Rethinking flood resilience: systemic risk, governance failures, and the social production of vulnerability in the Himalayan-Indus region.

Abstract

Flood disasters in the Himalayan-Indus Basin are increasing in frequency, scale, and impact, driven by glacial melt, erratic monsoons, and changing land-use patterns. Yet their effects are unevenly distributed, and their causes extend beyond climatic or environmental factors. Using the 2022 Pakistan floods as a case study, this paper argues that such disasters are not isolated anomalies but emerge from the intersection of climate extremes, systemic risk, social vulnerability, and governance failure. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship in disaster studies, hydropolitics, and critical development, this study employs a qualitative, exploratory research design, analysing published papers, technical and policy reports, and grey literature. A critical social science perspective frames the analysis, highlighting how historical and political processes-including colonial-era infrastructure, socio-political exclusion, and institutional dysfunction-have produced and distributed systemic flood risk in Pakistan. We argue that flood crises stem not only from climate extremes but are systemically produced by historical and political processes, shaped by intersecting hierarchies of social, economic, and political marginalization. The paper critiques dominant hazard-centric and technocratic responses and calls for reimagining resilience as a transformative process-one that involves overhauling governance, dismantling exclusion, rebuilding socio-ecological relations, and embedding equity and justice in disaster risk strategies. The paper advocates for just, participatory, and ecologically grounded approaches to resilience. While focused on Pakistan, the findings offer broader insights for understanding and addressing systemic flood risk across the Himalayan-Indus region and comparable climate-vulnerable contexts. The paper contributes to ongoing debates on disaster governance and resilience in climate-vulnerable regions.