This summer, Pakistan isn’t just hot—it’s scorching. Across Sindh and Punjab, the mercury has crossed 49°C, placing cities like Jacobabad and Nawabshah among the hottest places on Earth.

Urban residents suffer in what has become an annual crisis, but a more acute, quieter catastrophe is unfolding just beyond our city centers. In Pakistan’s rapidly expanding peri-urban zones, millions endure deadly heatwaves without the most basic tools to survive.

Peri-urban areas—those sprawling, semi-formal settlements on the fringes of cities—are the hidden casualties of the climate crisis. These are the transitional zones where rural landscapes give way to unchecked urban sprawl. There live Pakistan’s working poor: sanitation workers, rickshaw drivers, construction laborers, and domestic help. They build our homes, grow our food, clean our offices—but when the heat strikes, they are left to face it with nothing but wet rags, unreliable electricity, and hope.

This disparity is not accidental—it is institutional. Peri-urban areas fall into a policy vacuum. Too urban to qualify for rural development funds and too informal to be fully integrated into city governance, these communities are often invisible in the very plans meant to protect the public........

© Business Recorder