When Pakistan’s Climate Minister Mussadiq Malik recently called the deadly floods “a crisis of justice,” he struck a chord with many in the Global South. The language of injustice has become central to climate diplomacy — and for good reason. Countries like Pakistan, which have contributed almost nothing to global carbon emissions, keep bearing the brunt of climate disasters. They are being drowned by emissions they didn’t produce, pushed to the margins of global finance, and called upon to clean up after a mess made elsewhere.
But in the rush to call out historical polluters — rightly, and with evidence — the government has also found a convenient way to paper over its own role in Pakistan’s vulnerability. When the state speaks up for justice in international forums, it often skirts around the deeper, internal crisis of justice that has played out across Pakistan’s rivers, fields, and floodplains for decades. In doing so, it misses the opportunity to turn climate catastrophe into structural course correction.
Successive governments have leaned heavily into the rhetoric of external blame while turning away from difficult questions about domestic reform. They speak passionately of climate reparations but fall back on the very development model that has pushed Pakistan into ecological and social precarity. They seek out global sympathy and funding but hold off on addressing entrenched patterns of environmental mismanagement that have built up over time.
Pakistan’s water and agricultural systems offer the clearest example. Since colonial times, rivers have been carved up, diverted, and locked into rigid patterns through a network of dams, barrages, and canals. This model, designed to squeeze revenue out of land for imperial trade, was taken up and carried on by postcolonial governments. Rather than phase it out, planners doubled down — reinforcing structures meant to control nature instead of working with it. Natural floodplains were cut off, wetlands dried out, groundwater drawn down. Riverine communities, who had long learned to live with the seasonal rhythms of water, were pushed aside.
The country cannot expect to get away with framing itself as a passive victim while continuing to dig deeper into the same ecological trap it inherited
The irony is hard to miss: the government now wants to tap into global climate finance to shore up the very infrastructure that lies at the root of the crisis. In effect, it is calling for funds to prop up the system that must be dismantled — or at least radically transformed — if Pakistan is to stand a chance at long-term resilience.
Instead of rethinking its relationship with rivers and land, the state is gearing up to pour money into flood protection walls, canal rehabilitation, and embankment reinforcements. All this sounds like action, but it merely papers over a deeper rot. Meanwhile, displaced farmers, landless labourers, and riverine dwellers — many of whom have been left out of planning processes for generations — are expected to tough it out with little support.
To move past this impasse, Pakistan must stop falling back on the development dogmas of the past and start breaking open space for a new ecological imagination. That starts with letting go of the control mentality that has governed its water systems since the days of empire. Climate justice in Pakistan cannot be delivered through concrete and canal gates. It must be rooted in the restoration of ecosystems and the return of dignity and rights to the people most affected.
What Pakistan needs now is not just money, but a change in mindset. It must rework its adaptation plans from the ground up, pulling in community voices, pulling back from destructive land use, and rolling out strategies that treat rivers not as problems to be solved, but as living systems to be supported. The restoration of wetlands, revival of floodplains, and regeneration of river ecology are not luxuries — they are lifelines. They can absorb floods, store water, recharge aquifers, and support food systems that are resilient to climate shocks.
Floodplains, once written off as wastelands or risk zones, need to be brought back in — both physically and politically. Pakistan must draw on, not drain away, the knowledge of riverine communities. These people have learned to ride out floods, plant according to shifting seasons, and live in rhythm with nature. Their experience, long pushed out of policy, must be brought into the centre. This means handing back land, building up adaptive infrastructure, and scaling up support for floodplain-compatible farming, fishing, and herding.
International climate finance can be a lever for change — but only if Pakistan steps up to redirect those funds toward transformation, not preservation of the status quo. The country cannot expect to get away with framing itself as a passive victim while continuing to dig deeper into the same ecological trap it inherited. It must come to terms with how internal policies have paved the way for disaster and lay out a new path forward.
That means cutting through the politics of short-term fixes. It means standing up to vested interests that have captured land and water. It means coming clean about what went wrong and laying down a roadmap that breaks away from the past — not just to survive climate change, but to heal from within. Climate justice, in the end, cannot be imported. It must be grown, reclaimed, and lived — not just for Pakistan, but in Pakistan.
So while the world does owe Pakistan support, the country owes its people something far greater: a system that listens, a landscape that breathes, and a future that doesn’t wash away with every monsoon. And that begins not in donor conferences, but along the rivers — where justice, too, has long been left to dry out.