Pakistan's climate advocacy scene is hiding a problem few people want to talk about. The very organisations funded to fight environmental degradation have built a quiet culture of intellectual theft, one that is choking the genuine innovation the country desperately needs. Funded NGOs are constantly hungry for "new ideas" to satisfy donor reports and justify their budgets. But this hunger is self-made. It comes not from a shortage of creativity in Pakistan, but from an industry built more on performance than on purpose. Too many of the people running these organisations are not climate professionals driven by ecological conviction. They are grant chasers who learned how to write a persuasive proposal, not people who understand the science, the urgency, or the stakes of the crisis.

The creative failure runs deeper than simple incompetence. Many of these organisations hire "creative teams" pulled straight from corporate marketing backgrounds, people trained to sell soft drinks and shampoo, not to steward planetary survival. They arrive with polished portfolios full of brand campaigns and apply the same transactional thinking to climate communication. What follows is a steady stream of tired, recycled campaigns that treat climate awareness like a product, not a civilisational emergency that demands honest engagement. They stage tree planting photo ops with imported saplings that die within weeks. They launch "green challenges"........

© The Express Tribune