KARACHI: Federal Minister for Climate Change and Environmental Coordination Dr Musadik Malik said on Friday that climate disasters, technological disruption and an increasingly unequal global economic order are converging to deepen Pakistan’s economic vulnerabilities, warning that their combined impact could reverse decades of progress made by vulnerable communities.
He said this while speaking at the concluding day of a two-day conferenceBeyond Polycrisis: Pathways Towards a Sustainable EconomicFuture-organisedbyIBAKarachi’s Center for Business & Economic Research.The annual conference brought together scholars, policymakers, industry leaders and students to examine how Pakistan can move beyond its overlapping economic, climate and governance crises.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr Musadik argued that Pakistan’s economic difficulties could not be understood solely through domestic policy failures, as global commodity cycles, interest rates, geopolitical conflicts and technological changes also shaped the country’s economic prospects.
Referring to flood-hit communities in Gilgit-Baltistan, he said some families had taken three generations to escape poverty, only to lose their homes, livestock, schools, clinics and other assets in a single devastating flood.
He described how communities that had gradually built their livelihoods were pushed back into poverty after floods destroyed the foundations of their economic security.
The minister questioned the conventional economic approach to measuring climate losses through GDP and financial figures, arguingthatthe consequencesshould alsobe assessed through deaths, displacement, disability, disrupted education, infant and maternal mortality, and the destruction of family livelihoods.
He cited figures of around 6,000 deaths, 20,000 injured or disabled people and 30 to 40 million displaced persons over five majorflood events, underlining the scale of the human cost of climate-related disasters.
The minister then linked these vulnerabilities to another emerging challenge: technological disruption.
He said advances in robotics and automation were accelerating industrial transformation, with potentially serious consequences for workers possessing low or mixed skillsets.
He said the combined effects of climate disasters, technological change, economic policies and geopolitical tensions were creating a complex global crisis that could not be addressed throughisolatedinterventions.
He pointed to the weakening of the rulesbased international order and the growing reliance on unilateralism, bilateral arrangements and power-based trade settlements as factors adding to global economic uncertainty.
On the domestic front, the minister cited the expansion ofrooftop solarinstallations as an example of how public initiative could contribute to addressing structural economic challenges.
Emphasising the role of young people in economic transformation, Dr Musadik Malik identified solar energy, wind corridors and water resources as important opportunities for Pakistan.
The minister said Pakistan’s economic challenges required a collective response involving the government, academia and citizens, urging students to examine interconnected problems patiently and critically rather than seek simplistic solutions.
‘Challenges of new Axial Age’ Addressing the conference as a keynote speaker, Senator Sherry Rehman called for a fundamental rethink of how countries approach climate resilience, energy security and technological change, warning that the world isentering a new Axial Age in which climate stress, geopolitical disruption and AI are increasingly interconnected.
She said the world was experiencing more than another cycle of political or technological change. ‘We are witnessing a much deeper shift in the way human civilisation is organised, how social connection is changing, how power is exercised, and how we understand our relationship with the planet and with each other.
Highlighting Pakistan’s growing climate vulnerability, she warned that the country was caught in a ‘recovery trap’, wherethe next disaster arrives before the previous one has been fully addressed.
‘Climate change was once discussed as if it were a single crisis. We now understand that it is part of a much larger polycrisis. Climate stress intersects with geopolitical conflict, food insecurity, water scarcity, technological disruption and energy dependence,’ she said, adding that countries could no longer afford to treat these challenges as separate policy concerns.
Turning to Pakistan’s energy transition, Senator Rehman described the country’s rapid solar adoption as one of the most sig-nificant examples of decentralised change, driven substantially by households, businesses and industries responding to the e conomics of renewable energy.
She stressed that the next phase of the energy transition must focus on battery storage, distributed generation and electric mobility.
She also called for greater policy support for electric two-wheelers and three-wheelers, charging infrastructure and affordable electric mobility.
‘Energy independence is geopolitical independence,’ she said, cautioning that excessive dependence on imported fuelsexposes countries to international price volatility, supply disruptions and geopolitical shocks.
Addressing the rise of AI, Senator Rehman cautioned that technological progress does not automatically translate into equality. The benefits of the AI revolution, she said, remain concentrated among those who own the infrastructure, computing capacity, data and capital, while much of the rest of the world risks becoming a consumer of systems it neither controls nor fully understands.
Concluding her address, Senator Rehman said climate change, artificial intelligence and geopolitical disruption were reshaping the foundations of human civilisation, requiring a new way of thinking and a stronger sense of moral responsibility.
‘The real test of this new Axial Age will not be how much technology we create or how much power we accumulate. It will be whether we can remain human, equitable and accountable while doing so,’ she said.
In his opening remarks, IBA Karachi Executive Director Dr S Akbar Zaidi described Pakistan’s economic, climate, population and political challenges as interconnected crises, noting that growth has for years remained only slightly above the rate of population growth.
He identified climate change and population as two crises that need far greater attention, with Pakistan’s population of about 250 million projected to reach 270 million by 2030.