The world treats defence as an existential priority – and rightly so, because lapses in readiness can trigger cascading crises.
Climate change now carries the same gravity for vulnerable regions like Pakistan and whole of South Asia. It shuts factories during heatwaves, collapses bridges in flood season, pushes food and energy prices higher and strains public order. It is a traditional security threat because it erodes the very systems that keep a country stable and safe. If the world can mobilise for defence, it can mobilise for climate security with the same seriousness, clarity and speed.
Pakistan’s geography makes this argument urgent. We share rivers, mountains and an airshed with India – and those natural systems do not stop at the border. In May this year, India placed the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance, jolting a framework that for decades helped prevent miscalculation around water flows and infrastructure operations. The suspension created a vacuum of predictability at precisely the moment when climate extremes are intensifying flood and drought risks.
As the monsoon advanced into June and beyond, extraordinary rains, high mountain runoff and upstream reservoir operations combined to swell rivers, force evacuations and heighten anxiety downstream in Pakistan’s plains. These episodes illustrated how, in a warming world, lawful but opaque actions on shared resources can magnify insecurity unless they are accompanied by verifiable data and pre-agreed operating procedures.
Air tells the same story. Punjab on both sides of the border breathes a single airshed that routinely traps pollutants over hundreds of kilometres. When residue burning rises, when industrial stacks lack controls and when transport standards lag, smog does not respect immigration lines. It moves with the wind and moisture, overwhelming hospitals and slowing economies.
In such conditions, inaction or under-action in one jurisdiction becomes a cross-border security problem in the other – not because anyone fires a shot, but because every child’s lungs and every worker’s productivity are placed at risk by choices that could have been coordinated.
For these reasons, Pakistan should use COP30 to propose a climate security cooperation package tailored to volatile regions that share natural systems, beginning with South Asia. The package would rest on four connected pillars.
The first pillar is verifiable water cooperation to strengthen adaptation. During the monsoon and peak melt seasons, countries that share resources – like Pakistan and India – should publish time-stamped, independently auditable data on reservoir levels, gate operations and intended releases. They should conduct joint stress tests of flood corridors to simulate compound rainfall and reservoir scenarios and they should pre-clear humanitarian and engineering channels for equipment, fuel and repair crews so that when thresholds are crossed, lifesaving support moves without delay.
None of this requires rewriting existing treaties or waiving sovereignty. It simply recognises that in a climate-changed hydrology, the cost of ambiguity is measured in lost lives and damaged institutions.
The second pillar is clean air diplomacy. Because the airshed is shared, the monitoring and the rules must be compatible. Pakistan and India should endorse a neutral, technical platform that harmonises measurements, shares real-time alerts and synchronises seasonal measures on residue management, transport and industrial emissions. A service model for farmers that places seeders and straw-handling equipment within reach on both sides would convert intention into practice. A public dashboard showing sources, actions and outcomes by district would make progress visible to citizens, courts and media, replacing accusation with evidence and evidence with accountability.
The third pillar is rapid, debt-light finance as security assistance. When heat, flood or cyclone thresholds are breached, money must arrive in days, not months, and it must arrive mainly as grants or on highly concessional terms. Pakistan should champion parametric triggers within the Loss and Damage arrangements and related facilities so that districts can secure early recovery and social protection quickly, while parallel windows fund medium-term reconstruction that does not rebuild vulnerability. Because repeated climate shocks quickly erode fiscal space, loan-heavy packages are counterproductive; they convert climate risk into debt distress and weaken the very state capacity that security depends on.
The fourth pillar is hard accountability for promises. After Pakistan’s 2022 floods, donors announced nearly $11 billion, yet only a small fraction arrived as grants and only a fraction of the total had been disbursed by mid-2025. That gap between podium and practice corrodes trust and leaves frontline authorities without the resources they need when the waters rise again. The COP30 should adopt a pledge-to-impact system that records every commitment in grant-equivalent terms, sets quarterly milestones, and publicly flags delays.
The chronic shortfalls should trigger make-good obligations, for example topping up the Loss and Damage window or buying down interest to move past loans toward grant value. If the world can track military readiness with exacting metrics, it can track climate delivery with the same discipline.
These regional measures only work if they are nested in the broader COP30 agenda on finance and implementation. Pakistan should press for New Collective Quantified Goal mechanics that prioritise grants, publish annual scale-up schedules and disclose recipient- and project-level transfers in machine-readable formats. The measure of success should be the rate at which funds reach provinces, cities, water utilities, disaster authorities and community organisations, because that is where roads are raised, schools are cooled, drainage is redesigned and clinics keep vaccines cold when the grid fails.
Pakistan must also match this diplomatic stance with visible delivery at home. A consolidated and costed pipeline aligned with the Nationally Determined Contribution and the National Adaptation Plan signals readiness. Provincial procurement and monitoring templates, last mile early warning, flood resilient transport links and heat ready health services show that assistance will translate into protection. Enforceable air quality standards, modern fuel and stack controls, and practical residue management services demonstrate that Pakistan is cleaning the air within its jurisdiction while it seeks cooperation across the border.
Some will argue that the UN climate process is not the place to raise sensitive regional issues. The opposite is true. Because climate extremes are amplifying traditional security risks, the UNFCCC COP30 is precisely where states should convert shared vulnerabilities into shared operating rules, finance channels and accountability that lower the temperature when politics run hot. In a region where two nuclear powers share rivers and a sky, ambiguity is dangerous and delay is costly. Hence, clear data, clear triggers and clear finance reduce the odds that weather or environmental shared resource becomes a pretext for confrontation.
Pakistan’s message in Belem should therefore be direct and constructive. Treat climate as a traditional security threat and resource it accordingly. Build verifiable cooperation on water and air so that seasonal hazards do not become strategic leverage. Tie pledges to delivery so that families in Multan, Dadu, Rajanpur or Swat see protection before the next storm, not promises after it.
If COP30 can achieve that alignment, it will be remembered as the moment when the world brought the discipline of security to the reality of climate risk. If it does not, climate will continue to test not only our resilience but also our peace.
(Opinion) Published in The NEWS on October 29, 2025.
