CLIMATE FEDERALISM WITHOUT SHARED RULE: CENTRE–PROVINCE COORDINATION IN CLIMATE CHANGE GOVERNANCE AND DISASTER RISK MANAGEMENT IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

The issue of climate-governance in Pakistan is often blamed on decentralized/institutional setup, limited capacities of provinces and devolution of environmental authority through the Eighteenth Constitutional Amendment. But these diagnoses highlight relevant symptoms without necessarily reflecting why the path of a more networked governance of climate change – in terms of more climate policies, climate councils, climate authorities, catastrophe and climate finance strategies and platforms – has not resulted in coherent action. This article contends that Pakistan has come up with a way forward by establishing a route to climate federalism without any institutionalised shared rule. Authorities exist at several environmental and many climate sensitive levels, especially provincial, where some governments have powers, the federal government has international representation and have a significant fiscal leverage, and the local governments are held back, at the same time, to the front line risks, but do not have a stable on its own authority or financing. This makes for an authority/capacity/accountability disconnect that leads to duplication of policies, unfunded mandates, strategic blame passing, and pushes towards institutional bias towards addressing relief, rather than resilience, in the aftermath of a disaster. The article analyzes the constitutional provisions, legislation on climate and disaster risks, national and provincial policies that have primarily been implemented between 2021 and 2025 and postscholarship analysis. This is regarded as a stress test of the multilevel governance system in 2022, with flooding events. The article builds on the notion of negotiated climate federalism, which would be based on a federal-provincial climate compact, differentiated implementation agreements, climate-responsive fiscal equalisation, integrated climate-disaster information, empowered local governments, and include substantive duties under article 9A that are enforceable. It sums up that the issue in Pakistan is not over devolution, it is under federalisation – self-rule has been given but the systems required for own fiscal arrangements, shared decision-making and monitoring and accountability remain underdeveloped in Pakistan.