Rethinking Climate Litigation in Pakistan

Climate change represents one of the most significant global challenges of our time, with far-reaching implications for environmental sustainability, economic development, public health, and social justice. As the impacts of climate change become increasingly evident, legal systems at the national, regional, and international levels are being called upon to develop effective frameworks for mitigation, adaptation, accountability, and resilience. Given the pivotal role that law can play in shaping climate governance, this blog series, edited by Dr Azadeh Chalabi, brings together academics, legal practitioners, and policymakers to contribute blog posts on the theme “Law and the Climate Crisis". Contributions to the series seek to foster critical engagement with the evolving relationship between law and climate change while exploring innovative legal responses to contemporary environmental challenges.

Minahil Wahid, University of Strathclyde

Keywords: Climate litigation; Pakistan; Environmental governance; Constitutional rights; Global South

Ask a climate law scholar to name a climate case from Pakistan and the answer will almost certainly be Leghari v Federation of Pakistan. Since its decision in 2015, the case has become one of the most frequently cited examples of climate litigation from the Global South.[1] Widely praised for linking climate change to constitutional rights, it has come to dominate discussions of climate litigation in Pakistan. But does it tell the whole story?

The question matters because Pakistan occupies a particularly significant position within global climate justice debates. Despite contributing less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, it remains among the countries most vulnerable to climate-related harms. The devastating 2022 floods, which affected around 33 million people, starkly illustrate this vulnerability.[2] Understanding how courts engage with climate governance in such contexts is therefore increasingly important.

In Leghari, the Lahore High Court found that the government’s failure to implement Pakistan’s National Climate Change Policy threatened fundamental rights and established a Climate Change Commission to oversee implementation.[3] That attention is well-earned, but it has come at a cost: the case has absorbed so much scholarly and public attention that it now stands in for Pakistan’s climate litigation as a whole.

This concern reflects a broader debate within climate litigation scholarship. Bouwer has argued that a focus on high-profile or “holy grail” climate cases can divert attention from less visible forms of litigation that nevertheless shape climate governance. Pakistan illustrates this dynamic particularly well.

Looking Beyond Leghari

Before Leghari, the Supreme Court’s decision in Shehla Zia v WAPDA [1994] recognised that the constitutional right to life could encompass environmental protection. The case arose from a challenge to the construction of an electricity grid station near a residential area, brought under Article 184(3)’s public interest jurisdiction on the grounds of health risks from electromagnetic exposure. [4] The Court held that the right to life extends beyond mere existence to include the right to a healthy and safe environment. It also appointed an expert Commissioner to examine the scientific evidence, a commission-based approach that would later reappear as the centrepiece of the Leghari judgment. Although decided before climate litigation emerged as a recognised field, Shehla Zia did more than establish a constitutional basis for environmental claims: it supplied a judicial toolkit that Pakistani courts continue to draw on.

Another example can be found in the case of Ali v Federation of Pakistan, filed only a few months after Leghari in late 2015. Although the petition emerged in the immediate aftermath of the landmark case, it was not simply a continuation of that litigation.[5] It was brought in the name of a seven-year-old from Karachi (Rabab Ali), who challenged both the government’s failure to adequately address climate change and its plans to develop coal fields in the Thar Desert. Like Leghari, the petition relied on constitutional rights, arguing that climate change threatened the rights to life and dignity protected under Articles 9 and 14 of the Constitution. However, unlike Leghari, it placed a child claimant at the centre of the proceedings, reflecting the growing global movement of youth climate litigation, where younger generations argue that government decisions today will determine the environmental conditions in which they will live tomorrow. Although the proceedings remain ongoing, Ali shows that Pakistani courts have been asked to weigh not only government inaction but the government’s own development choices, and to do so on behalf of claimants who will live longest with the consequences.

A more recent example is Maria Khan v Federation of Pakistan [2019], in which five women brought a constitutional challenge alleging that the government’s failure to implement its climate mitigation commitments under the Paris Agreement – including the promotion of renewable energy and transition to a low-carbon economy – violated its legal obligations.[6] Like Ali, the proceedings remain ongoing, but it signals that citizen-led constitutional claims have continued well past the initial wave that followed Leghari, with petitioners now pressing courts on mitigation as much as adaptation.

Climate-related reasoning has also emerged in environmental disputes not ordinarily presented as climate litigation. In D.G. Khan Cement, for example, the Supreme Court considered whether a proposed cement plant’s environmental impact could be reconciled with constitutional and environmental obligations and ultimately barred both its establishment and any future expansion. [7] In reaching that outcome, the Court engaged with concepts including climate justice, sustainable development, the precautionary principle, and intergenerational equity to emphasise that economic development cannot come at the expense of environmental protection and the rights of future generations. Although the dispute did not arise as a conventional climate case, the judgment demonstrates how climate governance in Pakistan is increasingly shaped through broader environmental jurisprudence.

This is particularly important in climate-vulnerable jurisdictions, where climate governance is often contested through environmental, constitutional, and administrative disputes rather than headline-grabbing suits. Although cases like these attract little international attention, they nevertheless shape environmental governance and government responses to climate-related risk in ways that a single landmark judgment cannot.

Rethinking climate litigation in Pakistan therefore requires moving beyond the search for a single defining case. Shehla Zia supplied the constitutional foundation and the commission-based method Leghari would later use; Ali and Maria Khan show that citizen-led claims have continued, and diversified, in Leghari’s wake; and D.G. Khan Cement shows climate reasoning surfacing in disputes never framed as climate cases at all. Together, these cases reveal a more complex landscape than any single judgment can capture – one where climate justice is pursued not only through high-profile interventions, but through the everyday legal processes that continually test and enforce environmental governance. As climate litigation continues to expand across the Global South, scholarship must look beyond landmark judgments and engage with the broader patterns of litigation through which climate governance takes shape.

Author bio

Minahil Wahid is a 2^nd year Law PhD student at the University of Strathclyde. Her research explores how courts in Pakistan shape climate governance through litigation, with attention to how domestic law interacts with international legal norms within a plural legal setting. Her work builds an original dataset of climate-relevant cases before the Supreme Court and provincial High Courts, analysing patterns in judicial reasoning, sources of law, and the design of remedies addressing environmental governance failures. She is particularly interested in how courts engage with international legal norms and scientific evidence, and how litigation influences wider governance practices.

Notes

[1] Asghar Leghari v Federation of Pakistan (2015) W.P. No 25501/2015 (Lahore High Court).

[2] Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘Pakistan Floods of 2022’ < https://www.britannica.com/event/Pakistan-floods-of-2022> accessed on 28^th June 2026.

[3] Leghari (n 1).

[4] Ms Shehla Zia and others v WAPDA (Human Rights Case No 15-K of 1992) PLD 1994 Supreme Court 693.

[5] Ali v Federation of Pakistan (Constitutional Petition, Islamabad High Court, filed 2015) (pending).

[6] Maria Khan and others v Federation of Pakistan and others (Writ Petition No 8960 of 2019, Lahore High Court, filed 15 February 2019).

[7] D.G. Khan Cement Company Ltd v Government of Punjab and others 2021 SCMR 834.