Climate change is already reshaping everyday life across the country, from devastating floods and prolonged droughts to record-breaking heatwaves and increasingly unpredictable rainfall.
The current monsoon season is another reminder of how immediate these risks have become. By early August 2026, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) had reported 153 deaths and 457 injuries, including 111 females, 194 males and 152 children. Behind these figures are communities facing displacement, loss of livelihoods, disrupted healthcare and difficult decisions about how and where to seek safety.
These patterns are not new. During the catastrophic 2022 floods, more than 33 million people were affected, including 650,000 pregnant women, while over 1.6 million women of reproductive age needed urgent health services. Cultural barriers often prevented women from accessing assistance, as they were often excluded from information flows and faced increased risks of harassment in displacement settings. In Sindh province alone, 46 per cent of the two million schoolchildren affected were girls.
These are the hidden dimensions of disasters that statistics alone cannot capture. Disasters may affect entire communities, but their impacts are not gender neutral. They are shaped by the inequalities that determine who receives protection, who has access to assistance, and who is left behind.
Pakistan has not been standing still in the face of these growing risks. Over the past decade, the country has progressively strengthened its climate and disaster governance, beginning with the National Climate Change Policy 2012, followed by the Pakistan Climate Change Act 2017, the National Climate Change Policy 2021, the National Adaptation Plan 2023 and the National Disaster Risk Reduction Strategy 2025 to 2030. The national and provincial disaster management authorities actively prepare for the monsoon through contingency planning, response coordination and relief arrangements. However, policies and plans matter only when they translate into effective and inclusive action on the ground.
This makes climate change not merely an environmental challenge, but also a question of justice at the institutional, policy and household levels, shaped by the patriarchal structures of Pakistani society. Previously, men were treated as the primary stakeholders in climate and disaster responses, particularly as decision makers, landowners, farmers and primary income earners. However, governments, humanitarian organisations, and development partners now increasingly recognise that women face specific challenges during disasters, including limited mobility, unpaid care responsibilities, maternal healthcare needs, menstrual hygiene concerns, lack of privacy, and heightened risks of gender-based violence.
Although implementation gaps remain, women are now increasingly recognised as important stakeholders in adaptation, resilience, preparedness and recovery. This marks an important transformation towards a more holistic understanding of gender in climate action. But if climate conversation is becoming more inclusive, who is still missing from the picture? That would be the transgender community, which remains one of the country’s most socially and economically marginalised populations.
Unlike many other vulnerable groups, exclusion can begin within the family itself (through rejection, denial of inheritance and exclusion from education). Many transgender persons also face barriers to formal employment and therefore depend on insecure, informal livelihoods. Without stable incomes, family support or adequate social protection, they enter a disaster already at a disadvantage.
Their experiences are rarely reflected in the way disaster relief mechanisms are designed. During an emergency, these systems determine who receives warnings, reaches evacuation centres, registers for assistance and accesses food, shelter, healthcare, and recovery support. For transgender persons facing social exclusion, discrimination, insecure livelihoods and limited family support, conventional registration and beneficiary systems can create additional barriers rather than protection.
These realities force us to ask difficult questions: who ensures that transgender persons can safely access evacuation centres without discrimination? Who ensures that they are included in relief distribution when they do not belong to conventional family structures? Who ensures that beneficiary registration systems do not leave them behind? Who speaks for their needs when disaster management plans are written? Too often, there is no clear answer.
Closing this gap does not require creating a separate disaster system. It requires making existing mechanisms more inclusive, from early warning and preparedness to response, relief and recovery. Climate warnings must reach marginalised communities, while disaster plans and the Pakistan Monsoon Contingency Plan should address barriers transgender persons may face in evacuation, shelters, healthcare, sanitation and protection. Relief systems should ensure equal access to registration, food, cash assistance, healthcare and shelter without relying solely on conventional household structures. Recovery programmes should also include livelihood, housing and social protection support.
Transgender persons should be included in disaster planning and decision-making through meaningful consultation and representation. Only by embedding such inclusion across the disaster management cycle can Pakistan move closer to fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals and the Sendai Framework’s promise to leave no one behind.
Now, as Pakistan is in the midst of another monsoon season, public attention will once again turn to weather forecasts, rising river levels, damaged infrastructure, and emergency preparedness. All of these deserve attention. But resilience must also be measured by whether the people our institutions have overlooked for so long are finally seen, included and protected.
Syeda Safina Ali is a research assistant at the Sustainable Developlment Policy Institute (SDPI), Islamabad. She can be reached at: safina.ali@sdpi.org
Muhammad Awais Umar is a senior research associate at SDPI. He can be reached at: awais@sdpi.org
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