What we lost in Baku

Imagine, for a moment: a country teetering on the brink of climate catastrophe. Its glaciers are melting, its fields are parched, and its skies weep torrents of rain that drown the unprepared. What would life be like there? The good thing is you don’t need to rely on imagination. Just look out your window.

We are, by far, among the most climate-vulnerable nations – caught between a warming planet and an indifferent world. A projected rise in temperatures between 1.3 C and 4.9 C by the century’s end threatens to obliterate our agricultural backbone, devastate fragile ecosystems, and push millions into further poverty.

Every year, COP convenes as a gathering of hope, ambition, and political posturing. For developing nations like Pakistan, it is a lifeline – a chance to secure funding, advocate for climate justice, and push for global commitments to match the scale of the crisis. Instead of embracing Baku for the opportunity that it was, we held to tradition and chose spectacle over substance. The reason is as distressing as it is simple: we are fundamentally unprepared for the complexities of global climate diplomacy.

Negotiating at COP is not a simple task; it requires a deep understanding of technical frameworks, expertise, preparation, and a unified strategy prepared months in advance. Pakistan brought none of these to Baku.

Instead, we hosted seminars, panel discussions, and networking events – a carousel of awareness-raising that failed to address the urgent need for actionable commitments. Meanwhile, the true crucible of climate negotiations – the blue zone, where technical expertise and political strategy shape outcomes – lay largely out of our reach.

At the heart of our problems is the misalignment of our efforts with our objectives. We sent around 400 delegates. Three-fourths of them were observers. Less than 20 of the 100 or so ‘official delegates’ were from the Ministry of Climate Change. Consider, for a moment, the approach others took.

Bangladesh, for example, established the Bangladesh Climate and Development Platform to streamline donor coordination, eliminate overlapping financing, and improve inter-ministerial coordination to improve climate investment opportunities. This was a prerequisite to accessing financing under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF) to support its climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. Its delegation, bolstered by indigenous technical experts and representatives from marginalised communities, exemplifies what strategic climate advocacy looks like.

India’s delegation skipped the pavilion entirely, opting to make impactful interventions during negotiations. Its critique of the New Collective Quantified Goal – a pledge of $300 billion annually by 2035 – has positioned it as a leading voice of the so-called ‘Global South’. Saudi Arabia, with a delegation of just 50, demonstrated the power of preparation, leveraging months of groundwork to delay commitments on fossil fuel phaseouts.

In our case, bureaucratic inertia took precedence over informed advocacy. Networking became an end in itself. The net result of this was that everyone agreed on the severity of Pakistan’s challenges, while no one committed to concrete steps to address them.

The opportunity cost of this misalignment is mind-numbing. To put things in perspective, the 2022 floods placed one-third of Pakistan under water, displaced eight million people, and reduced our GDP by $15 billion. To avert future losses, we need to mobilise hundreds of billions of dollars to build a resilient economy; however, to negotiate a measly $1 billion under RSF, we are mandated to initiate institutional reform in the manner of Bangladesh.

Part of the problem is that we believe having a compelling story to tell is all it takes to get the world to act. We are wrong. The world does not move on moral appeals. Climate finance, adaptation frameworks, and mitigation goals are not handed out; they are wrestled from the grasp of more powerful nations through technical expertise and political savvy.

Meanwhile, developed nations arrive at COP armed with seasoned negotiators and robust institutional support. Even non-Annex I countries, which share our lack of historical responsibility for emissions, have outpaced us in building negotiation capacity.

The question, then, is: where do we go from here?

First, we must abandon the illusion that awareness and visibility are substitutes for strategy. Our delegations must be lean, focused, and intimately familiar with the intricacies of global climate agreements.

Second, our mindset must undergo a fundamental paradigm shift. COP is not a stage for grandstanding; it is a battlefield where the fate of vulnerable nations is decided. We have repeatedly failed to secure significant international climate finance, not because of a lack of need but because of a lack of capacity.

The technical complexity of the discussions at COP cannot be overstated. Article 6 of the Paris Agreement alone, which governs the operationalisation of carbon markets, requires a detailed understanding of the mechanisms that underpin them. What percentage of our team is even passingly familiar with national registries, greenhouse gas accounting protocols, and Marginal Abatement Cost Curves, the very fundamentals of carbon markets? How should carbon credits be verified across countries? What safeguards ensure that marginalised communities, including Indigenous Peoples, benefit from these markets rather than being exploited by them?

The New Collective Quantified Goal for climate finance and the Global Goal on Adaptation are frameworks that determine how funds are mobilised, who receives them, and under what conditions. For countries like Pakistan, which face extreme climate vulnerabilities, these are crucial to our climate change mitigation and adaptation goals.

Success in these negotiations demands technical precision, data-backed proposals, and an acute understanding of global financial instruments. Workshops and capacity-building sessions at COP also present critical opportunities to refine our Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs). These are further examples of spaces Pakistan has struggled to utilize effectively.

Furthermore, the architecture of COP reflects the power dynamics of a divided world. Developed nations, with their historical responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions, arrive with institutional resources that dwarf those of Pakistan, seasoned negotiators, legal experts, and technical advisors, many of whom have attended multiple COPs and can recall past decisions with ease.

In contrast, Pakistan's reliance on ad hoc and poorly coordinated delegations, often finalised in the weeks and days leading to COP, leaves us scrambling to catch up in discussions we should be leading.

The principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC), enshrined in the UNFCCC, acknowledges that developed countries bear a greater responsibility for addressing climate change due to their historical emissions. Yet the application of CBDR-RC is often diluted in negotiations, as powerful nations push for voluntary commitments and market-driven solutions that disproportionately burden developing countries.

For Pakistan, this means fighting not only for its fair share of climate finance but also against mechanisms that might inadvertently deepen existing inequities.

In simpler words, we remain woefully unprepared to navigate these systemic inequities. Our delegations lack the institutional memory and technical expertise required to build coalitions, counter opposing arguments, and secure meaningful commitments. The absence of strategic alignment across ministries – let alone within the delegation itself – only weakens our position further.

To secure the resources needed for adaptation and resilience, we must build institutional capacity, commit to long-term, data-backed planning, change our approach to delegation-building, and rethink our role in global climate change diplomacy as a whole.

If we cannot meet the demands of this moment, it will not be the world’s indifference that undoes us, but our own complacency.

The writer is a civil servant.