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The plenary sessions at the Imagining Futures Conference convened leading voices from academia, policy, practice, and civil society to engage in broad, cross-sectoral dialogue on the region’s most pressing social challenges. Anchored in key thematic areas, these high-level sessions focused on structural issues, lived experiences, and institutional responses. By bringing together diverse stakeholders, these discussions moved beyond diagnosis to critically reflect on current conditions, highlight overlooked gaps, and explore grounded, collaborative pathways for action and reform.
Moderator: Syeda Mehwish Zara Zaidi (Associate Professor of Practice, Communication and Design, School of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, Habib University)
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The opening plenary set the tone by underscoring that the climate crisis is not a distant reality but an urgent present, particularly for South Asia. Moderator Mehwish Zaidi framed the discussion around equity, asking whether those most at risk are being heard or merely spoken about, and whether current approaches truly address the scale of injustice embedded in the crisis. This framing brought forth a wide-ranging conversation on narratives, governance, and local action.
Afia Salam highlighted the paradox of vulnerability in Pakistan: despite being ranked the most climate-vulnerable country in the Global Vulnerability Index, the threat perception remains dangerously low in both society and policy circles. She critiqued the failure of media in shaping a nuanced, locally rooted narrative, arguing that discussions too often reflect Western framings and sensationalist dilemmas of “what sells is shown.” Importantly, she noted that vulnerability is not uniform, with the rural poor bearing the brunt while urban elites remain shielded, and called for a shift from victimhood toward recognition of the Global North’s historical responsibility.
The conversation then turned toward gaps in education, human resources, and governance. Reshma Aftab stressed the disconnect between education and climate realities, noting the absence of a cohesive national vision. Instead of rote learning, curricula must cultivate adaptive and innovative mindsets. Farhan Anwar argued that Pakistan lacks the trained human resources needed to implement policies, forcing dependence on foreign consultants, while both he and Salam identified governance as the missing link: institutions are undermined by arbitrary interference, and the promise of devolution has stalled at the provincial level, never reaching the grassroots where it is most needed.
Solutions discussed by the panelists reflected both individual agency and systemic change. Masood Lohar challenged the complacency of waiting for official action, urging students to begin with small but tangible steps, citing his Clifton Urban Forest as an example of transformative local action. He reminded the audience that one person’s resolve can catalyze wider change, echoing the spirit of Gandhi. Afia Salam and Reshma Aftab called for a rethinking of progress, cautioning against overreliance on “resilience” as a passive concept and urging readiness, accountability, and responsibility in addressing Pakistan’s own local environmental degradation. Farhan Anwar emphasized the need for a long-term, participatory vision and empowerment of local government as critical preconditions for sustainable change, while Aftab highlighted innovation in education and business as an opportunity to embed climate consciousness into daily life and market solutions.
The session closed with an animated exchange with students, who questioned whether the crisis was rooted in individual behavior or structural dysfunction. The panelists responded that while greed and consumerism play a role, they are amplified by systemic failures of governance and institutional design. Others noted the persistent disconnect between policymakers and ground realities. The consensus was clear: change must come from the bottom up, with politically aware and active citizens—especially the youth—demanding accountability and pressing for climate justice that is both inclusive and urgent.
Moderator: Uswa Ali Memon (Dean's Fellow, Social Development and Policy, Habib University)
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The second plenary addressed the deep structural inequities that define Pakistan’s health and education systems, emphasizing that problems of access, quality, and relevance are not merely technical but entrenched in policy failures, power dynamics, and social hierarchies. Moderator Uswa Ali Memon guided a discussion that revealed how decades of welfare and protection programs have failed to transform realities for the marginalized, as noted by Shahnaz Wazir Ali, who argued that small income transfers cannot dismantle the barriers built into the very structure of society.
Anita Pasha added that most programs are designed for a mythical “average user,” ignoring how gender, religion, caste, and geography intersect to produce vastly different lived realities. A rural Hindu woman, she reminded the audience, cannot be served by the same interventions as an urban Sunni male. Baela Raza Jamil connected this inequity to Pakistan’s education system, describing it as trapped in a colonial-industrial model that stifles creativity, punishes the use of local languages, and perpetuates an irrelevant curriculum.
Panelists pointed to governance failures, weak fiscal commitments, and entrenched professional monopolies as barriers to equity. Despite progressive laws, implementation is minimal, with education and health budgets among the lowest globally. Power has not devolved beyond the provincial capitals, leaving districts the size of small countries disconnected from the communities they serve. In health, Taha Sabri critiqued the dominance of physicians who resist delegating responsibility to nurses and community workers, creating bottlenecks that exclude the poor. Donor-driven agendas further compound the problem by shifting focus with global trends, leaving local needs unmet.
Amid these challenges, panelists stressed intentional, community-centered solutions. Anita Pasha called for treating communities as true partners rather than passive beneficiaries. Baela Jamil illustrated this through the Sanjan Nagar School, where disadvantaged students became so empowered that they redefined their own school motto from “Enabling the Deprived” to “Enabling Our Future.” She also presented the Pakistan Learning Festival as an example of breaking free from constricted education spaces, making learning joyful, multilingual, and inclusive.
Concrete models of reform were shared across both education and health. Sabri advocated for task shifting to nurses and community health workers to break monopolies and expand care. Jamil highlighted data-driven accountability, citing the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) as a tool for forcing government acknowledgment of low learning outcomes. Shahnaz Wazir Ali stressed that government ownership is essential for scale, pointing to successful examples like the Lady Health Worker program and the Indus Hospital partnership.
The plenary closed with a call to move beyond small pilots and embrace large-scale, homegrown models that challenge existing hierarchies and respond to local contexts. The panelists emphasized that meaningful change requires scaling intentional models, redistributing resources, and engaging young people in tracking budgets, asking critical questions, and holding leaders accountable. True social equity, they concluded, will only be realized when power structures are confronted and rebalanced in favor of the marginalized.
