THE Planning Commission has released a Preliminary Assessment of Flood Damages as of September 2025, providing the first official estimate of destruction caused by this year’s floods. This rapid assessment serves as the foundation for the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment 2025, following the precedent set by the comprehensive PDNA 2022 that guided Pakistan’s Resilient Recovery, Rehabilitation, and Reconstruction Framework (4RF). Can the current assessment provide the vision, direction, and granular data needed to ensure that PDNA 2025 translates lessons learned into effective climate adaptation and disaster resilience measures?
The 2025 floods provide a crucial, if tragic, opportunity to assess whether the climate-focused recommendations from 2022 influenced reconstruction and preparedness, or whether they merely exposed gaps between Pakistan’s development partners’ engagement ambitions and the government’s implementation realities. Three questions follow the Preliminary Assessment: What methodology was employed to capture the scientific complexity of floods across diverse ecosystems? How does the assessment build upon existing national and international climate commitments? What lessons were learned from the 2022 floods, and does the 2025 assessment show their application?
Methodology: The preliminary assessment lacks any scientific methodology. Rather than systematic data collection, it consists of an ad hoc compilation of datasets received from various departments in response to federal agency requests. The resulting data is neither complete nor verifiable. Critical gaps include the absence of district-level severity rankings and gender-disaggregated data. The assessment thus presents a fragmented, province-level, top-down picture lacking the methodological coherence needed for recovery planning.
Climate integration: Beyond some fleeting, rhetorical references noting that Pakistan ranks among the most vulnerable countries while contributing less than one per cent of emissions, the assessment is silent on climate readiness preparations. There are no references to climate adaptation or mitigation, Paris Agreement commitments, or national climate policies including the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) or NDCs. It even fails to mention the climate change ministry; neither has it referred to the findings and recommendations of the 2022 PDNA or 4RF. Does this mean that those who compiled the current report did not use the prior, climate-focused assessment as a benchmark for measuring progress?
Does the 2025 assessment show the application of lessons learned from the 2022 floods?
PDNA 2022 lessons: PDNA 2022 and the accompanying 4RF reframed our vulnerability, positioning recovery not as mere reconstruction, but as an existential imperative to embed climate resilience into national development planning through nature-based adaptation rather than traditional engineering. The diagnosis was robust; the prescription was not as it didn’t specify the institutional mechanisms and operational frameworks needed, leaving implementation priorities to the government.
Proposed policy reforms: The 2022 PDNA’s policy recommendations centred on three priorities. Institutionally, it advocated embedding risk assessments into the Planning Commission’s project approval processes and strengthening district-level disaster management capacity. Strategically, it called for aligning recovery with Pakistan’s climate commitments, while operationalising existing disaster management and flood protection plans. Operationally, it emphasised enforcing climate-resilient building codes in flood-prone areas, establishing comprehensive disaster risk financing strategies including sovereign insurance, and creating shock-responsive social protection systems.
Proposed programmatic interventions: These prioritised housing reconstruction with subsidies for climate-resilient core units. Infrastructure was to be rebuilt to multi-hazard standards emphasising nature-based solutions. Social assistance included cash-for-work schemes. Finally, the farm sector required weather-based agricultural insurance systems.
A critical gap spanned both policy and programmatic recommendations. The 2022 PDNA outlined what should be done but provided limited guidance on how. While this preserved sovereignty in priority-setting, it also created implementation vacuums that became evident in the 2025 floods.
Conclusion: The 2025 floods provide clear preliminary evidence of significant implementation gaps in the 2022 climate mandate. The persistent re-destruction of infrastructure (for example, the M-5 motorway section) and the loss of over 8,400 houses, confirms ‘build back better’ principles were not operationalised. Local capacity remains weak, with District Disaster Management Authorities still under-resourced. Pakistan has again requested support from the World Bank, ADB, EU, and UNDP for a post-disaster needs assessment. With this process ongoing, systematic evaluation of climate considerations in 2025 recovery planning remains pending.
PDNA 2022 exhibited strong conceptual understanding of climate vulnerability — acknowledging attribution science, invoking ‘build back better’ principles, and recommending nature-based solutions and climate-resilient reconstruction aligned with international best practices. Yet three weaknesses undermined implementation. First, the PDNA stresses principles over operational specificity, recommending climate resilience without detailing enforcement mechanisms, institutional mandates, or compliance frameworks. Second, it failed to systematically link recommendations to our existing climate policy architecture — the climate change policy, NAP, and NDC — forgoing opportunities to leverage these frameworks for implementation and financing. Third, it proposed no institutional reforms or policy actions necessary to embed climate screening into routine development planning, particularly the Planning Commission’s project approval processes.
By 2025, these weaknesses produced predictable failures. Environmental and climate risk screening remained absent from major infrastructure. Resilient construction standards went unenforced. District capacity-building never materialised. Adaptive social protection systems were never established. The gap between 2022’s climate ambitions and 2025’s reality exposes fundamental implementation barriers in Pakistan’s disaster response system.
The 2022-2025 experience proves that merely acknowledging climate drivers differs fundamentally from implementing effective policy. Assessments alone can’t drive transformation; they require strong institutional enforcement mechanisms, reform champions, and political will that prioritise long-term resilience over quick, short-term reconstruction. The 2025 floods resulted not from insufficient knowledge, but from unreformed political and institutional systems. Without operational frameworks to translate analysis into action, communities will remain vulnerable to predictable, recurring climate impacts.
The writer is a climate change and sustainable development expert.
Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2025
