As climate change continues to disrupt ecosystems and human livelihoods globally, Pakistan's challenge is becoming acute, especially for the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) mountainous regions.
In Pakistan, climate change results in more frequent and intense floods, droughts, glacier melt, temperature rise and a shift in seasonal rainfall patterns. The mounting evidence confirms that we are not just dealing with frequent hazards but facing systemic risks that threaten to alter the region’s socio-ecological and economic landscapes.
This emerging situation requires not more reactive planning, but a serious investment in foresight for future thinking; a deliberate shift in observing, planning, and acting on risks in an increasingly uncertain climate landscape.
Traditionally, emergency response planning has relied mainly on historical trends and linear projections. This approach has been successful in managing known risks, but it is inadequate for the unknown risks in the face of a changing climate. Past patterns are now less likely to accurately predict future risks. The time, scale and interconnectedness of climate risks are increasingly unpredictable through traditional approaches. This highlights the significance of an alternate approach that allows us to anticipate emerging challenges, prepare for multiple plausible futures and prioritise resilience across systems.
Foresight is not a prediction; it is a process of systematically exploring different plausible futures with an understanding of not only what might happen but what we want to make happen. It encourages policymakers, planners, and communities to depart from reactive cycles and engage with long-term thinking, scenario building and adaptive strategies.
In the context of the Hindu Kush Himalaya region of Pakistan, such an approach is particularly relevant. This region is facing simultaneous pressures – such as population growth, underdeveloped infrastructure, environmental degradation, gender disparities and weak public services. Agriculture, which is a basic livelihood for a large portion of the population, is becoming increasingly vulnerable to erratic rainfall, shorter growing seasons and shifting crop viability.
Water systems are heavily dependent on glacial melt and rainfall, both of which are undergoing significant changes. Forest degradation and land use change are amplifying the effects of extreme weather, while basic services – health, education and sanitation – remain stretched and exposed to disruption.
When planning is short term and reactive, these stressors exacerbate vulnerabilities. But when we use foresight tools like trend analysis, system mapping, and scenario planning, we can begin to ask more strategic questions. For instance, how might glacier melt changes over the next 20 years affect the water security in HKH? What will farmers' future look like if the monsoon becomes less reliable? What types of infrastructure investments would be adaptive across a range of climatic futures?
Foresight is not a technocratic tool to be applied in isolation; it's an inclusive, participatory process that brings diverse perspectives from a diverse set of stakeholders, including but not limited to local government officials, youth, farmers, women and civil society actors. When these stakeholders are allowed to co-create the scenario and explore long-term strategies, the result is not only better planning but deeper ownership of solutions. In regions like HKH, where top-down planning has historically overlooked the specific needs of remote mountain communities, such participation is essential.
Foresight requires institutions to confront complexity. It acknowledges that climate risks do not exist in isolation; instead, they intersect with governance, economic policy, land use planning, and cultural practices. For instance, a drought is not simply a meteorological event; it is risk-inflicted by factors such as irrigation practices, crop choices, access to credit and gender norms surrounding land ownership. Future-oriented thinking must engage with this complexity rather than avoid it.
The good news is that there are opportunities to institutionalise foresight within Pakistan’s planning architecture. The recently developed National Adaptation Plan (NAP-2023) calls for localised, cross-sectoral and forward-looking approaches to adaptation. Provincial governments have started acknowledging the need for long-term climate strategies. What remains is to equip local government/planning bodies with the tools, data and capacity to apply foresight meaningfully. This also requires investing in climate and socio-economic data systems, encouraging collaboration between scientific institutions and planning departments and establishing a space for dialogues and creative thinking.
Climate adaptation funding, whether sourced from national budgets or international organisations, should support not only infrastructure but also the process that empowers communities and institutions to think and act in new ways.
To initiate this process, the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Islamabad, in collaboration with the ICIMOD Nepal, is implementing a project, ‘Fostering Anticipatory Action to Climatic and Socio-economic Risks at Sub-national Scales’ – a series of participatory foresight workshops with stakeholders in Swat and Chitral to co-create solutions and envision their desired future.
Foresight is not a luxury or a thought experiment. It is a necessity in an era where the future is no longer an extension of the past. In Pakistan’s mountain regions, where every season brings new surprises, it may well be the most strategic investment we can make.
The choice is clear: we can either continue to react to crises or start planning for a range of possible futures with the people who are directly affected by these crises. By adopting foresight, we can make that choice count, not just for today but for the generations ahead.
The writer is a research associate at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Islamabad.