Moderator: Kaiser Ishaque (Assistant Resident Representative, Democratic Governance Unit, UNDP Pakistan)
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The third plenary explored the gap between constitutional guarantees and the lived experience of marginalized communities in Pakistan, situating the national conversation within a global backdrop of declining human rights, shrinking civic spaces, and deepening mistrust between states and citizens. Moderator Rana Qaiser Ishaq opened with sobering statistics on global democratic decline, before turning to Pakistan, where robust legal frameworks coexist with weak institutional capacity, low awareness, and restrictive social norms, creating a stark dissonance between rights on paper and rights in practice.
Rabia Javeri Agha argued for a preventive rather than reactive approach, noting that outrage often follows incidents of violence but rarely translates into structural reform. She emphasized that access to justice is mediated by a person’s “capital”—education, resources, and social standing—which explains why an educated woman in Islamabad experiences vastly different outcomes than a rural woman in Sindh. Her examples of systemic failure, from the death of trans activist Alisha at a hospital gate to the forced confinement of educated women in sham “rehab centers,” illustrated how institutions across health, law enforcement, and regulation fail the most vulnerable
Amna Baig positioned law enforcement as a mirror of society, reflecting its biases and blind spots. She spoke of the structural violence that denies women education and financial independence, leaving them vulnerable to direct violence, and explained why barriers to reporting persist—social stigma, lack of female officers, and weak institutional support. The Noor Mukadam case, she noted, gained traction because Noor had the capital to mobilize outrage, whereas countless other femicides remain invisible. Baig also pointed to the inadequacy of laws like PECA in addressing tech-facilitated violence, with limited cybercrime stations across the country leaving survivors without recourse. Communities, she stressed, often serve as the first responders and must be empowered to support victims rather than silence them.
Abeera Ashfaq critiqued Pakistan’s stagnant legal education, which continues to prioritize abstract notions of “rule of law” over critical engagement with economic, housing, and climate justice. She argued that law must be taught as a tool to interrogate and dismantle systems of power, warning against the use of law to create vulnerability, such as when protective regulations for informal settlements are rolled back in favor of elite development projects. Haseebullah Panhwar echoed these concerns, describing Pakistan’s legal system as a colonial relic of “hard law” designed for control rather than welfare, with recent laws further curtailing civil liberties.
The session also showcased models of holistic community-led change. Shabbir Ahmed Khan presented the Rashidabad project in Sindh as an “island of excellence” built on self-reliance, moral education, and integrated services in health, education, and vocational training. Funded initially by the pensions of retired officers, it has since grown into a model of equal opportunity that is now being replicated elsewhere, demonstrating how citizens can build responsive institutions where the state has failed.
Audience questions reinforced these themes, raising concerns about why knowledgeable women still fall victim to violence, why institutions like the HEC fail to implement anti-harassment laws, and why citizens fear engaging with the justice system. The plenary closed with a recognition that knowledge alone is insufficient; empowerment requires systems that respond fairly, social attitudes that support rather than silence, and holistic models that provide both dignity and opportunity.: Governance and Policy — The Way Forward
Moderator: Mariya Karimjee (Assistant Professor of Practice, Communication and Design, Habib University)
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The final plenary examined why Pakistan consistently struggles to translate ambitious policies into tangible outcomes. Drawing on decades of experience, the panelists reflected on a culture of ad-hoc policymaking, institutional fragmentation, and weak accountability that undermines even the most progressive legislation.
Dr. Kaiser Bengali pointed to the absence of detailed implementation planning as the foremost reason for policy failure. He cited the example of a school feeding program in Sindh, where plans to distribute milk and biscuits collapsed because no one accounted for the logistics of delivery and storage in single-room schools without refrigeration. Too often, he argued, laws are passed without the accompanying rules or context-specific frameworks that make them workable. Najam Ahmed Shah added that fragmented governance has left cities like Karachi paralyzed, with over a dozen overlapping land-owning agencies obstructing civic coordination. The unchecked growth of informal settlements, now home to half the city’s population, and the neglect of century-old irrigation infrastructure illustrate how the absence of planning compounds vulnerability, as witnessed during the 2022 floods.
Malik Kamran Rajar of the World Bank highlighted the chronic disconnect between policy rhetoric and budgetary allocation. Laws are passed without funding for implementation, while policies are made in silos without consulting relevant agencies or communities. Dr. Bengali further lamented the loss of a national development vision after the 1970s, contrasting the ad-hoc, performative policies of today—often tailored to international trends on environment or gender—with the focused state-building of Pakistan’s first decades.
Yet the session also offered examples of success. The Benazir Income Support Program, conceived as a response to food inflation, was translated into a robust, well-funded institution that today reaches millions of families. It has empowered women through financial inclusion and remains one of the least corrupt welfare programs in the world. Similarly, the national solar energy policy, launched after a small pilot project, transformed Pakistan into one of the largest importers of solar panels and is now shaping the energy grid. Perhaps most striking was the Sindh People’s Housing for Flood Affectees program, which rebuilt homes destroyed by the 2022 floods through an “owner-driven” model. By directing financial aid and land titles to women, opening over a million rural bank accounts, and embedding resilient design into construction, the program demonstrated how scale, equity, and climate resilience can be achieved when communities are empowered as partners.
The discussion closed with an affirmation of the principles that underpin successful governance: citizen and stakeholder ownership, cross-sector collaboration, sustainable financing, and direct empowerment of individuals, particularly women. Panelists agreed that transparency and accountability, enforced through citizen demand, are the final ingredients without which even the most innovative policies risk fading into forgotten promises.
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