Islamabad — Pakistan will publish an annual satellite-based report on construction and human activity in riverbeds and floodplains before every monsoon season, Federal Minister for Climate Change Musadik Malik announced on Saturday, as a five-day United Nations–Pakistan conference on space technology closed in Islamabad.
Addressing the closing ceremony of the International Conference on “Leveraging Space Technology for Early Warning for All (EW4All), Climate Action and Disaster Risk Assessment,” hosted by the Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO), Malik said the country must shift its disaster management from reactive rescue to prevention — using satellites, radar and artificial intelligence to spot risks before they turn into disasters.
A warning with no address is a warning to no one
Malik argued that warnings are useless unless they reach the exact people in harm's way. “A warning without a specific address is effectively a warning addressed to no one,” he said, calling for a move beyond broad regional forecasts toward precise, location-specific alerts that reach individual households and vulnerable communities.
He pointed to satellite imagery, radar, hyperspectral data, artificial intelligence and predictive modelling as the tools that make that precision possible, and said satellite evidence could identify vulnerable locations and give land-use planning a scientific basis “regardless of the economic or political influence of those involved.” Drawing an analogy with cardiology, he said that just as early diagnosis can spare a patient surgery, scientific monitoring and accurate forecasting should prevent disasters rather than merely respond to them.
The minister also questioned why thousands of lives are still lost despite available data and early warning systems, citing 4,600 deaths during a single week of heatwave conditions in Karachi as an example of the gap between scientific knowledge and effective response. Rescue operations, he said, should be the last resort rather than the first response — and satellite data, unlike paperwork, “cannot be bribed.”
What the five days produced
The conference, held from October 27 to 31, brought together around 250 participants from Pakistan and 22 countries, including representatives of federal and provincial ministries, academia, space agencies and international organisations. Across 17 sessions — two high-level plenaries, five panel discussions and 10 technical sessions — participants delivered 67 presentations, alongside 10 keynote talks and 32 panellists.
Its closing ceremony presented a summary of proceedings and key recommendations, and SUPARCO presented its Pakistan Space4Climate Initiative, aimed at using national space capabilities for climate monitoring, disaster risk assessment and resilience. SUPARCO Chairman Muhammad Yousaf Khan set out three priorities emerging from the talks: integrating information into decision-making, strengthening interoperable systems and data-sharing, and sustaining institutional and human capacity. Lorant Czaran, Director for Space Applications at the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), stressed international cooperation and the effective use of space-based technologies against climate and disaster risks.
The stakes for Pakistan
The conference was organised by SUPARCO with UNOOSA, the Inter-Islamic Network on Space Sciences and Technology (ISNET) and the Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization (APSCO), and centred on the UN's Early Warnings for All initiative, which seeks to protect communities and critical infrastructure from climate-driven disasters. Its deliberations also covered the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Paris Agreement.
The stakes are stark: at the conference's opening, Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal noted that the 2022 floods alone inflicted direct losses equivalent to 2.2 percent of Pakistan's GDP. A five-day training course at the COMSTECH Secretariat in Islamabad, running November 2 to 6, will now carry the conference's work forward — with the annual floodplain report promised before the next monsoon as its first concrete test.
