When Pakistan lands at the COP30 climate summit in Brazil next week, it will do so with both a burden and a bold new voice. For the first time, Punjab, the country\u2019s largest province, will join as a full participant. Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif, leading the delegation, brings a portfolio of \u201cClean Punjab\u201d projects on waste management and electric transport, signalling that Pakistan is no longer content to stand on the sidelines of the global climate stage. Her presence in Bel\u00e9m might mark a new era of provincial climate leadership and a chance to demand justice for a nation battered by a crisis it did little to cause.
\nPakistan contributes less than one per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet ranks among the world\u2019s worst victims of climate catastrophe. Year after year, we are battered by monsoons of biblical proportions, the most disastrous of which drowned one-third of the country in 2022, killed nearly 1,700 people, and caused damages exceeding $30 billion.
\nAt least 6.9 million were affected this monsoon. The international response, however, remains tragically meagre. Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal called it \u201can irony\u201d that a world pledging $100 billion a year in climate finance \u201cdid not provide even $1 billion\u201d when Pakistan was underwater.
\nStill, Pakistan\u2019s story is not one of victimhood but of persistence. It has set its sights on COP30 with proposals for recovery and adaptation, demanding that global pledges finally turn into payments.
\nThe Loss and Damage Fund, born at COP27, remains largely empty: $700 million pledged, $300 million received, not a single dollar delivered to Pakistan.
\nHalf the fund is already earmarked for small island states, leaving vulnerable nations like ours to compete for crumbs. Civil-society groups call it \u201ca band-aid on a bullet wound.\u201d The fund meant to act as an emergency lifeline has instead been strangled by bureaucracy.
\nBehind this paralysis lies the old North-South divide. Wealthy nations invent conditions and audits before releasing funds, and the vulnerable are told to wait. Meanwhile, climate disasters strike with growing ferocity. The hypocrisy is plain. Those who built their wealth on centuries of carbon pollution now hesitate to pay the debt.
\nCOP30 must break this cycle. Bel\u00e9m cannot become another stage for eloquent speeches and empty gestures. The summit coincides with a grim milestone: a decade since the Paris Agreement, halfway to 2030, and with 1.5 \u00b0C already breached. Without radical action, the planet is headed toward a 2.6 to 2.8 \u00b0C rise, an existential threat.
\nJustice delayed is justice denied. The world owes Pakistan and the Global South not sympathy but solidarity in funds, technology, and action. The planet, and Pakistan with it, cannot survive another broken vow. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Pakistan lands at the COP30 climate summit in Brazil next week, it will do so with both a burden and a bold new voice. For the first time, Punjab, the country\u2019s largest province, will join as a full participant. Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif, leading the delegation, brings a portfolio of \u201cClean Punjab\u201d projects […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-513445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-editorial"},"yoast_head":"\n