Thinking through Climate Change beyond Technofixes: Community Vulnerability and Environmental Justice in Pakistan

Abstract

This article examines the limits of climate technofixes in postcolonial spaces like Pakistan. I argue that if solutions to the recurrent climate change are thought only through technological responses alone, they remain incomplete. Without addressing the historical, social, and economic conditions that make communities vulnerable, recurring disasters will continue to recur. Pakistan’s climate crisis requires urgent action, but urgency alone cannot become the basis of climate policy. A just climate response would begin by asking how vulnerability is produced and why only certain communities are expected to adjust their lives in the name of reform. I argue that climate solutions need to pay close attention to local environmental knowledge systems, histories of uneven development, and underlying causes of structural vulnerability, as much as, if not more so, technological solutions. Without this attention, climate action will continue to deteriorate further the conditions of those who are already on the margins due to environmental change.