Pakistan is a carbon gold mine. Here's the plan.

Two careers that converged on the same problem

The episode opens with Muzamil asking both guests to trace their paths to Pakistan Environment Trust — and the routes could not be more different, yet they arrive at the same destination.

Talha Khan grew up in Islamabad, studied at GIC, then joined Enterprise DB as a database consultant before leaving Pakistan in 2009 for telecom consulting across Bulgaria, the US, and Dubai. A family crisis brought him to Dubai — his mother was diagnosed with cancer — and he credits that decision with giving him time with her during treatment. He then went to China for an MBA, drawn not by comfort but by the deliberate discomfort of it. “I wanted to go somewhere where I would come out of my comfort zone. It shouldn’t just be about academics. It should be about my personal growth as well.” He was shortlisted for INSEAD Singapore, ranked fifth globally at the time, but chose China. After graduating in 2014 he moved to the UK, joined Hay Group for HR consulting, then spent three to four years at McKinsey as a senior engagement manager advising a Middle Eastern health ministry on its national healthcare system and the European Commission on various policy questions. One year before this conversation, he left McKinsey for PET.

Hassan Anwar’s story runs through Lahore, Lums, and a Fulbright scholarship to Duke. His family background is engineering — his great-grandfather was one of the founders of WAPDA and helped establish Pakistan’s first hydropower plant — but his father advised him against engineering precisely because of how little had changed across generations. “Baba jaan ne mujhe advice kiya ke beta jo kar lo zindagi mein, engineering na karna.” He ended up studying economics at Lums, graduated in 2011, briefly worked on a USAID water resource project, then stumbled into a Coca-Cola management trainee role almost by accident. Within ten months he knew it was not for him. He applied to Duke, won a Fulbright, and at Duke got his first real exposure to climate finance — not just what climate change is, but how the economics of mitigation actually work. An internship at UNEP Geneva followed, then a consultancy with the government of California linking it to clean energy projects in Ukraine, Indonesia, and Kenya. His Donetsk project was abruptly ended when Russian tanks rolled in — in 2014, not 2022. “Low and behold, one week later I turned on the TV and literally we saw Russian tanks rolling into Ukraine, into Donetsk.”

After California, Hassan co-founded a small company working on biomass supply chains in Pakistan, eventually building a network of 65,000 farmers supplying agricultural waste as industrial fuel. A Punjab government contract collapsed when the entity they were supplying was caught up in the 56-companies NAB case of 2018. By mid-2019 he had walked away. PET found him in mid-2020.

The beaver that started it all

Muzamil asks both guests to explain what PET actually is, and Hassan tells the origin story — which begins, improbably, with a semi-aquatic rodent.

The beaver went extinct in the UK roughly four hundred years ago. When it was reintroduced six or seven years before this conversation, flooding in the affected areas dropped by 60% and water availability improved enough to revive agriculture that had disappeared. One of PET’s founders, Ben Goldsmith, was central to that UK rewilding effort and also had deep connections to Pakistan. He asked a group of Pakistani friends — hedge fund managers, investment bankers, people who think in economic terms — whether something similar could be done in Pakistan. They quickly established that the beaver does not exist in Pakistan and has no habitat here. But the real question they were grappling with was structural: where is the organisation in Pakistan that can convene climate scientists, water experts, wildlife specialists, and grassroots implementers, connect them to international capital, and make the whole thing financially self-sustaining?

McKinsey was engaged on a pro bono basis. A junior partner and a British-Pakistani analyst spent eight weeks in Pakistan mapping the gap. Their conclusion: no such organisation existed. The financial world and the development world in Pakistan speak entirely different languages. “Financial investment pe jo kaam kar rahe hain woh hamesha returns ki baat karenge. Development wale hamesha impact ki baat karenge.” PET was designed to be the translator between those two worlds — and to be financially self-sustaining from the start, modelled on the beaver initiative itself, which created jobs and attracted private investment rather than depending on grants.

What climate finance actually means

Before the conversation moves to PET’s programs, Muzamil asks Hassan to explain climate finance in plain terms. The answer is precise: climate finance is any funding directed at adapting to or mitigating climate change. In Pakistan’s context, the most immediate example is the transition from coal and imported fossil fuels — which Hassan calls “dirty fuels” — toward solar, wind, and hydro. “Because there is the aspect that through these projects and programs you are addressing climate change, that is why it has gotten this umbrella term climate finance.”

The scale of the numbers involved is what makes the conversation shift from environmental to economic. Talha references a network established after COP26 called GFANZ — the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero — which brought together roughly 450 asset owners managing approximately $130 trillion in assets. That capital is committed to moving toward net zero. The question is where it flows. “This money is going to move from the US, UK, Switzerland towards developing countries.” Pakistan, if it can build the right platforms and demonstrate credible programs, is positioned to receive a significant share of it.

