Power, Patronage and Climate Insecurity: Moving towards an Integrated Framework for Climate Resilience in Sindh, Pakistan

Sindh province’s formal climate governance framework has expanded considerably through climate change policies, disaster management institutions, and adaptation programmes. Yet climate insecurity and resilience outcomes remain deeply uneven across the province. This study draws on critical political economy, political ecology, and climate justice perspectives, arguing that climate insecurity in Sindh is produced not only by hazard exposure but also by structural inequality, power asymmetry, and patronage-mediated governance that systematically exclude marginalised communities from protection and recovery. The study adopts a qualitative comparative case study design grounded in a critical realist ontology. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with purposively selected experts across flood-affected districts of Sindh and triangulated with documentary analysis of secondary data using a hybrid inductive-deductive thematic analysis. Findings from the 2010 and 2022 floods reveal that identical patterns of exclusion were reproduced across both events despite significant institutional expansion in the intervening period. Relief distribution, embankment protection, and reconstruction support consistently followed patronage networks rather than vulnerability criteria. The study demonstrates that resilience in Sindh functions as a politically distributed privilege and that institutional expansion without power redistribution reproduces rather than resolves climate insecurity