SUNEEL KUMAR
In Sindh, climate change isn’t a future threat—it’s the salt in your drinking water, the cracked canals of Thatta, the 42°C Karachi afternoonsvvg that force children indoors. While politicians draft ambitious plans, the province’s fields dry up and its coasts slip underwater.
This year, Islamabad promises a revolution. The Budget 2025–26 is Pakistan’s most climate-focused ever, introducing Climate Budget Tagging to track over 5,000 spending lines linked to climate action. Officials claim this will embed resilience into every corner of public finance.
The numbers are headline-grabbing:
- 🌿 Mitigation funding: Soars 183% to PKR 603 billion, targeting emissions cuts in power and transport.
- 🌊 Adaptation spending: Up 83% to PKR 85 billion, meant to prevent disasters like the 2022 floods that drowned one-third of Sindh, displaced 8 million people, and caused USD 3 billion in damages.
- 🗣️ Climate governance budgets: Nearly doubled.
Yet Sindh has heard promises before—and seen little delivered. A revealing investigation by The Citizenry and the Climate Action Centre found that over 16 years, Sindh’s climate-related departments were allocated Rs48.8 billion.
Actual expenditure? Just Rs20.2 billion—barely 41%.
Some departments exist only on paper:
- The Directorate of Climate Change received Rs40 million—and spent nothing.
- The Alternative Energy Department got Rs173 million in 2013-14—again, not a rupee spent.
- The Environment Department used only 10% of its funds.
- Even the PDMA, Sindh’s main disaster response agency, spent less than 24%.
While budgets remain locked in bureaucratic vaults, groundwater in Thar has fallen 80 feet in two decades. Karachi endures 40+ extreme-heat days each year. Families in katchi abadis line up daily for tanker water, while promised solar tube wells never arrive.
This year, the stakes are existential. Rising seas swallow farmland in Badin and Thatta. Khairpur’s orchards wither under record heat. Public health emergencies multiply with every heatwave.
So will this be the year Pakistan’s climate spending finally reaches Sindh’s frontlines—or will funds dissolve in red tape again?
Experts warn that without district-level tracking, independent audits, and citizen oversight, these billions will never translate into real relief. As Sadya Siddiqui of The Citizenry put it: “Policy isn’t your documents—it’s what you actually do.”
For Sindh, climate change is not an agenda item—it’s an emergency that grows fiercer by the month.
This budget could be historic. But only if every rupee turns into action—strong embankments, clean water, shaded streets, and real help for the people whose lives are already shaped by the climate crisis.
Will 2025–26 be the year budget lines become lifelines? Or just another year of empty declarations?
It’s time for Sindh to watch, record—and demand accountability.