When a patient is wheeled into an emergency ward, no surgeon dares to cut open without first consulting test reports from an accredited laboratory. This is the international protocol of medicine, applied everywhere, including in Pakistan. Yet when Pakistan is struck by the existential crisis of climate change, those entrusted with treatment—the Prime Minister, ministers, bureaucrats, and so-called climate experts of NGOs and the Ministry of Climate Change and NGOs—rush to write prescriptions without first checking the diagnostic reports.
The tragedy is staggering. Authentic data exists, maintained by institutions like the World Bank, the International Energy Agency (IEA), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), IQAir, and most importantly EDGAR, the European Commission’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research.
EDGAR provides independent, consistent, IPCC-based emission estimates with global coverage, disaggregated by country and even by 0.1° grid squares, updated yearly, monthly, and even hourly. Pakistan also has its own technical agencies: WAPDA’s Upper Indus Hydrology Project, which monitors glaciers with GPS and hydro-meteorological stations, and the Pakistan Meteorological Department, which maintains long-term weather and climate datasets. All the science is there. The evidence is there.
And yet, while billions have poured into Pakistan’s climate change sector since the floods of 2010 not once have the Ministry of Climate Change or the NGOs feeding off donor streams grounded their projects in these scientific diagnostics. Not once have they transparently produced project designs rooted in EDGAR’s emission inventories, or IQAir’s real-time air quality indices, or the World Bank’s verified climate risk assessments. They leap to blame the world for Pakistan’s suffering, but they refuse to face the data that indicts them.
The scoreboard is merciless. Pakistan’s greenhouse gas emissions were ~250 MtCO₂e in 2000. By 2005, they climbed to ~310. By 2010, ~380. By 2015, ~460. By 2020, ~540. By 2022, ~565. By 2023, ~575. By 2024, ~585. Nearly a quarter-century after the global climate finance taps were opened, Pakistan has doubled its emissions instead of bending the curve.
The air tells the same story. Lahore and Karachi rank among the dirtiest cities on Earth. AQI readings average 180–250, choking millions of lungs. By comparison, Amritsar and Ludhiana in Indian Punjab range between 110–160, while cities in Gujarat and Rajasthan hover at 80–140. Why the disparity? Because India, in 2020, implemented Euro 6 fuel standards with a 10 ppm sulphur cap. Pakistan, in 2025, still runs on Euro II with 500 ppm sulphur—standards abandoned by the world decades ago. Worse still, diesel, petrol, and LPG are openly adulterated.
This is not ignorance. It is neglect bordering on criminality.
Donor funds, meanwhile, flow like rivers. Pakistan has received USD 249 million from the Green Climate Fund (GCF), spread across projects for glacial outburst floods, climate-resilient agriculture, Karachi’s Green BRT, distributed solar, and ecosystem-based flood management. Another USD 80 million comes from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) for biomass energy, waste management, livestock management, and industrial reforms. Bilateral donors and multilaterals have given hundreds of millions more—OECD data shows USD 491 million in 2017 alone. World Bank, ADB, UNDP, EU—everyone has written cheques.
But where are the results?
No post-project evaluations are publicly available. No hard outcomes, no proven impacts, no tangible resilience on the ground. Did the glacial flood projects in the north protect villages? Did Indus Basin farmers shift to climate-smart agriculture? Did Karachi’s BRT reduce emissions? Citizens do not know. Donors do not demand answers. The Ministry of Climate Change and elite NGOs remain unaccountable.
We appeal to the United Nations to immediately conduct a performance audit of all NGOs dealing with climate change and all officials of Pakistan’s Ministry of Climate Change who served from 2000 to 2025
Meanwhile, the people who positioned themselves as “climate champions” have enriched themselves beyond imagination. The owners of NGOs dealing with climate change have built fortunes, many of them now billionaires, not because they delivered resilience, but because there is no accountability system. Funds intended to shield Pakistan’s poor from disaster became pipelines for luxury lifestyles. The Ministry’s officials, rotating between government and donor-funded projects, have treated the climate crisis as a career ladder, not a national emergency.
The floods prove the failure. In 2010, embankments burst, villages were drowned, and official reports blamed breaches, encroachments, and corruption. In the 2022 floods, one-third of the country was submerged, worsened by deforestation and the absence of drainage systems. In 2025, despite “resilience projects,” hotels still stood inside Swat riverbeds, and housing societies sprawled within the Ravi floodplain near Lahore—because the Federal Flood Commission, in fifty years, never completed the basic task of river zoning.
The glaciers prove the failure. Black carbon from brick kilns and vehicles continues to stain Himalayan ice, accelerating melt. The soot is visible; the data is measurable; the catastrophe is predictable. And still, coal plants expand, Euro II fuels burn, and forests fall.
The air proves the failure. Each winter, Lahore turns into a gas chamber. Schools shut down. Emergency wards overflow. International monitors record hazardous AQI levels daily. Yet climate finance projects boast of awareness campaigns and stakeholder workshops while children suffocate.
This is the charge sheet:
- Billions of dollars received. No evidence of impact.
- Emissions doubled in 25 years, despite “mitigation” projects.
- Air quality worsened, despite “clean energy” promises.
- Floods devastate with equal force, despite “resilience” investments.
- No post-project evaluations to measure outcomes and impact on the ground.
- Institutions like the FFC remain non-functional, failing even to map flood zones.
- Fuel standards stuck in the 1990s, unlike regional neighbours.
- Owners of NGOs became billionaires off donor money, with zero accountability.
- Officials of the Ministry of Climate Change treated climate finance as a career ladder.
- Ministry and NGOs thrive, citizens drown, glaciers blacken, skies choke.
What is climate finance in Pakistan today? Not a shield for the vulnerable, but a feeding trough for the powerful. Projects begin with glossy brochures and end in silence. Donors are satisfied with paperwork; officials are satisfied with workshops. The patient is left untreated while the surgeons count their fees.
The tragedy of Pakistan’s climate crisis is not only in the floods, the smog, the heatwaves, and the glacier loss. It is in the betrayal—the betrayal of science ignored, of data sidelined, of money drained, of trust broken. The betrayal of a people left defenceless while their rulers build careers and fortunes on the language of “climate victimhood.”
And so the question remains: how do you treat a patient when you refuse to look at the test results? Pakistan’s leaders know the lab reports. They are written in EDGAR’s emission inventories, in IQAir’s indices, in WAPDA’s glacier stations, in the World Bank’s assessments. But instead of diagnosing honestly, they hide the evidence, mislead the world, and gamble away the survival of generations.
Unless Pakistan stops this charade—unless it grounds climate action in authentic data, demands accountability for every donor dollar, enforces clean fuels, reforms its broken institutions—the money will keep flowing, the emissions will keep rising, and the people will keep drowning.
This is not climate vulnerability. This is complicity. This is betrayal.
The global community must not look away. We appeal to the United Nations to immediately conduct a performance audit of all NGOs dealing with climate change and all officials of Pakistan’s Ministry of Climate Change who served from 2000 to 2025. Let the world see the truth of how billions meant for the poor were turned into the fortunes of the powerful. Let accountability replace excuses, and let science replace slogans. Without this reckoning, Pakistan’s tragedy will remain endless, and the world’s promises of climate justice will remain a cruel lie.