Dr Shahzad Ali Gill
THE 2022 floods put a third of Pakistan under water and affected 33 million people. The post-disaster needs assessment, prepared by the government with the World Bank, the ADB, the EU and UN agencies, put damages at USD 14.9 billion and economic losses at USD 15.2 billion. Sindh absorbed close to 70 per cent of that. Reconstruction needs came to at least USD 16.3 billion. Yet one of the few natural defences on Sindh’s coast rarely features in flood budgets: the mangrove forests of the Indus Delta.
Mangroves work on two ledgers at once. On flood protection, a 2020 study in Scientific Reports estimated that they avert more than USD 65 billion in property damage worldwide every year, and that 15 million more people would be flooded annually without them. That is a global estimate, not a Sindh figure, but the mechanism is local since the roots slow waves and storm surges before they reach villages and farmland. On climate, mangroves are the best-known “blue carbon” ecosystem, a term that entered policy vocabulary through a 2009 UN Environment Programme report. They hold three to five times more carbon per hectare than many land forests, most of it in waterlogged soil, where it stays locked away for centuries unless the forest is cleared.
Pakistan hosts the world’s largest blue carbon project. The Delta Blue Carbon project, developed by Indus Delta Capital in partnership with the Sindh government since 2015, covers 350,000 hectares of the delta. It is registered under Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard and its Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standards. Over 60 years, it is expected to remove about 142 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. Verra’s latest project summary, which now includes a second, adjoining project, lists 100,000 hectares restored, 15,000 jobs created and about 70,000 community members benefiting.
In 2022, the first credits were sold to buyers including Microsoft and Trafigura, in deals covering up to three million credits. Private money was paying for mangrove restoration that public budgets had not. Policy has moved, but unevenly. In late 2024, the federal cabinet approved Policy Guidelines for Trading in Carbon Markets, setting out how the Ministry of Climate Change and Environmental Coordination authorizes projects. Pakistan’s third NDC, submitted in September 2025, commits to cutting projected 2035 emissions by 50 per cent, including 17 per cent on its own and 33 per cent conditional on international finance. In July, the maritime affairs minister said mangrove carbon could earn Pakistan USD 20-50 million a year.
What the published guidelines do not address, as far as they go, are questions specific to tidal forests: who holds carbon rights on state-owned mangrove land, what share reaches the fishing villages beside it, and which agency answers when a project touches forests, fisheries and ports at once. The Delta project exists largely because its founders spent years running workshops and persuading federal and provincial officials one by one, as Verra’s own case study records. That cannot be repeated for every new project.
Indonesia shows the alternative. Its 2025 national map records 3.46 million hectares of mangroves, and the same year it issued a dedicated government regulation on mangrove protection and management. In September 2023, it opened a state-backed carbon exchange under a Financial Services Authority regulation. Pakistan’s mangrove area is far smaller, so the comparison is not like-for-like. But an investor in Jakarta can read the rules, and an investor in Karachi cannot yet. Meanwhile, the forest is not safe. WWF-Pakistan’s 2024 report documented mangroves cleared along the Karachi coast for housing schemes and commercial and industrial projects. Updated satellite mapping shows net mangrove gains in Pakistan between 1985 and 2025, which proves restoration works. The Karachi clearances show how fast it can be undone.
Four steps need to be prioritized in this context. First, the Ministry of Climate Change should publish a national blue carbon baseline, building on the World Bank’s 2021 rapid assessment, and attach a quantified mangrove target to NDC 3.0 implementation. Second, the Sindh government, whose forest department is the partner of the Delta Project, should notify rules on carbon rights and community benefit-sharing for tidal forests, consistent with the federal guidelines.
Balochistan should follow once its coast is mapped. The maritime affairs minister cites 4,058 hectares there, small but uncounted in carbon terms. Third, the ministries of climate change and maritime affairs, the provincial forest and fisheries departments, and the Planning Commission need a standing forum, so that a project developer has one door to knock on. Fourth, encroachment around Karachi needs real enforcement. Carbon credits are only as credible as the forest left standing, and buyers send auditors.
Most of this is drafting and enforcement, not spending. The arithmetic should stay honest. Even the minister’s upper estimate of USD 50 million a year is small against a flood bill of around USD 30 billion, and carbon revenue will not pay for the next disaster. What it can do is fund the part of coastal defence that maintains itself and keep thousands of coastal residents employed in the work. Microsoft and Trafigura have already bought from Sindh once. The next buyer will ask who owns the carbon and who gets paid, and the ministry should have a written answer.
—The writer is a blue economy researcher based in Islamabad, with a background in public administration, public policy & management.
