive.

The IEA had projected fossil fuel demand peaking before 2030. The Hormuz crisis, arriving on top of the Ukraine war, has put that projection in a serious doubt.

For Pakistan, which had begun to reduce its LNG import exposure through grassroots solar revolution, the lesson is both cautionary and instructive: the energy transition is real, but it is fragile, and every geopolitical shock tests whether governments have the institutional resolve to stay the course, or the political instinct to retreat to the fuel they know.

The grand ambitions of successive COPs, from the $100 billion promise of Copenhagen to the 1.5°C target of Paris and to the $300 billion pledge of Baku, today look like agreements made in a different world.

Belem in November 2025 left the Loss and Damage Fund critically underfunded and substituted voluntary initiatives for binding ones.

Meanwhile the same governments that signed these pledges are spending that record $2.7 trillion annually on military hardware and cutting their climate finance budgets to fund it.

Multiplied across the EU and the US, the cumulative diversion from climate finance to military spending dwarfs every commitment made at every COP since Copenhagen.

The bill for that choice is being paid by Pakistan and countries across the Global South — absorbing, year after year, the consequences of decisions made in capitals far from their own.

Global targets have slipped

The Paris Agreement is failing.

In 2024, the global average surface temperature reached 1.55°C above pre-industrial levels, the first calendar year to breach the Paris threshold.

The three-year period ending in 2025 averaged above 1.5°C. Atmospheric CO2 is at its highest in two million years. The UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2025 finds that even full NDC implementation would deliver 2.3-2.5°C by 2100.

Current policies track 2.6-3.1°C. The US withdrew from the IPCC at a time when this verdict was being written.

Ecosystems are tipping

Tipping points are activating now.

Warm-water coral reefs have crossed their thermal threshold, with direct consequences for the fish stocks and coastal protection on which hundreds of millions of people in South Asia depend.

Greenland is losing 30 million tonnes of ice per hour.

The Atlantic circulation system (AMOC) that drives the South Asian monsoon is destabilising; its weakening would fundamentally alter the rainfall patterns on which Pakistan, India and Bangladesh have built their agricultural systems over centuries, reducing monsoon intensity in some zones while intensifying it unpredictably in others.

In the Hindu Kush-Himalaya-Karakoram region, glaciers are retreating faster than the global average, draining the rivers that provide freshwater to nearly a billion people across the region.

Along South Asia’s coastlines, the Arabian Sea is warming faster than the global ocean average, intensifying cyclone energy and driving saltwater intrusion into the agricultural land and freshwater aquifers of coastal Sindh and Balochistan as well as Bangladesh’s delta regions.

These systems interact: each one that tips accelerates the others.

The AMOC features in 45pc of all modelled tipping point cascade interactions.

What begins in Greenland arrives, in time, in the Indus Delta.

Pakistan pays the bill

Pakistan’s glaciers are retreating, simultaneously triggering glacial lake outburst floods in the north today and, over the longer term, threatening the dry-season river flows on which 80pc of irrigated agriculture depends.

Floods today, water scarcity tomorrow: two faces of the same crisis.

The monsoon, once the organising rhythm of Pakistan’s agricultural calendar, has become erratic and violent — arriving in concentrated, devastating bursts or failing to arrive at all.

The 2022 floods affected 33 million people and caused $30 billion in losses. Recurrent flooding in 2025 confirmed that nothing structural has changed.

Prolonged droughts in Balochistan and Sindh are driving displacement and deepening cross-border water tensions with Afghanistan and India.

The 1991 Apportionment Accord governs a river system that climate change has fundamentally altered.

The coastline is retreating under accelerating sea-level rise, storm surge, and saltwater intrusion.

Mangroves that once absorbed the majority of cyclone energy along the Karachi coast have been cleared.

The Indus Delta has contracted severely. Per capita water availability has fallen from 5,260 cubic metres in 1951 to approximately 1,000 cubic metres today, placing Pakistan at the threshold of absolute water scarcity.

Four crises — political rupture, military displacement of the climate agenda, accelerating warming and ecological collapse — are not parallel phenomena. They are one system of causation, activating the tipping points.

Pakistan absorbs the consequences of decisions made elsewhere.

Time is running out — faster than the models predicted, in a political environment more hostile than any since the UNFCCC was founded, for a country that did nothing to deserve what is arriving.

The writer represents Pakistan on the International Board of Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage.

IRAN’S war has lessons for Pakistan. Can Iran survive half a century of technological and trade embargoes and infrastructural bombardment? While GDP and foreign reserves are standard metrics of survival, Iran has shown that national endurance is actually measured by the depth of human capital. Even if the political order crumbles, Iran’s foundational capacity to innovate remains an indestructible strategic armour, a result of a deliberate immersion in science, technology, engineering and mathematics that created a workforce capable of withstanding shocks that could disintegrate less complex societies.

Credible climate resilience is not a stand-alone technical fix; it is anchored in a socioeconomic hierarchy that consists of five layers that must be traversed one by one. These layers move sequentially from basic literacy as a social buffer, through skilled labour and high-quality diaspora, to trade-driven technology absorption, to applied STEM innovation under isolation, and finally to a fully integrated knowledge economy where solutions are generated faster than shocks can destroy them.

