Forecast: official unpreparedness

EDITORIAL: The warning that the developing El Nino could become the strongest since comparable monitoring began should already be forcing governments into emergency-planning mode.

The World Meteorological Organisation expects the phenomenon to peak towards the end of this year, with climate effects continuing well into 2027, while sea surface temperatures in central and eastern Pacific could reach around 3.6 degrees Celsius above average. For climate-vulnerable countries such as Pakistan, this cannot be treated as another distant environmental forecast. It is an advance warning of potentially severe economic and humanitarian disruption.

The pattern is becoming depressingly familiar. Extreme weather events that were once treated as exceptional are arriving with increasing frequency and intensity, while the underlying warming of the planet makes naturally occurring phenomena such as El Nino considerably more damaging. The last powerful El Nino contributed to 2024 becoming the warmest year on record. The current one could be stronger still, and the effects will be felt through rainfall patterns, droughts, storms, food production, water availability and public health across regions far beyond the Pacific.

Pakistan sits uncomfortably close to the front line of these consequences despite contributing only a negligible share of global greenhouse gas emissions. That injustice has been repeatedly stated at international climate forums, and rightly so. But climate injustice does not reduce physical exposure. Floods, heatwaves, glacial melt, erratic monsoons and water stress will continue to arrive regardless of who produced the emissions responsible for worsening them. That makes domestic preparedness every bit as important as international demands for climate finance and compensation.

Yet there is little evidence of the urgency this moment requires. Pakistan’s climate response remains heavily weighted towards speeches, donor conferences, policy documents and post-disaster appeals. Preparatory capacity at the provincial and district level remains weak, drainage and flood infrastructure remain vulnerable, urban planning routinely ignores environmental risk, and settlements continue expanding into areas already known to be exposed to flooding and extreme heat.

The warning from the WMO should therefore trigger a coordinated national risk review immediately. Provincial disaster-management authorities should be assessing flood, drought and heat exposure under a strong El Nino scenario. Agricultural authorities must identify crops and regions most vulnerable to rainfall disruption and temperature shocks. Reservoir management, irrigation planning, hospital readiness, emergency shelters and early-warning systems should all be reviewed before conditions deteriorate. Local administrations need clear contingency plans rather than instructions hurriedly issued once the emergency has already begun.

The economic stakes are equally serious. Pakistan can barely absorb repeated climate shocks without worsening fiscal deficits, food inflation and external financing pressures. Floods destroy crops and infrastructure, droughts reduce agricultural output, heat damages productivity, and emergency reconstruction diverts scarce public money from development. Each disaster therefore compounds existing weaknesses in public finances and pushes vulnerable households further towards poverty.

The international community also has obligations here. The UN’s emergency appeal to protect millions of people from El Nino’s potential impact underlines how quickly the humanitarian consequences can spread. Countries that contributed least to global warming will once again require assistance for adaptation, resilience and disaster response. Climate finance must move faster and become easier to access before catastrophes, rather than arriving mainly after the damage has been done.

But Pakistan cannot build its entire climate strategy around waiting for outside help. The WMO has supplied the warning and the science is increasingly clear. The country now has months, rather than days, to prepare for what could become a severe global weather disruption.

If the government spends those months doing what it usually does, the next emergency will once again be described as unprecedented, even though everybody was warned in advance.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026