Pakistan has suffered three major floods in just fifteen years. In 2010, the Indus overflowed and left a fifth of the country underwater. In 2022, large parts of the country drowned again, displacing millions and causing billions in damage.And now, in 2025, we find ourselves back in the same place.
According to NDMA estimates, this year’s floods alone damaged or destroyed nearly 2,000 kms of roads and about 240 bridges. Agriculture lost over Rs300 billion, while damage to transport and communication networks is estimated at almost Rs100 billion.
The pattern is painfully familiar. We suffer, raise funds, rebuild and then watch the same roads, bridges and schools collapse in the next flood. Pakistan is among the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries. We contribute less than one per cent to global greenhouse gases, so mitigation is not in our hands. What is in our hands is adaptation and resilience: building infrastructure that can withstand a changing climate.
I have spent the past few years working with government departments on these issues. What I have realised is that our problem is not the lack of engineers or technical talent. The real problem lies in how we plan, design and build public infrastructure. Our systems, our rules, and our working culture are still built for an old climate that no longer exists.
Let’s start with procurement. Even today, most projects still go to the lowest bidder. On paper, it saves money. In practice, it often means cutting corners. Weak oversight and limited testing allow poor materials and designs to pass. The result is short-lived infrastructure that fails when it is needed most. The real cost is paid when floods wash away what was cheaply built, and we end up spending many times more to rebuild it.
This is not how the rest of the world is moving. Countries affected by similar disasters have reformed procurement to reward durability and risk-sharing, rather than just the lowest upfront cost. Pakistan must also adopt procurement models that mandate shared responsibility and risk. Global practices offer clear models for this shift. Germany is increasingly using collaborative contract models that provide for transparent, cooperative risk allocation for complex public infrastructure projects, shifting away from adversarial fixed-price tenders where the private sector may overprice risks. Meanwhile, Australia’s ‘alliance contracting’ model is highly effective because it binds all participants to a culture of shared fate, formally spreading risks and rewards between the client and contractors. This unique structure eliminates disputes, encourages innovation and drives better long-term project performance. Finally, in the UK, a firm requirement is now in place for suppliers bidding on large government contracts (over GBP5 million) to publish a Carbon Reduction Plan showing their path to net zero, thereby ensuring carbon accounting and climate considerations are mandatory before project approval.
We must also acknowledge that the climate is changing, so globally, the best practice is shifting to adaptive planning, designing projects that dynamically evolve as conditions change. The Thames Estuary 2100 Plan in the UK and the Dutch Delta Programme both use the ‘adaptive pathways’ methodology: instead of locking in one fixed design, they define triggers and rigorous monitoring systems to update plans every few years. These programmes protect millions of people and billions in infrastructure by recognising that true resilience is a continuous process, not a product.
Pakistan’s planning cycle also needs a similar shift. Our PC-I and PC-II forms do ask about climate risks, and large projects now conduct environmental and hydrological assessments. Yet what is missing are institutional checks that ensure those findings shape design, procurement and operation. And our monitoring forms (PC-III) track spending and timelines, not how an asset performs under stress.
The situation is made worse by limited and expensive data. Our network of weather and river monitoring stations is thin and often not working. Even when data exists, our departments, such as the Meteorological Department and Wapda, sell it. Critical data on historic daily temperature, rainfall and river flow must be bought through lengthy bank challans that can take weeks or months and cost more than a million rupees. This is absurd. Climate data is not a luxury; it is the foundation of climate planning. Countries like Bangladesh, Kenya, Vietnam and others have made their hydromet data public, enabling their engineers and researchers to design more resilient infrastructure. Pakistan must do the same.
If we truly want things to change, the system itself has to change. This involves establishing dedicated resilience units within the Planning and Development Department and key line departments responsible for building public infrastructure. These units should include specialists in climate science, hydrology and procurement whose only job is to ensure resilience is built into every project. Procurement rules must also be reformed so that contracts reward life-cycle performance and long-term value, not just the lowest upfront cost.
Countries are experimenting with performance-based and cost-sharing contracts, which require contractors to maintain assets for several years after completion and link payments to actual performance under stress. Such models could also be piloted here, especially for flood-prone roads and bridges.
Pakistan could also learn from risk-transfer mechanisms like the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility or Mexico’s catastrophe bonds, which provide rapid post-disaster funds to rebuild damaged assets. With predictable and pre-arranged finance, the response cycle becomes faster and less dependent on emergency donor appeals. Finally, our planning cycle must acknowledge that the future cannot be predicted precisely. Countries now use Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways to manage uncertainty, building flexibility, setting ‘signposts’ and adjusting when thresholds are crossed. This approach is not about more analysis but about embedding learning and flexibility into policy. Pakistan’s planning system, which currently treats design approval as a one-time event, needs to build this adaptability into its DNA.
None of this is impossible. It does not require waiting for new donors or global agreements. It only requires us to change how we plan and spend the money we already have. If we continue with business as usual, the story will keep repeating: billions wasted, infrastructure washed away. But if we plan smarter, procure better, and use the knowledge and tools already available, the next flood does not have to feel like history repeating itself.
The writer is a development consultant.