Pakistan’s social security system is at a confluence. Traditional social protection systems, while also providing critical critical support for poverty reduction, are not designed to tackle the complex challenges of climate disaster. The country’s flagship Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) needs to integrate an intensive social protection system that can respond to climate risks and shocks while maintaining its basic poverty alleviation. The transition can be headed by the provinces, where the provincial BISP setup is looking for specific priorities and innovations related to the province.
BISP has emerged as the basis for Pakistan’s poverty alleviation strategy. It works mostly in isolation with the risk management and climate reconciliation efforts of the country, which in turn leads to ineffective use of resources and inadequate protection, when disasters are a matter of recent floods, heatwaves, droughts and snow disputes.
Pakistan’s social security policy has been set to target social aid programs from the point of view of the welfare state, in which the BISP was launched in 2008 as a global advance. It has successfully financed millions of families, which have the identity and sophisticated payment systems of the beneficiaries. However, it lacks the mechanisms of expected measures to promote aid during climate disaster, integration with initial warning systems and pre -destructive disaster effects.
Government response to the emergency has been widely responding rather than organizing. The key space in the climate response includes institutional pieces, limited coverage, weak households, focusing on the post -destructive reaction rather than a risk reduction, inadequate integration and mainly reaction to the reaction.
The 18th Amendment, 2010, has changed many responsibilities of social protection to the provincial governments from the federal governments, which has created challenges and gaps of harmony in comprehensive social protection coverage. Overall, the landscape has become irrelevant, scattered and inadequate responsible for the increasing weaknesses of the landscape.
Globally, a number of social protection programs have been developed to integrate social protection and environmental protection. Pakistan needs a systematic change of BISP, which includes institutional reforms, governance restoration and modern financing methods. This will depend on expanding the BISP mandate, strengthening initial warning integration, producing predictions action protocol, and establishing multi -layered financing, which combines domestic resources and international climate financing. It is a long order but an important order, which is necessary to break into pieces of social protection responsibilities between the federal and provincial governments, which is a hindrance to a coordinated reaction to climate disasters.
Encyclopedic protection offers a promising integrated approach that connects social protection, risk of destruction and the adaptation of climate change to make more responsible security net. ASP recognizes the cohesion of social, economic and environmental risks, rather than treating poverty and climate risks. By increasing the flexibility of weak families with various shocks, the ASP creates a protective trap that responds to the emerging risks while creating long -term flexibility. This integration is especially important for Pakistan, where climate risks influence the poor and threaten to damage development benefits.
Pakistan needs to improve a significant improvement in the classification of social protection, while the rising risks of climate are to create flexibility in the weak communities. Comparative regional, its social protection costs (0.5 to 1.4 percent of GDP) lags behind regional counterparts. The country’s social protection index is about 0.07, less than Bangladesh (0.33), India (0.46) and Sri Lanka (0.47). Coverage rates are about the same, with only 9.2PC population in Bangladesh and about 100 100pc in India, only 9.2PC benefits.
Pakistan needs systematic change of BISP.
In the context of climate change, the increasing frequency and intensity of climate -affected disasters increase the current socio -economic risks, which creates a cycle of crisis and recovery, which struggles to solve the traditional system. India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNERGA) and Bangladesh’s National Social Security Strategy (NSSS) offer exciting regional case studies.
The MNREGA offers a compulsive model to connect environmental protection with social protection. It guarantees rural households annually 100 -day non -skilled wages, focusing on natural resources management activities that increase climate flexibility by providing income support. The crocodile reaches about 140 million in the 270 million rural households, and its population is rapidly the opposite of 4PC’s more limited BISP access, which reaches 8.5 million households.
Minarga has developed water harvest structures that improve agricultural productivity and reduce the risk of drought. In Rajasthan, it has built 125,000 water protection structures, which has benefited 1.8 million farmers. Some studies show that through various environmental measures for environmental measures, Magiga has separated about 102 102 million tonnes of carbon, which produces the possibility of carbon credit.
MGNREGA and BISP mainly represent different ways. The MNREGA demand -powered employment guarantee program develops directly for environmental interference through public works, while the BISP cash transfer provides cash without any environmental dimension. About 60pc MGNREGA works on geometric and natural resources management. The BISP has no comparison mechanisms for environmental interference.
The NSSS of Bangladesh has begun the social protection of climate response by targeting weak areas and interacting the reaction of destruction with a long -term flexible building. The social protection system reaches about 28 28pc of the population, which includes more than 9 million beneficiaries in the coastal areas, who gain more coverage in more dangerous areas than Pakistan’s limited presence in similar areas.
For Pakistan, it is a matter of adopting elements of regional success stories, possibly a hybrid model mixed with BISP’s cash transfer with optional public works in environmental risk areas. In order to achieve regional equality in the coverage of social security, Pakistan will need to dramatically expand its security net. Pakistan will need to provide protection up to some 140 million people to achieve the modest target of 40pc coverage by 2047 – more than six times the current coverage.
Sustainable financing requires stimulation of domestic resources, modern risk transfer methods, international climate support, and private sector engagement. Climate -risk financing devices need to complete budget resources through layers of emergency funds combining emergency funds for continuous events with insurance mechanisms. Like others, Pakistan can also seek international climate financing to advance the encrypted social protection.
In order to transform the BISP into an adaptive social protection system, its scope must move beyond the cash transfer while maintaining its basic poverty alleviation. In this vision, the BISP is included in a responsible mechanism that can measure aid during climate shock, add expected steps, and create long -term community flexibility.
The author is the climate change and a sustainable development expert. The column is based on his keynote address at the Second National Social Security Conference, organized by the German Agency for International Cooperation, Karachi.
Dawn, appeared on March 13, 2025
