Climate Governance Capacity in Pakistan: Institutional Challenges and Policy Directions
Abstract
Purpose: Pakistan's National Climate Change Policy identifies institutional capacity building as a central goal, yet the country continues to face acute exposure to climate-related disasters. This study examines how five of Pakistan's principal climate-governance institutions describe their own policy, technical, coordination and human-resource capacity, and what this reveals about the gap between stated policy ambition and institutional readiness. Design: A qualitative research design was adopted. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with 30 individuals drawn from government and non-government institutions engaged in climate change policy, financing and implementation in Islamabad, purposively and conveniently sampled until data saturation. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Findings : Across the institutions examined, a consistent set of capacity themes emerged: reliance on modelling and forecasting constrained by limited computational infrastructure; a persistent shortage of trained climate-science human resources; weak coordination both between federal and provincial authorities and among institutions with overlapping mandates; and a financing structure that channels the bulk of climate resources through international donors and multilateral partners rather than sustained domestic budget lines. Policy implications: The findings indicate that Pakistan's climate governance constraint is less a shortage of institutional mandates or policy documents, of which there are many, than a shortage of coordination mechanisms and human-resource investment capable of translating those mandates into consistent practice across federal and provincial levels. Value: Where prior research on Pakistan's climate governance has tended to evaluate national policy documents in the abstract, this study draws directly on how the institutions responsible for implementing that policy describe their own capacity, offering an institution-level account of where the gap between climate policy ambition and institutional practice actually sits.
Keywords: Institutional capacity; climate governance; climate policy; sustainable development; Pakistan; qualitative research
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