CHALLENGES OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND THREATS TO NATIONAL SECURITY OF PAKISTAN: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Abstract

Pakistan is burning, flooding, starving and drowning, all at the same time and all due to a crisis that it hardly contributed to create. The research paper proposes a strictly-evidenced, mixed-method analysis of the compounding problems that climate change presents to the national security of Pakistan. To create a comprehensive picture of the economic, developmental, and humanitarian cost of climate change in Pakistan, the study uses only authoritative international institutional sources published between 2020 and 2025 - namely the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Risks Report series, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Reports Such quantitative results are then interpreted by a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the most meaningful climate and security policy texts in Pakistan, such as the National Security Policy 2022-26 as well as the National Climate Change Policy 2021, the aim of which is to reveal the discursive fractures and institutional misalignments that do not allow the country to develop an effective whole-of-government response to. The article critically analyses how climate change alters and magnifies the threats on the food security, water resource management, energy provision, economic stability, population health and internal displacement dimensions. One of the main areas of analysis is the recognition and criticism of the discursive bifurcation between the security governance architecture in Pakistan that has traditionally been concerned with conventional military threats and its climate governance structure that functions within a rather technical, developmental register that has little to do with national security planning. The paper contends that this bifurcation itself is a first-order failure of governance, with second-order material implications on social stability, state legitimacy, and national sustainability. The conclusion does not follow the typical structure of research papers but presents a substantive and implementable synthesis of evidence-based policy frameworks both at a national and international level and community-level intervention strategies aimed at fostering adaptive capacity at the ground level. These suggestions are informed by UNDP, World Bank, and ADB programmatic evidence and are tuned to the unique institutional, socioeconomic, and geopolitical situation of Pakistan.