Pakistan is not suffering a resource crisis. It is suffering a power crisis. The problem is not that the country lacks land, water, forests or even the capacity to adapt to a rapidly changing climate. The problem is that the benefits of these resources are captured by a small group who shape institutions, budgets and national priorities to serve themselves.
A new Oxfam report estimates that Pakistan’s wealthiest 10 per cent now control around 42 per cent of the national income. This is not simply inequality. It is elite capture: a system in which governance is designed to work for the few, not the many.
The consequences are now visible in every climate disaster. When floods submerged one-third of the country, it was not the affluent districts of Lahore, Karachi or Islamabad that were washed away. It was small farmers, landless labourers and the residents of informal housing in climate hotspots. Climate shocks have become a national security threat, not because they are unpredictable, but because state capacity has been hollowed out by decades of selective governance. The poor are exposed; the powerful are insulated.
This is why the debates leading into COP30 matter. The next global climate summit has already been described as ‘Nature COP’, with an emphasis on restoring ecosystems and integrating climate action with biodiversity. For Pakistan, this is not a global slogan. It is a survival strategy. Nature-based solutions are labour-intensive, locally rooted, and cost-effective. They provide work to people who need it, restore landscapes that protect communities, and reduce long-term adaptation costs.
There are already promising examples. The mangrove restoration efforts in Keti Bunder and across the Indus Delta show what can happen when ecological restoration is tied to local employment and community stewardship. Fish nurseries return, erosion slows, storm surges soften, and families have sustained livelihoods. Similarly, urban ecological work under Suthra Punjab (Clean Punjab) has hinted at how water bodies, urban tree belts and restored wetlands can make cities more breathable and resilient.
But these successes remain fragile. And we know why. The Billion Tree Tsunami in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa demonstrated that even strong environmental programmes collapse when procurement is opaque, contracting is politicised, and monitoring is captured by networks of patronage. Independent audits pointed to successes in many plantation zones, but also to inflated reporting and irregularities in others. The lesson is not that nature-based solutions fail. It is that nature-based solutions fail when elite capture governs implementation.
So the question is not whether Pakistan can adapt. It is whether Pakistan will allow adaptation to be captured, just as development, resources and representation have been.
To break this, Pakistan needs three structural shifts.
First, nature-based projects must be community-owned and locally managed. Mangrove protection committees, watershed cooperatives, and neighbourhood stewardship programmes are not small community add-ons; they are the mechanism through which climate adaptation becomes durable. When restoration work is contracted out to external firms, projects often collapse as soon as funding cycles end or governments change. But when local residents are trained, paid, and recognised as the custodians of their own landscapes, the ecological gains hold.
The success of the mangrove restoration efforts in Keti Bunder, for example, rests not only on planting trees but on enabling fishing families and coastal communities to govern access, monitor tidal flows and maintain the restored delta creeks. The same is true for watershed management in mountainous regions: community-led restoration of terraces, springs and forest cover stabilises slopes in a way that no seasonal contractor could accomplish. Local ownership is not charity or decentralisation for its own sake. It is the only model that extends climate resilience beyond a single administration and roots it in the daily life, knowledge and economic security of the people living with the land.
Second, Pakistan must expand progressive taxation in a way that directs revenue from those with accumulated wealth rather than relying on indirect taxes that fall heavily on ordinary consumers. When 42 per cent of national income is held by the wealthiest 10 per cent, the issue is not a shortage of resources but the state’s failure to mobilise them. A useful example comes from Brazil, where the Imposto Predial e Territorial Urbano, known as the Urban Building and Land Tax, applies higher rates to high-value and underused urban property, enabling cities such as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro to channel this revenue into public services, environmental protection and urban resilience.
The principle is straightforward: those who hold the most valuable assets contribute proportionately to the stability of the system from which they benefit. For Pakistan, a similar approach would mean meaningful taxation of large agricultural estates, speculative landholdings, and high-value commercial property, with revenue reinvested directly into mangrove restoration, flood defence, watershed management, and urban cooling projects. This is not punitive redistribution; it is the fiscal architecture of climate sovereignty. Without such reform, Pakistan will remain indebted and reactive. With it, adaptation becomes a question of national self-determination.
Third, every new urban or infrastructure project must meet mandatory green resilience standards, with a minimum 10 per cent of project land reserved as green or blue space integrated into the design rather than added as decoration. This is not a radical proposal; it is already part of planning law in high-density cities such as Singapore and Seoul, where green corridors, rain gardens and urban wetlands are treated as core infrastructure that cools city temperatures, absorbs stormwater, and restores biodiversity.
When planned correctly, these spaces also become public commons, allowing working-class neighbourhoods to share in environmental benefits rather than watching private clubs and gated communities monopolise them. In Pakistan, this would mean requiring large housing societies, industrial parks, transport corridors and commercial developments to allocate and maintain functional ecological space as a condition of approval, monitored by provincial planning authorities with transparent compliance reporting. Such a shift does not slow economic growth; it shifts the model of growth away from heat, flooding, and concrete sprawl and towards cities that are breathable, hydrologically stable and socially inclusive.
These are not short-term fixes. They do not look like emergency camps, donor pledges or ribbon-cutting ceremonies. They look like governance reform. They demand transparency, institutional redesign and a willingness to redistribute not only money, but power. Elite capture is dangerous. It intensifies vulnerability, hollows out the state and turns climate shocks into social collapse. Breaking it is a national security imperative. Pakistan does not need to request climate rescue from abroad. It needs to govern differently at home.
The writer is an environmentalist.