COVER STORY
You can feel it - that sticky, suffocating heat pressing down like a fire blanket. One minute our rivers rage like monsters, swallowing whole towns; the next, they’re just… gone. Nothing but bone-dry cracks in the dirt where water should flow. Pakistan’s got enough problems - empty wallets, shouting politicians, the usual chaos - but this? Climate change isn’t just some ‘issue’ anymore. It’s a cleaver hacking at our nation’s foundations.
Calling it ‘climate apartheid’ isn’t drama; it’s the ugly, undeniable truth. The term actually comes from UN expert Philip Alston, who warned that the rich are increasingly able to insulate themselves from overheating, hunger and conflict, while the rest of the world is left to suffer. Essentially, climate change is widening the gap between those with means and those scraping by - a Grand Canyon-sized chasm, indeed. And Pakistan is living that chasm. In 2022, climate change made our monsoon floods up to 50 percent worse, causing over 1,700 deaths and around USD 40 billion in damage. From 24 June to 23 July 2025, monsoon rainfall was 10 to 15 percent heavier because of global warming, resulting in at least 300 deaths and over 1,600 homes destroyed. Meanwhile, our rivers - especially the Indus - are drying up. This isn’t a distant threat. It’s happening now and hitting Pakistan hard. Look around. Up north?
Those massive glaciers in Gilgit-Baltistan feeding our rivers are shrinking at frightening speed. Recent regional analyses show glaciers have lost anywhere between two per cent and 39 per cent of their mass since 2000, with melt rates rising by about 36 per cent in the last decade or so. That’s not just ice disappearing - it’s a loaded gun aimed at millions downstream, ready to unleash deadly floods with no warning. Down in Balochistan, dryness is devouring the land; rainfall was 64 per cent below normal this winter. The heat isn’t just uncomfortable; it’s a growing threat to food, livelihoods, and our future.
In Sindh, entire villages, especially around Ghotki, remain submerged months after the monsoon rains ended. Over two million people across the province lost their homes and are still displaced, living in makeshift camps on roadsides, their fields remain ruined by salt-water intrusion. The Indus Basin is heating, and record-breaking heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense. Remember last summer? Jacobabad, Dadu and Mohenjo Daro remained the hottest places not only in Sindh but across the county for two consecutive days.
Temperature in these cities surged from 49°C to 50°C. People died just walking to market. And the rains? Forget reliable monsoons. It’s either bone-dry despair turning soil to concrete, or sudden walls of muddy water sweeping away lives and livestock overnight, like what wiped out entire neighbourhoods in Dera Ismail Khan and Rojhan just months back. The cost? Economists at LUMS now peg climate damage at 7.2 percent of GDP this year - not 5 percent.
That’s over USD 30 billion flushed away every single year. How is anyone supposed to build a future on that kind of ruin? Our basic systems? Buckling under the strain. Less river flow means less hydropower - Tarbela Dam’s output is down 40 percent this summer, plunging cities into darkness for over 12 hours a day at times. And the cities themselves? Lahore and Karachi have become toxic gas chambers for almost half the year now. Lahore’s AQI hit 485 for 18 consecutive days this June - that brown haze isn’t just fog; it’s a lethal cocktail of factory smoke, ancient diesel fumes, and desperate farmers burning crop residue. Hospitals reported a 300 percent surge in asthma and cardiac ER visits. The very things meant to sustain us - air, water, soil - are turning against us.
For mates sitting in Defence or Gulberg, climate change is an inconvenience, maybe just a bigger electricity bill. They flick the AC on, powered by imported solar panels on the roof, maybe jet off to Murree or even Dubai when it gets unbearable. But the labourer welding in Lyari’s narrow lanes, sweating under a corrugated tin roof in 50-degree heat with no breeze? He has no escape! Or the woman farmer in Tharparkar watching land her family has worked for generations drown in saline sludge one year, then turn to cracked, useless dust the next? Ancient wisdom about monsoons and seeds? Totally useless now against climate. They’ve got nothing. No cushion. No backup plan. Poverty means you stand in the eye of the storm, with nothing between you and its full fury.
It’s brutal, echoing the worst of the old feudal systems but magnified. Previously, the wadera controlled the water channels and the land titles. Now? The weather itself is the overlord, and it’s utterly merciless, its cruelty amplified by leaders who seem to look the other way. Poor families remain chained to the land or the sea. One freak storm, one failed crop, and they’re drowning in unpayable loans or packing a single bag for Karachi’s overflowing slums.
The UNDP estimates that in 2024 alone, 700,000 Pakistanis were forced into climate migration. Kids had to quit school to haul bricks or beg at traffic lights. Government clinics, of course, buckle under waves of heatstroke, cholera, and dengue cases, while medicines are perpetually ‘out of stock’. The rich retreat behind their walls; the poor are erased, inch by scorching inch.
This isn't just sad stories on the news. It’s national suicide playing out in slow motion. Our food basket? Shattered. A country that once exported wheat now imports over USD 2 billion worth annually. Water? Running out fast, with provinces ready to brawl over the last scraps. Villagers fleeing flooded homes cram into cities where taps run dry and sewers overflow.
To the world, we look inches from collapse. Most investors have backed away - foreign direct investment fell 22 percent last quarter. Trade deals favour countries not literally melting or drowning. We’re becoming a permanent charity case, pleading for aid to survive a disaster we barely caused. Our carbon footprint is just 0.8 percent of global emissions, yet we’re paying the highest price.
Enough talk. Enough fancy reports and empty summits. Fighting climate change isn’t tree-hugging or a ‘green trend’ anymore. It is survival - a basic human right, as fundamental as clean water or a vote. It’s core national security. Politicians need to wake up - solar microgrids and drought-resistant seeds are as vital today as roads or motorways. More vital, honestly. Divert even 10 percent of budget toward water reservoirs and early warning systems.
Action plan: Path one? We keep sleepwalking, lost in petty squabbles. Climate apartheid hardens into a permanent caste. The poor pay the ultimate price while the powerful shield themselves.
Path two? We fight like our future depends on it - because it does. Demand long-term vision, not five-year election cycles. Spend real money - transparently, wisely - on adaptation now: reforestation in the north, mangrove restoration along the coast, massive rainwater harvesting. Break down the walls between ministries of water, agriculture, energy and health because this crisis connects them all. Protect the weakest first, because let’s be honest: if they drown, we all sink together.
The clock is screaming midnight. A fairer, tougher, more resilient Pakistan is still possible. But only if we stop talking and start doing - right now.