The summer we chose not to prepare for

In summer of 2024, Pakistan experienced one of the most intense heatwaves in its recent history. Temperatures soared across Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan, exposing millions of people to dangerous levels of heat with little protection. In Karachi alone, as temperatures exceeded 47°C, the Edhi Foundation recovered 568 bodies in just five days. During the same period, Provincial Disaster Management Authority officially acknowledged only 56 heat-related deaths. The difference between those figures was not a statistical anomaly. It reflected the distance between the suffering ordinary Pakistanis endured and the suffering the state was prepared to recognise.

Two years later, that distance has narrowed only slightly. In May 2026, Karachi again recorded temperatures above 44°C while Dadu reached a blistering 51.5°C, among the highest temperatures ever recorded in Pakistan. Pakistan Meteorological Department repeatedly advised people to avoid unnecessary outdoor exposure. More recently, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), through its National Emergency Operation Centre, issued a nationwide advisory for 13-18 July, warning of thunderstorms, heavy rainfall and continued hot and humid conditions across much of the country. Such forecasts are important and undoubtedly save lives. Yet for the farmer harvesting wheat, the construction worker laying bricks in the sun, the traffic policeman directing vehicles or the daily-wage labourer whose home lacks even a fan, a weather advisory offers awareness but not protection. Information alone cannot substitute for resilience.

Heat is not new to Pakistan. What is new is its intensity, persistence and increasingly deadly combination with humidity, which prevents the body from cooling itself through perspiration. What was once considered an extreme weather event is rapidly becoming the new normal. According to World Weather Attribution’s analysis published in May 2026, the April heatwave across South Asia was made approximately three times more likely by human-induced climate change and about one degree Celsius hotter than it would have been in a pre-industrial climate. If global warming continues on its current trajectory, comparable heatwaves could occur every two to three years by the end of the century. For Pakistan, already among the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries, this is no longer a distant forecast but an increasingly accurate description of the future.

The geography of extreme heat is also expanding. Cities once considered relatively moderate are now experiencing temperatures that would previously have been regarded as exceptional. This summer, intense heat spread well beyond the traditional hotspots of Sindh and southern Punjab, with large parts of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan repeatedly facing dangerous temperatures before the monsoon arrived. Even as the NDMA’s latest advisory forecasts rainfall in many districts, it warns that hot and humid conditions and rising daytime temperatures will persist across much of the country. Heat is no longer a regional problem but has become a national reality.

The human cost of this crisis is deeply unequal. Heat rarely kills those with air-conditioned homes, reliable electricity or the option to work indoors. It kills those whose livelihoods depend on working outside and whose poverty offers no protection from rising temperatures: farm workers, sanitation workers, factory labourers, street vendors, traffic police and construction workers. Climate change has become one of the most powerful amplifiers of inequality, forcing those least responsible for the crisis to bear its heaviest burden.

Pakistan’s heat emergency is inseparable from its environmental decline. Across Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and other expanding cities, shrinking tree cover and growing expanses of concrete have intensified the urban heat island effect, trapping heat during the day and releasing it slowly at night. Research published this year found that conventional brick-and-concrete homes in Punjab can exceed 45°C indoors during peak summer, leaving millions without refuge even inside their own homes. Trees remain among the cheapest and most effective forms of climate adaptation, yet they continue to disappear beneath housing schemes, wider roads and commercial developments.

Political economy behind this destruction is painfully familiar. Trees generate neither tax revenues nor ribbon-cutting ceremonies, but roads, plazas and housing schemes do. Their financial benefits are immediate and visible, while the environmental costs emerge gradually, often only when disaster strikes. Hotter neighbourhoods, worsening air quality, greater flood risk and rising heat-related illness rarely feature in project approvals or political speeches. For decades Pakistan has built cities that are larger but less liveable, wealthier on paper but increasingly vulnerable to climate extremes.

Solutions are neither unknown nor unaffordable. From Ahmedabad’s pioneering Heat Action Plan to France’s post-2003 heat-health strategy, Spain’s workplace protections and Phoenix’s network of cooling centres, governments have shown that early warnings combined with practical interventions save lives. Pakistan has strengthened its early-warning capacity through Pakistan Meteorological Department and NDMA, but warnings alone are not enough. They must be backed by local heat action plans, cooling shelters, emergency medical preparedness, legal protection for outdoor workers, accurate mortality reporting and climate-sensitive urban planning. Without implementation, even the best warning becomes little more than advance notice of a preventable tragedy.

Climate change in Pakistan has become a public health emergency. Every tree cut, every wetland lost and every heat-related death left uncounted adds to a debt paid not in money, but in human lives. The heaviest burden will continue to fall on those who contributed least to the crisis and have the fewest means to escape it. Pakistan has become better at warning people about extreme weather, it must now become equally serious about protecting them.

Otherwise, every summer will bring better forecasts, but the same preventable tragedy.