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ISLAMABAD: National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Chairman Lieutenant General Inam Haider Malik warned in a press briefing on Wednesday that the 2026 monsoon season could bring 22 to 26 per cent more intense rainfall than the devastating 2025 floods, painting a stark picture of Pakistan’s escalating “new normal” under climate change.
“Pakistan remains among the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations despite contributing less than one per cent to global emissions. We are seeing scorching dry spells priming the system, then sudden torrents that fill reservoirs in hours, forcing emergency releases and prolonged flooding.”
The warning comes just months after the 2025 monsoon claimed nearly 1,000 lives, displaced millions, destroyed hundreds of kilometres of roads and bridges, and left vast farmlands submerged into autumn – with simultaneous “exceptionally high” floods in the Chenab, Ravi, Jhelum, and Sutlej rivers for the first time in decades.
Hours before the press conference, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif chaired a high-level meeting at the Prime Minister’s House, attended by federal ministers including Ahsan Iqbal, Ahad Khan Cheema, Muhammad Aurangzeb, Dr Musadik Malik, and Attaullah Tarar, along with NDMA officials.
“We cannot afford loss of life or the diversion of development funds to endless relief,” PM Shehbaz directed, approving the Ministry of Climate Change’s short-term mitigation plan and ordering its immediate implementation. “Being a developing country, Pakistan has to spend a significant portion of its GDP to cope with the adverse impacts of climate change, which otherwise could be used for development projects.”
The approved three-tier strategy emphasises “restoring normalcy” and “getting life back on track” after each event. It includes a 240-250 day “fix what is broken” phase to repair damaged dykes, spurs, and floodgates; a one-to-three-year expansion of undersized infrastructure like urban drainage; and a five-year “fix, expand, rebuild” programme for resilient systems. Other measures: redesigned early warnings reaching district assistant commissioners first, pre-positioned mobile hospitals and temporary schools, restricted tourism in northern areas during peak risk, and preparations for a National Water Council meeting.
Dr Musadik Malik stressed at the presser: “Climate-induced disasters must be treated as a political priority. The 2022 floods alone caused losses exceeding 9 per cent of GDP.”
Yet renowned hydrologist Dr Hassan Abbas, a vocal critic of conventional flood management, told Radio News Network that the government continues to treat a permanent climate shift as a temporary disruption.
“Every official statement talks about ‘restoring normalcy’ and ‘minimising disruption to development’,” Dr Abbas said. “This language reveals the mindset: they still believe the old predictable monsoon will return if we just patch the bunds faster and warn people a few hours earlier. The plans are entirely about repairing colonial-era barriers and managing the crisis when it hits, not redesigning how 240 million people live with a river that has permanently changed its behaviour.”
He added: “Putting cascades of dams along the rivers and constructing higher dykes would only increase the damages in case of failure. True adaptation means giving the river space: restore wetlands as natural sponges, promote recession-based agriculture with flood-tolerant crops and aquaculture, recharge the vast Indus aquifers underneath the floodplains – our real ‘strategic storage’. This would turn floods from destroyer to renewer, creating green jobs and carbon sinks.”
As Pakistan braces for what NDMA calls an “existential” threat, experts warn that without shifting from reactive repairs and a vocabulary of “restoring the old normal” to transformative living-with-water strategies, the nation risks another cycle of devastation – and missed opportunities – in 2026.
