NEW DELHI: South Asia is once again grappling with the fury of climate extremes. Currently, torrential rains have submerged villages in northern India, while swollen rivers in Pakistan are washing away homes and farmlands.
As the monsoon recedes, winter will bring another predictable crisis: dense fog and smog that paralyse Lahore, Delhi, and other cities, threatening health, halting flights, and shutting down highways.
Yet despite these recurring disasters, India and Pakistan have not updated their climate action plans to claim their share of the United Nations Climate Finance Fund. The deadline to submit fresh proposals is only weeks away, at the end of September.
At last year’s COP29 in Baku, countries agreed on a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) for climate finance. The deal promised to mobilise $300 billion every year for developing countries, scaling up to $1.3 trillion annually by 2035.
These funds are designed to help nations cut greenhouse gas emissions, invest in clean energy, and adapt to increasingly destructive floods, droughts, and storms. But governments must first submit updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Without them, access to this money is blocked.
India last submitted its NDC in 2022, pledging to reduce the emissions intensity of GDP by 45 per cent by 2030 compared with 2005 levels. Pakistan presented its plan in 2021, with targets to expand renewable energy and reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels. Since COP29, however, both countries have remained silent.
UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell has been raising the alarm. “Time is running out. We need every country to step up,” he said recently. “The choices made now will shape our ability to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.”
Globally, fewer than 30 countries have filed updated NDCs so far. China, India, and the European Union are all absent. The UN expects a last-minute rush, but every week of delay reduces negotiating power.
Stiell has urged governments to use the high-level event hosted by UN Secretary-General António Guterres in New York on September 24 to announce new targets. “Countries that submit strong new NDCs are on their way to securing the biggest share of the clean energy boom and the millions of jobs it is creating,” he said.
Guterres himself has pressed for urgency, warning that “the window to avoid climate catastrophe is closing fast.” He has reminded leaders that “this is not charity. It is an investment in stability and survival.”
If any two nations should act quickly, it is India and Pakistan. Both sit on the frontline of climate change. In 2022, Pakistan experienced what Guterres called “climate carnage,” when unprecedented floods displaced 33 million people and caused more than $30 billion in damage. In India, flash floods and cloudbursts in the Himalayan belt continue to destroy homes, schools, and roads.
Then comes winter. Each year, smog blankets northern India and Pakistan’s Punjab, cutting visibility to zero, grounding planes, and choking millions. Health experts say toxic air shortens thousands of lives annually. As one climate activist in Lahore remarked, “The fog does not need a passport to cross Wagah. Our shared air is our shared crisis.”
It is not the first time the two countries have faced a shared existential challenge. In 1960, amid Cold War rivalries, they signed the Indus Waters Treaty to share a vital river system. Climate change could be another area where necessity forces cooperation.
By aligning their climate proposals—or at least presenting complementary strategies—India and Pakistan could strengthen their negotiating position at the UN. A joint or coordinated approach could highlight South Asia’s scale of vulnerability and secure a larger share of financing. Civil society groups on both sides of the border have long argued for regional collaboration.
The UN will release a synthesis report ahead of COP30 in November in Belém, Brazil. That report, based on submitted NDCs, will guide negotiations and determine how the $300 billion annual fund is distributed. If India and Pakistan miss the September deadline, their influence in shaping those talks will be weakened.
As Stiell put it plainly: “We will either see climate finance flow to where it is most needed, or we will continue with a dangerous gap between rhetoric and reality.”
Experts warn that the cost of delay will be heavy. Without fresh proposals, both countries risk losing billions in adaptation funding that could strengthen early warning systems, build climate-resilient infrastructure, and invest in cleaner transport to reduce winter smog.
As September closes, the choice before India and Pakistan is stark: continue with rivalry and inertia, or act—together or separately—to secure resources their people desperately need.
The floods of summer and the fogs of winter are not going away. What can vanish, if leaders fail to act, is the opportunity to claim billions now on the table.
For once, cooperation could be measured not in grand gestures but in survival.
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