CLIMATE RESILIENCE BEYOND NET ZERO: COMPARING EMERGING GOVERNANCE PATHWAYS FOR SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT IN CHINA AND PAKISTAN

Abstract

Net-zero commitments have become central to climate policy, yet emissions-reduction targets alone do not ensure resilience to intensifying climate risks or sustainable environmental management. This study examines how governance systems can move beyond net-zero commitments by integrating mitigation, adaptation, ecosystem protection, institutional learning, climate finance, stakeholder participation, and digital environmental governance. Using a qualitative comparative case-study approach, the study analyses the emerging climate-governance pathways of China and Pakistan through documentary evidence covering national climate policies, adaptation strategies, environmental frameworks, institutional arrangements, and implementation mechanisms. The study’s principal novelty is the development of a Climate Resilience Governance Framework (CRGF) that integrates adaptive governance, climate-resilient development, and polycentric governance across six interrelated dimensions: institutional coordination, adaptive capacity, climate finance, ecosystem-based environmental management, stakeholder participation and climate justice, and digital environmental governance. The comparative findings demonstrate that China’s pathway is characterised by strong central coordination, long-term strategic planning, substantial domestic investment, technological capacity, and large-scale environmental implementation, while challenges remain in locally differentiated adaptation, stakeholder participation, and continuous institutional learning. Pakistan has increasingly embedded adaptation, vulnerability, ecosystem restoration, and climate justice within its policy framework, but implementation is constrained by fiscal limitations, fragmented federal-provincial responsibilities, institutional discontinuity, and uneven subnational capacity. The analysis further identifies institutional coordination as a connecting mechanism through which finance, information, ecosystem management, participation, and adaptive learning can generate resilience outcomes. The study concludes that progress beyond net zero depends less on the adoption of ambitious targets alone than on the development of coordinated, adequately financed, adaptive, inclusive, and context-sensitive governance capabilities. The CRGF provides an analytical basis for comparing such pathways across developing and emerging economies without assuming a universal governance model