THE heat arrives early now. By April, much of Pakistan is already sweltering, with temperatures nearing 40 degrees Celsius and humidity thick in the air. In the south, fans spin uselessly as the heat turns predatory. Hospitals begin seeing heatstroke victims even before summer officially begins. Glaciers in the north, melting rapidly, feed rivers that now swing between drought and flood. In parts of Sindh, the mercury soars past tolerable limits, scorching crops into dust.

Farmers in Thar brace for annual winds that dry out land and lives alike, all signs of a climate crisis Pakistan didn`t cause, but one it must now survive, against impossible odds.

For decades, our environmental policy has resembled a game of whac-a-mole swatting at symptoms while not thinking much of the rot beneath. In the 1990s, the logging mafias of KP denuded mountainsides with impunity, triggering landslides that buried entire villages. The state responded with bans and task forces, but the lumber trucks kept rolling. By 2010, Pakistan`s forest cover had dwindled to among the lowest in Asia. Then came the Billion Tree Tsunami, launched in 2014 as a rare success story. Over eight years, more than a billion saplings were planted, reviving watersheds and creating green jobs. But in recent years, rains have damaged large swaths of the new plantations, while deforested slopes have left villages once again vulnerable to floods exposing how fragile that progress remains.

What has played out in the forests echoes in other domains; bursts of ambition, followedbybacksliding. Pakistan`senergy and water policies reflect a similar pattern of progress undercut by dysfunction. The country`s push into solar power has led to desert solar farms and rooftop incentives, yet the national grid, a creaking relic of the 20th century, remains hostage to inertia. Coal still powers a sizeable chunk of electricity, while gas shortages push factories to burn tyres, filling already polluted neighbourhoods with toxic fumes.Despite scattered innovations, the system remains locked in a cycle where short-term fixes overshadow long-term reform.

Water scarcity deepens these contradictions. By 2025, Pakistan is projected to be South Asia`s most water-stressed nation, with per capita availability dropping from 5,650 cubic metres in 1951 to just 860. The country`s storage capacity covers only 30 days of demand well below the global average of 120. In cities like Karachi, many rely on private water tankers, paying in some cases as high as Rs6,000 for 1,000 gallons. Elsewhere, groundwater tables are plunging and contaminationfrom sewage and industry is quietly poisoning what remains.

Both crises reveal the same fault line: a system built to serve the powerful while leaving the rest to endure where thirst, like heat, is not just a symptom, but a manifestation of structural inequality.

Technical fixes alone cannot mend what is broken. The deeper malady lies in perception. A failure to recognise that environmental collapse is not a niche concern but the meta crisis swallowing all others.

Inflation, terrorism, political instability; these are symptoms of a biosphere in revolt. When crops fail, farmers migrate to cities already bursting at the seams; when floods destroy infrastructure, foreign investors flee; when heatwaves cripple labour, GDP withers. The environment is the economy, it is national security, it is the ledger on which all debts eventually come due; the scaffolding of survival.

Pakistan`s predicament mirrors the Anthropocene`s central riddle: how do we reimagine a society built on extraction,growth, and waste within planetary boundaries? The answers lie not in grand technological gambits but in the unglamorous work of rewiring governance: integrating climate resilience into urban planning, teaching farmers to readweather apps alongside crop prices, slashing fossil fuel subsidies not through diktat but by making renewables cheaper than coal; rethinking incentives, redistributing risk, and removing the luxury of inaction from those who have benefited most from delay.

Under the weight of rising temperatures and shrinking margins, we are being pushed towards choices we can no longer defer. The IPCC gives 12 years to halve emissions, but Islamabad has less time. By 2050, millions could end up enduring heatwaves beyond human tolerance, or forced to migrate in search of breathable air and viable soil. What is needed is neither optimism nor despair, but clarity and a break from the myths of separation from nature and infinite `growth`. What Pakistan needs now is not just aid or awareness but agency, and a politics that treats climate and the environment not as a downstream concern, but as foundational to every policy choice that follows. • The wnter is a joumalist based in Canada.

quratulain.siddiqui @gmail.com