PAKISTAN has never lacked a climate story. What it has lacked is the financing to settle its climate invoice. Here is the invoice. Pakistan estimates it needs $565.7 billion in investment by 2035 to meet its climate targets and says its full ambitions depend on international climate finance. It contributes less than one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Climate finance speaks in three tenses: what is needed, what is promised and what is delivered. Pakistan lives in the gap between them.
I first understood that gap in Kathmandu, where I represented Pakistan and SDPI at ICIMOD’s regional workshop on adaptation indicators for mountain communities. We spent days debating how to measure resilience where one flash flood can erase a family’s savings, school and shelter at once. I came away convinced of what negotiating rooms keep forgetting: for people who live under glaciers and above rivers, adaptation is not a policy category. It is whether the roof holds in August. For many families, it did not. The 2026 monsoon had killed 199 people by 30 September, including 91 children. By late July, the NDMA had identified house, roof and wall collapses as the leading cause of fatalities. Climate vulnerability here arrives not only as a wall of water, but as a mud-brick room giving way in the night.
On 9 November, delegates gather in Antalya, hosted by Türkiye and steered by Australia. Pakistan will rightly press for more adaptation finance and a better-funded loss and damage mechanism. Its own climate secretary has warned that even tripling adaptation finance would not be sufficient given the very low existing baseline. The Loss and Damage Fund shows why: its first call drew 176 requests worth $2.8 billion, against $342 million available for the pilot phase. Pakistan’s three proposals await consideration, with the board’s next decisions expected in December. A flood does not wait for a board meeting. So Antalya alone will not rescue us. Pakistan does need international money and the world owes it. But winning and using it depends on three things within our control: transparency in how we spend, credible projects that lenders can price and a real voice for the communities who bear the risk. Pakistan’s place among the first five pilot countries of the COP31 presidency’s BRIDGE initiative, designed to turn commitments into finance-ready projects, is an opening, not a prize. Pilot status buys a seat, not a cheque.
The government has itself recognised this. At a pre-COP consultation, the state minister acknowledged the absence of a formal mechanism through which provincial institutions, universities, youth organizations and affected communities could contribute evidence. That candour is a useful starting point. The 18th Amendment devolved major responsibilities, including agriculture and many aspects of disaster management, to the provinces. A negotiating brief is a map; it is stronger when the institutions and communities responsible for implementation help draw it. Here is how I would build on that. First, widen the brief. Publish Pakistan’s negotiating priorities before departure and invite provincial governments, universities and flood-affected communities to contribute evidence. Tag climate spending in federal and provincial budgets, so transparent accounting gives funders greater confidence that finance is used effectively. Second, adopt a grants-first, debt-safe rule. Adaptation finance should come as grants or on near-grant terms, with any loan passing a published debt-sustainability test and debt-for climate swaps should convert part of repayments into verified resilience spending. A vulnerable country should not be pushed deeper into debt to adapt to a crisis it did not cause.
Third, launch a Safe Roof programme. When house and roof collapses are among the leading causes of monsoon deaths, housing resilience is essential infrastructure, as surely as an embankment is. Offer certified low-cost flood-resistant designs, concessional credit through microfinance banks for households that can borrow and direct grants for the poorest who cannot. BRIDGE should carry costed projects of this kind. Fourth, ask for money that moves before the water recedes. Disbursements should be triggered by data such as river discharge, rainfall thresholds and glacial-lake alerts, not by appeals that arrive after the funerals.
Fifth, make mountains the measure. Much of the water that feeds the Indus comes from snow and glacier melt and changing melt patterns can raise flood risks while deepening long-term water insecurity. The climate minister has already urged greater cooperation to protect the Himalayan glacier system, proposing joint scientific research with regional partners. Turn that into a coalition and insist that adaptation indicators capture mountain livelihoods. In Kathmandu I learned that what is not measured is not funded and what is not funded is not built. None of this excuses the rich world. They made the promises. But climate diplomacy rewards the prepared and the countries that win finance are those with open books, credible projects and communities in the room.
—The writer is a policy advocate and researcher. She is a Public Policy Master’s graduate of King’s College London.
