Introduction
The concept of good governance and the social contract is to establish the rule of law in sovereign states. Consequently, these sovereign democratic states have the inherent responsibility to protect the fundamental rights of individuals. However, the concepts of democracy and fundamental rights are mere myths in third-world states like Pakistan. In Pakistan today, governance often reveals itself less in the promise of life and more in the promise of death. This necropolitical structure in Pakistan proliferates through the sustenance of the hierarchies of grievability—the death of a political figure is exalted as a national tragedy. In contrast, the death of hundreds of innocent civilians in floods is flagged as an unfortunate natural calamity.
Rob Nixon’s idea of state violence further deepens this claim, as environmental collapse, infrastructural neglect, and climate disaster culminate in necropolitical strategies of abandonment through the marginalization of underprivileged segments of society, condemning them to gradual, unnoticed death.
Therefore, this article will investigate the politics behind the environmental collapse and the devastation it brought by floods and smog. Through Achille Mbembe’s theory of necropolitics and Nixon’s concept of slow violence, this article will further discuss the intersectionality between the depoliticization of environmental decay and calibrated infrastructural failures of the state as tools of necropolitics to legitimize the devaluation of the lives of underprivileged communities.
Environmental Necropolitics: A Tool for Governance
The concept of necropolitics is rooted in the concept of biopower by Michel Foucault. In his work, Foucault argued that the repressive power of the sovereign has been exchanged for the normalization of power through the regulation and optimization of masses. In the past three centuries, the sovereign power has been transformed into fostering life and disallowing death. It is actively exercised by investing in the optimization of life, not just as subjects for control but also as human beings whose life processes can be harnessed into achieving economic and biopolitical desires.
In other words, it is characterized by disciplining a population of cheap, disposable labor. In biopolitics, death is reframed as a byproduct of optimizing life. As Foucault writes, “Entire populations are mobilized for wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity: massacres have become vital.” It can be illustrated through the collateral damage of millions of lives Pakistan suffered in the US war against terror.
However, Achille Mbembe takes death as the starting point of his work. He characterizes death as the fundamental tool that states utilize for the subjugation of the masses. According to him, statecraft is designed in a way that reduces people to mere subjects whose lives should be conquered. According to him, necro-political states, to protect their political order, reconstitute themselves as a force to organize death.
Therefore, anyone who poses a threat to the power structure should be eliminated. In contemporary times, a threat that is molecular and abstract in nature is integrated into the system to legitimize state violence, murders, and obedience as defensive mechanisms essential to maintain the rule of law in society. Therefore, these necropolitical states prioritize security over the well-being and development of society.
Similarly, the national security statecraft of Pakistan is designed to promote necropolitics as a state tool to consolidate power among the elites and legitimize slow violence. Necropolitics in Pakistan is not a colonial residue. It is the contemporary invention of Pakistan’s Riyasat to govern the masses. In the earlier discourse, it was governed by being abandoned by all institutional recourse.
You do not exist in the national database; bureaucracy denies your existence, courts do not address your grievances, and the media does not tell your truth. You get swallowed by the state’s dark structure. Nowadays, the exercise of necropolitics has become more subtle. It has been characterized by environmental destruction, depoliticization of climate change, and deliberate ignorance of climate policies.
This is evident from the state policies where innocent people are dying from climate change, and the government is deafeningly reticent. This silence elucidates the ignorance of government, which is what Nixon called “the slow violence of the state.” The state categorizes slow violence by the marginalization of underprivileged communities, leaving them to die unknown, unfortunate deaths. Likewise, state protection in Pakistan is limited to a few segments of the society, whereas others are left at the behest of nature. This nescience of government is epitomized by the deliberate environmental neglect as a mode of governance of the pauperized communities. Therefore, death is used as a climate governance tool to control the masses in Pakistan.
Slow Violence: Death by Decay
Slow violence is subtle, incremental, and invisible. Oftentimes, it is unacknowledged and underreported. Therefore, states like Pakistan actively employ it as a subservience mechanism for the masses. This slow violence by Pakistan is epitomized by their budget allocation, protecting their elitist interest and ignoring the grievances of individuals. Consequently, in the 2025-26 fiscal year, from the total budget of Rs. 17,593 B, only Rs. 1000 B has been allocated for public sector development programs.
Similarly, a meager amount of Rs. 3,223 B has been collectively allocated to all the provinces for Provincial Annual Development Programmes (ADPs). Likewise, only 85.4 billion PKR has been allocated for climate mitigation. This disproportionate allocation of resources elucidates the priorities of the state, where people are left to bear the ghastly consequences of their ignorance. The repercussions of this state reticence are evident from the destruction caused by the 2025 floods in Pakistan.
