Pakistan Floods & Climate Security: Rethinking Comprehensive National Security

Sep 8, 2022 | Ameera Adil, Faraz Haider
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Between 2010 to 2022, on average, there has been a major flood every other year in Pakistan, causing hundreds of casualties. From a human perspective, the losses are too grave to quantify. But in political terms, they speak to the missing domain of climate security in the state’s national security architecture, which could pose existential challenges for Pakistan.

Pakistan’s recent National Security Policy (NSP) introduced a “comprehensive national security” framework that embodied the essence of the Comprehensive Security Framework by the Copenhagen School.  Developing an interdisciplinary perspective is vital to address the needs of the people directly affected by the climate crisis. Practically, this can translate into holistic stakeholder engagement, functional accountability mechanisms, or even integrating climate action into government operations. 

Another indirect threat is to the military. The military has played an active and comprehensive role in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) for flood-affected areas. Expending military resources to HADR will naturally take away from responding to other crises and potentially inhibit the military’s function of protecting Pakistan’s borders.