Evaluating Pakistan's Climate Change Strategies: Challenges and Shortcomings

Abstract

Climate change is a reality, and it is destructive to Pakistan and the entire world. Climate change is a real threat to all facets of sustainable development. It impacts all sectors, including agricultural and food, water and energy, forests and their living beings, the coastal and marine systems, and increase in frequency coupled with severity of climate calamities such as floods and droughts. Thus, Pakistan has experienced this problem regularly and, in order to solve this, the National Climate Change Policy was created in 2012 and enacted in 2013. But it does encourage more analysis and assessments to identify any missed or unimplemented policy measures, to examine more rigorously the adopted policy measures, and to ensure their proper application. This article examines the impact of the present and future climate change in Pakistan, and presents a critical overview of the challenges and obstacles to the implementation of climate change policies in this country. This article focuses on the policy implementation barriers that result in poor adaptation and enhanced risk of exposure to extreme vulnerabilities, based on experiences in Pakistan. The study also highlights the nature of this problem and recommends a closer examination of the prerequisites of engagement in climate decision-making for better understanding and implementation of adaptation practices in de-centralized governance.