Azhar Saeed
Pakistan’s federal budget for 2025-26 arrives on the heels of climate catastrophes – unprecedented heatwaves, crazy hailstorms, and a creeping water crisis that threatens to redraw maps and destinies. The government proudly bills this budget as “green.” Yet, as one peers beneath the carefully curated fiscal spreadsheets and the climate-flavored labels, a troubling reality emerges. The budget’s soul still seems trapped in the past, wedded to fossil fuels, subsidies, and short-term firefighting. It speaks the language of change but walks the path of inertia.
The climate emergency demands audacity, but Pakistan’s spending patterns remain conventional. The government continues to pour colossal sums, over Rs. 1.19 trillion, into fossil fuel subsidies and energy sector bailouts. These subsidies, cloaked as lifelines for the poor, prop up a power sector addicted to oil, gas, and imported coal, the very sources Pakistan’s own Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) have pledged to phase out.
Pakistan’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP), painstakingly developed to shield vulnerable communities from the ravages of climate change, finds only selective echoes in this budget. The NAP envisions a sweeping overhaul of water governance, climate-smart agriculture, urban resilience, and disaster preparedness. The federal budget, however, offers piecemeal nods to NAP; some solar tube wells here and a few agriculture loan subsidies there. These fragments cannot stand against the scale of the threat. Pakistan’s cities, blistering under rising temperatures and choking in smog, receive little in the way of sustainable urban planning, green infrastructure, or investments in urban transport systems that could ease both emissions and urban misery.
Disaster management, too, remains a reactive affair. The budget sets aside Rs. 150 billion for emergency relief, a necessary cushion, but there is little ambition to break the endless cycle of disaster-relief-disaster. Where are the early warning systems, the climate-proofed infrastructure, the proactive investments that could prevent the next flood from becoming a national tragedy? Pakistan’s NAP pleads for a shift from reaction to resilience, but the budget seems content to keep mopping the floor while the roof is still leaking.
The social protection allocations, most prominently the Benazir Income Support Program, remain substantial. But while these programs offer essential relief, they stop short of enabling real climate resilience among Pakistan’s most vulnerable. Gender initiatives, youth employment schemes, and green job creation receive some funding, but these are droplets in a sea of need. The budget continues to treat these as peripheral rather than core components of Pakistan’s climate mitigation and adaptation strategy.
Perhaps the most glaring silence in this budget is on climate finance innovation. The NDC and NAP both underline the urgent need to mobilize green bonds, nature-based solutions, and international financing mechanisms. Yet, there is no meaningful sign of green fiscal tools, no ambitious plan to tap into global climate funds, or to crowd in private green investment at scale.
Punjab’s budget, despite allocations of a whopping Rs. 795 billion towards climate-related actions, is even more perplexing. A closer scrutiny of numbers turns the cracks in this grand climate narrative into gaping holes. The budget sets aside a colossal Rs. 22 billion in wheat subsidies. It devotes another Rs. 46.9 billion for electricity bill relief, ostensibly to cushion the poor from rising energy costs. But this is not climate-responsive spending; it is a direct subsidy to fossil-fuel-powered electricity consumption.
Even more perplexing is the abrupt drop in the Energy Department’s allocation from Rs. 47.1 billion last year to a paltry Rs. 0.48 billion this year. The budget is also notably silent on investments in electric vehicle infrastructure, solar energy rollouts, sustainable public transport, or urban resilience projects; priorities clearly highlighted in Pakistan’s updated NDC.
Instead, the budget leans heavily on politically popular but environmentally hollow subsidies. Huge subsidies for wheat and electricity relief dwarf the allocations for skills development, disaster resilience, and sustainable industry. The province’s “support for industrial development” does increase to Rs. 12.9 billion, but the climate footprint of this support remains unclear. Will these industries become greener, or will they lock Punjab into a higher-emissions trajectory?
Punjab’s budget also misses the chance to mobilize private investment for climate action. There is no evidence of green bonds, innovative climate financing, or meaningful incentives for renewable energy businesses. Moreover, critical NDC targets, such as the 30% electric vehicle target, renewable energy expansion, and urban adaptation, are largely missing. Punjab could have taken the lead by embedding climate conditionalities in subsidies or by prioritizing green job creation in its industrial development plans. It did neither. Punjab’s budget, much like the federal one, seems trapped in the comfort of business-as-usual spending dressed in green garments.
If the federation and the provinces truly wish to move beyond the optics and into the arena of verifiable, climate-aligned investments, they must wean themselves off energy subsidies that perpetuate fossil fuel dependence and invest aggressively in adaptation, renewable energy, and sustainable infrastructure. Anything less is not climate action, it is climate pretense. The question is no longer whether Pakistan will pay for climate change. It is whether we will pay now, or later, with lives and devastation.
