On December 3, Islamabad’s LatestNewsX reported that Karachi has been plagued by unchecked illegal land reclamation and a rapid boom in unauthorized construction—from sprawling concrete sites to towering high‑rises. These developments are jeopardising coastal communities, long‑standing fishing traditions and the few protected parks that remain in the city, and the report warned that the result is a growing urban heat island that makes the metropolis feel almost like a furnace.
Citing the United Nations’ 2025 Asia‑Pacific Disaster Report, the assessment warned that Karachi’s swift concrete expansion and the loss of green space are pushing the city toward extreme heat levels that may surpass those in much of Asia. “This is an especially grim reality for a metropolis where heat waves have increasingly become a feature of its climate over the last decade, making the prospect of an even hotter city all the more frightening. Without urgent interventions, unplanned urbanisation, dense construction and shrinking natural buffers could push temperatures a disturbing 2 °C‑7 °C above global warming levels, intensifying the urban heat island effect and pushing the country’s financial hub increasingly towards unliveability,” a report in Pakistan’s leading newspaper, Business Recorder, detailed.
The UN report places Karachi among nine Asian cities most at risk from rising temperatures in the coming years and predicts that Pakistan could become one of the world’s driest nations between 2041 and 2060, confronting life‑threatening heat and acute water shortages that will reshape the country’s disaster landscape. “There is, of course, a persistent — and justified — tendency to highlight how advanced industrialised economies have driven global ecological breakdown through decades of unchecked emissions, leaving countries like ours to bear the harshest consequences. That reality, however, does not excuse the self‑serving, short‑sighted and often incompetent governance frameworks that have compounded our own vulnerability,” the report mentioned.
“Nowhere is this starker than in Karachi, which is routinely ranked among the least livable urban centres in the world, a status shaped not just by climate exposure but also by years of institutional neglect, fragmented authority and policy paralysis that have, in turn, intensified environmental stresses, locking the city into a destructive cycle,” it added.
According to the assessment, Karachi has had six master plans since independence, with a seventh—the Greater Karachi Regional Plan 2047—unveiled earlier this year. Yet none of these plans have tackled the core problems: rapid population growth, unplanned urbanisation, eroding municipal services, chronic transport failures, encroached waterways, poor waste management and the shrinking of public and green areas.
“The fact remains that urban planning in Karachi—as in Pakistan’s other major cities—remains driven more by political interests and the desire for centralised control than by scientific evidence or the input of local experts on population growth and climate needs,” the report noted.
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