WHEN Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi recently declared that national security requires deep reforms, and ISPR publicly endorsed the call, both were arguing for the same things: coherence, coordination, service delivery pushed closer to the doorstep, a state that functions as a state should. Nothing wrong with that ambition. The problem is what it left out, and how familiar that omission is.

Pakistan has set out for this destination before. Every serious reset since 1947 has restated some version of that list: Peace. Prosperity. Rule of law. A federation the provinces actually believe in. None of it was ever the wrong destination. What keeps happening is Odysseus’s wandering. His ship knows exactly where Ithaca lies and still takes the long way, blown off course by whichever storm is loudest that year. Each course correction adds distance instead of closing it. This is not a nation still discovering what it wants. It is a nation that has known the address for decades but keeps failing to arrive.

Climate change is the clearest evidence of that failure, the one threat that has already reshaped the economy and governance more than any militant group, hostile neighbour, or political crisis since 2010. Yet, it barely features in the national security conversation beyond a meek reference in the 2021 National Security Policy. Pakistan’s own climate finance planning puts annual investment need at roughly $56.6 billion, one and a half times what defence and debt servicing cost combined, nearly 20 times the federal development budget. Climate investment is deferred, year after year, for the next government or generation to absorb.

The reason is structural, not a matter of neglect.........

© Dawn