Parliamentary Diplomacy and Climate Legislation in Pakistan

Institutional Responses to Global Climate Governance (2015–2025)

Abstract

With increased climate vulnerabilities for the global south, Pakistan has felt the need to shift its climate governance strategies from executive centric response to more institutionalized legislative frameworks. This research aims to study evolution of climate legislation in Pakistan between 2015 and 2025 by surfacing the role of parliamentary diplomacy in redefining the country’s legislative and policy approach towards climate change. The research also poses a big question as to how global climate commitments and norms are incorporated into national and provincial legislative framework in Pakistan via inter-parliamentary engagements. To explore the objectives research questions designed for the study, a qualitative research design is employed based on secondary sources such as reviewing the existing literature, policy documents, legislative developments, and international engagements. Moreover, a thematic approach is designed which is extracted from the global climate commitments and national legislative framework via parliamentary actors, committees, and other parliamentary efforts mediated by inter-parliamentary engagements. A visible, yet inconsistent but growing alignment of Pakistan’s climate legislation with global commitments, supported significantly by engagement forums such as IPU, CoPs, and CPA is revealed through the study. It is concluded from this study that parliamentary diplomacy serves as a critical bridge between international norms and national legislative approaches, reinforcing both legislative legitimacy and policy coherence. By situating Pakistan within broader global climate governance processes, this study contributes to the emerging discourse on the role of parliamentary institutions in advancing climate-responsive legislation in developing countries.

Keywords: Parliamentary diplomacy; climate legislation; climate change; Pakistan; policy diffusion