Climate Adaptation and Environmental Governance in Pakistan: Identifying Legal and Institutional Gaps

Abstract

Pakistan is among the countries highly exposed to climate-related hazards, including floods, droughts, heatwaves, water stress, glacier-related risks and coastal vulnerability. The scale of recent climate-related disasters has demonstrated that adaptation is not merely an environmental policy concern but an institutional governance challenge. Pakistan has developed a substantial legal and policy framework consisting of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act 1997, the Pakistan Climate Change Act 2017, the National Climate Change Policy 2021, the National Adaptation Plan 2023, nationally determined contributions and disaster-management legislation. Nevertheless, the existence of multiple legal and policy instruments has not necessarily produced coherent or effective climate governance. The central problem increasingly concerns institutional fragmentation, unclear distribution of responsibilities, weak vertical coordination after devolution, uneven provincial capacity, limited local-government participation, insufficient integration of climate risk into development decisions and difficulties in translating policy commitments into enforceable adaptation action.

This article examines the legal and institutional architecture of climate adaptation and environmental governance in Pakistan and identifies the principal gaps that constrain effective implementation. It adopts a doctrinal legal research design supplemented by qualitative documentary and institutional analysis of legislation, constitutional provisions, government policies, climate plans, judicial decisions and authoritative development assessments. The analysis finds that Pakistan's principal weakness is not the complete absence of environmental or climate legislation but the limited coherence between institutions responsible for environmental regulation, climate policy, disaster risk reduction, development planning and local implementation. The article argues for clearer intergovernmental allocation of functions, stronger mechanisms for institutional coordination, mandatory climate-risk integration into development and environmental assessment, enhanced local-government capacity, transparent climate-finance mechanisms and measurable institutional accountability. Strengthening adaptation therefore requires moving from policy proliferation toward an integrated, multi-level governance model in which responsibilities, resources, information and accountability are aligned.

Keywords: climate adaptation, environmental governance, Pakistan, institutional gaps, climate law, devolution, environmental regulation, climate resilience

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22921794