Every summer, a familiar chorus rises from Pakistan's climate commentariat. Heatwaves bake Karachi, floods swallow Sindh, and glaciers retreat above Gilgit, and someone, somewhere, asks the question designed to silence all opposition: "Should Karachiites be left at the mercy of heatwaves until adaptation SOPs are developed?" It is a rhetorically devastating question. It is also an intellectually dishonest one, and it deserves a direct answer.

Start with what most people discussing climate change in Pakistan actually understand about it. The honest answer is: very little. Walk into any seminar, any NGO townhall, any government briefing, and you will find the same pattern. Awareness campaigns celebrate solar panels and tree plantation drives. Carbon footprint calculators circulate on social media. Commentators praise this organisation or that outlet for "raising climate awareness". Mitigation, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, dominates the room, the budget, and the conversation. Adaptation, the set of measures that protect communities from climate impacts that are already happening and cannot be reversed, is treated as an afterthought, mentioned at the end of a presentation slide, funded from whatever remains after the mitigation projects are approved.

This is a profound misallocation of intellectual and financial energy for a country in Pakistan's position. Pakistan contributes less than one per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it consistently ranks among the ten most vulnerable countries to climate change impacts. Pakistan's mitigation........

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