Foundational literacy: Layer 1, at the base, is foundational literacy, an essential social floor that Pakistan’s 26 million out‑of‑school children currently lack. Without this cognitive bedrock, communities cannot process early warnings or adapt their livelihoods. The recurring cycle of disaster confirms that climate vulnerability is almost always a direct consequence of educational neglect. In all recent floods, losses were highest in districts with the lowest literacy. This correlation spans every province. Communities suffer disproportionately as they lack the cognitive tools for adaptive response.

Credible climate resilience is anchored in a socioeconomic hierarchy that consists of five layers.

The 2022 floods served as a stress test of this missing foundation. The maps of devastation followed the contours of neglect. Yet almost all of Pakistan’s public sector investments and the bulk of loans from multilateral development banks remain hyper-focused on infrastructural development and high-tech early warning systems, while ignoring the human capital that actually determines a nation’s resilience capacity.

Functional human capital: The trajectory of layer-climbing is evident across Asia. At Layer 2, Bangladesh has systematically outpaced Pakistan by prioritising women’s literacy and NGO-led vocational training as prerequisites for economic resilience. Organisations like BRAC and Grameen Bank reached women in rural communities with education, microcredit and vocational training at a scale no government bureaucracy could match. By securing the lower layers first, Bangladesh created a stable social floor that allows its workforce to adapt to climate shocks and market shifts more effectively, as reflected in its emergence as the world leader in certified green garment manufacturing. That floor is now being extended upward: Bangladeshi women are entering the gig and digital economy through mobile platforms, home-based entrepreneurship, and digital financial services, converting the literacy investments of one generation into economic participation in the next.

Trade-anchored upgrading: Sri Lanka demonstrated the social anchor model, where its 92pc literacy rate enabled quick recovery from the civil war and a skilled diaspora prevented total societal collapse during its 2022 sovereign default. Likewise, Vietnam transitioned from a war-devastated agricultural base to a technology manufacturing hub by committing 14pc of national expenditure to education, progressively upgrading from garments to electronics to semiconductors. These Layer 3 examples confirm that resilience layers cannot be skipped; the foundation must be built before a nation can withstand disruptions.

India shows how nations can span multiple layers internally. Though it ranks 38th on the Global Innovation Index, its variance is stark: some states function at Layer 4, while others resemble Pakistan in female literacy and school enrolment.

Applied STEM resilience: Since 1979, Iran has more than doubled its adult literacy rate — from roughly 40pc to nearly 93pc — effectively eliminating the gender gap in basic education. This rapid layer‑climbing was driven by a deliberate focus on rural areas and women, who moved from 30pc literacy to forming the majority of university entrants within a single generation. Around two‑thirds of Iran’s higher‑education output is in technical and scientific fields, reflecting decades of investment in STEM as a survival strategy.

Since the 1979 embargoes began, Iran moved from a dependency‑based economy to Layer 4, marked by technical self‑sufficiency. It built a base of over 2m university students, produced 335,000 STEM graduates a year, and developed world‑class capabilities in nanotechnology, aerospace, AI and biotechnology, producing over 95pc of its medicines domestically. It ranks 34th globally in research output, has produced Fields Medal‑winning mathematicians, and has developed stem‑cell research capacities among the top 20 worldwide. This is the essence of Layer 4 resilience: the ability to re‑engineer, design, and manufacture advanced technology when imports are denied. This knowledge resides in the minds of graduates as a form of capital that cannot be sanctioned or bombed out of existence.

Integrated innovation economy: A vivid comparison exists between Iran and Israel, two nations with divergent political ideologies but a shared resilience DNA rooted in STEM. Both identified scientific depth as a strategic necessity born of existential pressure. Israel represents the global benchmark for Layer 5: its investments have created an ecosystem where military research, world-class universities and venture capital generate solutions faster than regional shocks can destroy them.

Iran’s STEM graduate output far exceeds Israel’s in volume, but the fundamental difference is institutional. Israel converts talent into economic output through a functioning commercialisation ecosystem. Iran possesses the same scientific inputs and a literate and technically trained population, but its capacity to commercialise that talent awaits the lifting of sanctions and governance constraints. For both, the scientific depth is the ultimate guarantor of national resilience, despite high brain drain.

Pakistan’s layer-climbing: Pakistan has not yet fully secured Layer 1. As the late Dr Mahbub-ul Haq would have said, educational attainment is among the strongest predictors of climate mortality. The country’s 265 universities barely produce 445,000 graduates a year, yet fewer than 180,000 are in STEM, barely half of Iran’s, leaving a system wide in enrolment but thin in the specialised depth that turns education into resilience.

The evidence is unambiguous. Nations that invested in their people absorbed wars, defaults and disasters and emerged stronger. Nations that did not are still counting the losses. Pakistan stands at a crossroads.

The writer is a climate change and sustainable development expert.

Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2026