In Pakistan, 507 people have been killed and 700 have been injured in the floods. 314 of them have been killed in KPK, where 217 have been killed in the Bunar district alone. In addition to that, 50% of the houses have been completely obliterated by the floods, whereas the rest have become uninhabitable in the Bunar district. Cloudbursts have caused devastation in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, killing 60 people and washing away dozens more. Karachi has been washed away by heavy rains because of an inadequate drainage system. Therefore, people are suffering, schools are closed, infrastructure has been destroyed, and the government is defiantly complacent.
Furthermore, state-sponsored deforestation is weakening the natural defenses against climate devastation. Pakistan’s forest cover has fallen from 3.78 million hectares in 1992 to just 3.09 million hectares in 2025, leaving only five percent of the total land under forests, the lowest in South Asia. In Azad Kashmir, forest cover dropped from 46 percent in 2000 to 39 percent in 2020, a decline directly linked to worsening floods and landslides.
All this destruction is not an isolated natural disaster. It is a strategic and deliberate mode of governance where people are left at the mercy of natural catastrophes. This slow violence by the state not only highlights the incompetence of government but also exposes a deep-rooted system of hierarchies of grievable deaths institutionalized by the state.
In this hierarchy, the death of a common person is met with obstinate callousness by the government. However, all state resources have been employed to stifle dissent and conquer individuals who pose a danger to their necro-political and capitalistic edifice. Furthermore, the government of Pakistan spent $40 million on the employment of the firewall, which incurred a $300M loss to Pakistan’s economy. This highlights the priorities of Pakistan’s government, which is more concerned with controlling narratives rather than addressing the real grievances of people.
Zones of Death: Climate Camps and Displacement
Achilles Mbembe, in his work, introduced the idea of the “death world.” According to him, “death worlds” are social and material spaces where populations are subjected to conditions of life that are so degraded, precarious, and violent that they are akin to a permanent state of death-in-life. It is pertinent to understand that the concentration camps in Gaza, Sudan, Libya, and Syria are not the only death worlds in the world. These death worlds are also present in Pakistan. The climate crisis caused by the ignorance and flawed priorities of the state has created a death world in Pakistan in the form of climate refugee camps.
Pakistan’s climate shock has pushed millions into temporary climate refugee camps and urban slums. In the 2022 floods, 33 million people were affected, and 8 million were displaced. Furthermore, each year, 3 million people are affected by floods nationally. Climate shocks are accelerating rural-to-urban movement, with 0.7 million people shifting annually, swelling informal settlements. These climate refugee camps and urban slums lack basic amenities of life. These camps and slums have become high-risk zones because of overcrowding, unsafe housing, poor drainage, heat stress, and disease exposure. These death zones turn poverty into a trap to administer the life and death of climate-impacted refugees.
However, this climate collapse is not only establishing death worlds, but it is also trapping people into vicious cycles of debt. Loss of crops, livestock, and land is forcing people to find precarious urban informal work. This is shrinking the middle class in the country. With rising inflation rates, lack of employment, and climate destruction, poverty is intensifying and is becoming self-perpetuating. The relief that is provided to the IDPs is ad hoc, and no long-term rehabilitation is being provided by the state, therefore keeping people in camps longer than primarily intended. This climate vulnerability is being weaponized by the state to discipline marginalized communities.
However, the government and courts have theoretically expanded constitutional rights to cover climate harms to the people. Article 9(a) of the Constitution establishes a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as a fundamental right for every citizen. Article 14 of the Constitution, protecting the sanctity of the house, is provided as a statutory safeguard in urban flooding. All these rights are present in the constitution, but scarcely upheld by the necro-political regimes.
In Asghar Leghari v. Federation of Pakistan (2015), a climate commission was established under Art. 9 of the constitution, but no durable resettlement funding to displaced households was provided by the state. Therefore, this neglect by the state is political, where survival is reduced to bare life—no dignity, just endurance.
Conclusion
Pakistan’s climatic crisis is not merely a natural disaster but rather a result of political decisions based on necropolitics and slow violence. It is the marginalized who suffer from drowning, suffocation, and displacement, while the elites shield themselves from the decay. Safeguarding the environment is not just a constitutional obligation but an intergenerational right—denying this today will condemn the future generations to dead worlds.
What is critically needed is collective action that transcends indifference, politicizes environmental destruction, and awakens class consciousness to confront elite governance. The priorities of the state should be realigned—focusing on the implementation of environmentally just policies that prioritize people over profit. Only by reclaiming the politics of life can Pakistan escape cycles of abandonment and ensure a dignified future for everyone.
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