A closer look at the past few years reveals a disturbing pattern that is impossible to ignore: since 2022, not a single year has passed without Pakistan being battered by destructive monsoon floods. What began in 2022 as a catastrophic deluge affecting 33 million people and causing over $15 billion in losses has, in different intensities, become an annual reality. The 2023 floods affected 9 million people and destroyed 849,000 hectares of crops in Balochistan, KPK and parts of Punjab. In 2024, more than a hundred lives were lost again; in 2025, floods killed nearly 900 people and inflicted economic damage worth Rs409 billion. Disaster, it seems, is no longer episodic in Pakistan; it is becoming structural. Yet as the waters rise year after year, the state’s fiscal priorities remain anchored elsewhere. Pakistan’s latest budget arrives with the usual promises of macroeconomic stability, growth and fiscal discipline. But behind the carefully arranged numbers lies an unsettling truth: the state continues to budget for yesterday’s debts while underbudgeting for tomorrow’s disasters.

There is something deeply paradoxical about a country standing at the frontline of climate catastrophe while treating climate resilience as a peripheral concern. The contradiction has rarely been starker.

The Pakistan Economic Survey 2025–26 offers a sobering reminder. The year 2025 was the country’s second warmest in the last 65 years, continuing a disturbing pattern of record-breaking temperatures. In May 2026, Dadu in Sindh recorded a staggering........

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