At the World Urban Forum in Baku this week, Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif presented a comprehensive and data-driven vision of urban transformation, highlighting Punjab’s evolving development model and placing the province prominently within the global conversation on sustainable cities, climate resilience and people-centred governance.
The occasion was the World Urban Forum — one of the United Nations’ principal platforms for debating the future of cities, housing, climate resilience and inclusive governance. Heads of government, urban planners, development economists and senior diplomats from across the globe were in attendance. It was not a stage built for provincial politicians. Yet the Chief Minister of Pakistan’s most populous province used it to mount a case that Punjab, for all its well-documented challenges, is attempting something genuinely worth examining.
Her address combined development reportage with a clear philosophical framing. Resilient cities, she argued, can only be built when governance is human-centred, environmentally conscious and driven by data rather than political instinct. “My responsibility is towards the woman who walks miles for water, the child breathing polluted air and the homeless family without shelter,” she told delegates. It is a formulation that travels well across borders, because the problems it describes are not unique to Punjab. They are the defining challenges of rapidly urbanising societies from Sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia.
The centrepiece of her presentation was Punjab’s flagship housing initiative, “Apni Chhat Apna Ghar,” which she described as one of the world’s largest interest-free housing programmes. More than 160,000 families have received housing support in under a year, with over 100,000 completing construction and taking possession of their homes. In a country where affordable housing has long been a policy aspiration rather than a policy reality, those figures — if independently verified — represent a meaningful shift in delivery. She also announced a provincial urbanisation investment programme exceeding two billion dollars, targeting roads, drainage systems, water storage and climate-resilient infrastructure across the province. More than 30,000 kilometres of roads have been constructed or rehabilitated in two years. Over 2,000 villages are being upgraded under the Model Village Programme with clean water, solar energy, sewage systems and paved streets.
On the environment, Punjab has sharpened its focus on the seasonal smog challenge that affects Lahore and surrounding districts each winter, moving from ad-hoc responses toward a more structured, technology-assisted approach. Maryam Nawaz Sharif acknowledged the challenge and outlined a response: technology-based smog monitoring, 1,100 electric buses already operational and a target of 5,000 electric vehicles by 2029, the planting of 50 million trees under the “Plant for Punjab” campaign, and one percent of all provincial development expenditure now earmarked for climate initiatives. The “Suthra Punjab” sanitation programme, she noted, engages over 150,000 workers in solid waste operations and is being redesigned to adopt a waste-to-value model, involving recycling, composting and energy recovery.
Punjab governs at a scale most nations never reach. With over 120 million people, it sits comfortably among the world’s most populous jurisdictions and the development challenges it is actively addressing are among the most universal. Affordable housing, climate resilience, clean mobility and inclusive welfare are not Punjab-specific problems. They are the defining pressures of our urbanising century. A province that finds workable answers at this scale is not just managing its own future; it is quietly writing a playbook for the Global South.
There is also a dimension of political symbolism embedded in the visit that deserves honest acknowledgement. In South Asia and across much of the Muslim world, executive governance at the provincial level remains overwhelmingly male. Maryam Nawaz Sharif is, by any measure, one of the most senior elected women leaders in the South Asian region today. Her presence at a forum of this standing, not as a delegate but as a presenting head of government, reflects a visible shift in Pakistani political life. That shift is meaningful regardless of one’s assessment of her party or her politics.
The vision presented by CM Maryam Nawaz Sharif in Baku reflected an approach focused not only on launching large-scale public welfare initiatives but also on strengthening their long-term impact through data-driven governance and institutional reform. The figures and development targets highlighted Punjab’s growing emphasis on measurable progress in housing, infrastructure, social protection and urban resilience. Initiatives such as the Punjab Socio-Economic Registry signal an important shift toward evidence-based policymaking, designed to ensure that welfare resources reach the most deserving segments of society with greater transparency, efficiency and inclusion.
Pakistan’s most durable development gains have always been those that transparency and public accountability helped protect and sustain. The Baku visit demonstrated that Punjab has found its international voice — confident, data-driven and anchored in a genuine commitment to human dignity. That same confidence, sustained through open governance and strengthened by the visible, daily progress felt by ordinary citizens across Punjab, is what will elevate that voice from a promising debut on the world stage into a lasting and respected presence in the global conversation. The world heard Punjab speak in Baku this week. With the will to match word with deed, Punjab has every reason and every opportunity to make the world keep listening. (The writer is a Lahore-based public policy analyst and can be reached at [email protected])
