Broken federalism
PAKISTAN is confronting climate change under a governance model that was not designed for systemic, cross-border crises. Floods, heatwaves, droughts and glacial melt now interact with food security, public health, migration and fiscal stability. Yet the constitutional and fiscal architecture created after the 18th Amendment disperses authority, fragments accountability and leaves the federation with too little capacity to coordinate national responses. In a warming country already facing economic stress, this model is becoming a multiplier of vulnerability rather than a shield against it.
The 18th Amendment devolved extensive powers to the provinces, abolishing the Concurrent List and making provinces primarily responsible for key sectors such as health, education, agriculture, water and environment. Devolution addressed genuine grievances about over-centralisation and provincial autonomy. However, climate change is not a sectoral issue; it is a system shock. Rivers do not respect provincial boundaries, heatwaves spread across regions, and climate-induced migration strains cities far from the point of impact. Effective climate governance therefore requires strong federal coordination, data integration, financing capacity and enforcement authority. The current system constrains this.
The National Finance Commission (NFC) Award compounds this weakness. Under the prevailing formula, around 82 per cent of the divisible pool is distributed on the basis of population, leaving the federation fiscally hollowed out. After debt servicing and defence, federal development and climate spending space is minimal. This means Pakistan negotiates international climate finance, adaptation funds and loss-and-damage commitments without the domestic fiscal leverage to co-finance, scale or sustain them. Provinces, meanwhile, often lack technical capacity, long-term planning frameworks and incentives to invest beyond electoral cycles.
Visible consequences include the 2022 floods with losses exceeding $30 billion, cutting across Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab and KP. Yet response and recovery were uneven and despite shared basins, water governance remains weak. Inconsistent standards for early warning and data platforms are not failures of intent but of structure.
Climate change is not a sectoral issue.
Deforestation and its wider national implications are other emerging concerns. Does provincial autonomy give sub-national governments the right to put at risk the lives of communities in other parts of the country? The scale of deforestation in KP, GB and AJK and its impact in 2025 on downstream communities is another example of the devastating consequences of this disconnect. The 18th Amendment and the NFC Awards should therefore not only be seen as institutional arrangements but as a moral and ethical compact designed to facilitate cooperative governance and not mini power centres for serving political agendas.
Provincial scale is another overlooked constraint. Punjab alone governs a population larger than most countries, while Balochistan’s vast territory poses administrative challenges. Oversized provinces dilute accountability, centralise power in provincial capitals and struggle to deliver services in peripheral regions. Climate impacts disproportionately hit those peripheries — riverine belts, arid zones, coastal districts — where governance is weakest.
Pakistan does not need to abandon federalism; it needs to rebalance it. Revisiting the 18th Amendment does not mean recentralisation but rationalisation. Climate, water, disaster risk reduction and interprovincial infrastructure should be treated as shared competencies with clear federal leadership. The NFC Award must be reconfigured to include criteria such as climate vulnerability, geography, revenue gen-eration and performance, while restoring sufficient fiscal space to the centre to govern effectively.
Equally important is administrative reform. Creating smaller, more manageable provinces or empowered regions would bring government closer to vulnerable communities, improve service delivery and allow tailored climate responses. Smaller units enhance oversight, reduce elite capture and align planning with local ecological realities.
Under a changing climate, governance structures are not neutral. They either absorb shocks or amplify them. Pakistan’s current model, designed for political balance rather than planetary stress, is increasingly misaligned with reality. Without structural reform, climate change will continue to expose the fault lines of a fragmented federation, weakening the state and making disasters costlier. Survival now necessitates thinking beyond politics as usual.
The writer is chief executive of the Civil Society Coalition for Climate Change.
Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2026