Pakistan’s NDC 3.0 Puts Rice, Fertilizer, Livestock and Waste Methane Into 2035 Climate Action Plan
By Shahnoor Saqib — SCN NEWS
ISLAMABAD, Sept. 27, 2025 — Pakistan's new climate plan is widening the country's emissions strategy beyond electricity and transport, placing agriculture, livestock practices and methane-producing waste systems among the sectors expected to contribute to its 2035 climate goals. The shift is significant for a country where climate policy is often framed around renewable energy, even though agriculture is simultaneously a source of greenhouse gases, a pillar of food security and one of the sectors most exposed to rising temperatures, water stress and extreme weather. Pakistan formally submitted NDC 3.0 to the UN climate secretariat on Sept. 24.
The plan identifies several interventions capable of cutting agricultural emissions while improving resilience. These include Alternate Wetting and Drying in rice cultivation, slow-release fertilizers, better manure management through composting and biodigesters, and measures to discourage crop-residue burning. Pakistan also identifies climate-smart irrigation, resilient seeds, improved soil and nutrient management and livestock resilience as adaptation priorities, effectively linking agricultural mitigation with the country's food and water-security challenge.
Rice is particularly important because permanently flooded paddy fields can create conditions that produce methane. Alternate Wetting and Drying periodically allows fields to drain instead of remaining continuously submerged, making it possible to address water use and methane emissions through the same agricultural practice. But scaling such methods across Pakistan would require more than a policy commitment: farmers need irrigation control, technical advice, appropriate incentives and reliable access to technologies suited to local production systems.
Livestock and manure management form another part of the equation. Pakistan's NDC specifically identifies composting and biodigesters as measures for improving manure management, while its broader climate-smart agriculture framework includes livestock resilience. This creates an implementation challenge different from building a utility-scale solar or wind project: emissions reductions must ultimately be delivered through large numbers of farms, communities and agricultural supply chains rather than a relatively small number of centralized infrastructure projects.
Methane policy also extends into Pakistan's cities. NDC 3.0 targets a 17% emissions reduction from the waste sector, with measures including waste segregation, recycling, composting, semi-aerobic landfills, wastewater improvements and advanced methane capture and utilization. The plan identifies landfill-gas capture and waste-to-energy facilities among technologies that could help turn methane-producing waste streams into managed sources of energy or avoided emissions.
These sectoral measures sit beneath Pakistan's broader economy-wide 2035 target. The NDC projects greenhouse-gas emissions could rise from 405 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent in 2015 to 2.559 billion tonnes in 2035 under its baseline trajectory, while setting an indicative goal of reducing projected 2035 emissions by 50%. Seventeen percentage points of that reduction are unconditional and 33 percentage points depend on international finance, technology transfer and capacity-building, making implementation resources as important as the targets themselves.
Agriculture consequently represents one of the hardest tests of whether Pakistan can translate its climate plan into measurable results. Solar plants, electric vehicles and power grids may dominate the visual narrative of decarbonization, but changes in irrigation, fertilizer use, manure, crop residues and waste management require implementation across dispersed communities and institutions. If Pakistan succeeds, those measures could produce benefits extending beyond emissions reductions — including water conservation, soil management, cleaner waste systems, agricultural resilience and greater protection of food production from climate shocks.