The 15-to-20 million jobs problem

The conversation’s sharpest economic argument comes from Talha, and it reframes climate change entirely. He cites McKinsey research showing that global brands — Gap, Zara, Primark, Target, Levi’s — have made net zero commitments. When those commitments translate into supply chain requirements, Pakistan’s textile sector faces a binary choice: demonstrate a green supply chain or lose the contracts.

“Agar yeh economic angle na dekha jaye iss ka aur uss par kaam na kiya jaye, to pandrah se bees million naukariyon ka hamen nuqsan face karna parega Pakistan ko.”

Fifteen to twenty million jobs. That is the downside scenario if Pakistan does nothing. The upside scenario is the mirror image: because Pakistan’s emissions are already low relative to its economic output, becoming a credible green industrial hub is far easier than it would be for a high-emission economy. “Pakistan becomes the green industrial capital of the world. Hamara textile is the greenest textile out there.” Talha describes a recent trip to the Copenhagen Global Fashion Summit where over a hundred brands were present. Pakistani representatives rarely attend such forums. When Talha presented data on Net Zero Pakistan and the 22 companies that had signed on, the response from brands was, in his words, “very refreshing” — they had only ever heard Pakistan’s story through Western mainstream media.

Carbon credits: the commodity Pakistan is ignoring

Hassan introduces the carbon credit framework as the mechanism that makes all of this financially coherent rather than aspirationally vague. Carbon is becoming a tradable commodity. Any entity that reduces carbon emissions at low cost will control a growing share of that market. Pakistan — with its low-emission agriculture, its potential for reforestation, its community micro-hydro grids — is, in Hassan’s phrase, “a carbon gold mine.”

“By 2030, the market for this carbon commodity is expected to be around $100 billion. And right now we’re not sort of actually — hum uss market ka hissa hi nahin hain in any meaningful way.”

PET’s role in the carbon credit market is specific. The organisation goes to communities — organic sugarcane farmers in Dera Ismail Khan, micro-hydro operators in Chitral and Swat, cotton farmers in Balochistan — documents what they are already doing, quantifies the carbon emissions being reduced, and takes that documentation to global accreditation agencies. Once projects are registered, carbon credits can be issued. PET then connects those projects to global buyers, who are currently in what Hassan calls “a feeding frenzy” because the supply of high-quality carbon credits is far short of demand. The financing that flows back funds the scaling of the very programs that generated the credits.

The Balochistan cotton example is concrete: large tracts of virgin, fertile land where organic cotton has never been systematically cultivated. Regenerative farming methods, soil sampling, and proper data collection would allow those farms to generate carbon credits on top of the premium that organic cotton already commands in global markets. “Aap ke paas land available hai, aap uss par organic cotton lagao.”

Community energy in KP: the model that already works

Later in the discussion, Hassan describes what is arguably the most grounded proof of concept in the conversation: micro-hydro mini-grids in Chitral and Swat that communities are already running and paying for themselves.

The organisation SRSP has been installing micro-hydro systems in Pakistan since the 1980s. In a valley called Daral Khwar in the Swat region, a community that previously had no electricity — or at best a few diesel generators — now runs its own distribution system, collects payments, and handles operations and maintenance. The turbines and components, initially partly imported from China, are now designed and manufactured in Pakistan. “Koi rocket science cheez nahin hai. In fact, hamare paas resources maujood hain ke hum uss cheez ko bhi reverse engineer karke bana lein.”

The gap is not technology or community willingness. It is a financing mechanism to bridge the upfront capital cost. There is a clear business case — customers willing to pay, communities willing to maintain — but no structured financial instrument to unlock it at scale. Carbon credits, Hassan argues, are exactly that instrument. The clean energy these grids provide generates credits; those credits attract financing; that financing funds replication across the estimated 2,500 to 3,000 megawatts of potential that community solar and hydro mini-grids represent in Pakistan.

Rewilding: rhinos, tourism, and the Congo precedent

The third program PET runs is rewilding Pakistan, and it is the most unexpected part of the conversation. The greater one-horned rhinoceros was once native to the subcontinent. The last recorded rhino in Pakistan was hunted — possibly by the Nizam of Hyderabad — and the species has been absent from the country for decades. The animals that remain are held in European zoo associations or private estates in the US.

PET has been working with government stakeholders to identify a reintroduction site. The tentative choice is Lal Suhanra National Park in Bahawalpur, where two rhinos were brought roughly forty years ago but failed to breed due to a disability in the female. The plan is to bring five to six rhinos, acclimatize them over five to six years under light protection, and then allow them to roam freely — with the surrounding communities economically integrated into the conservation effort from the start.

The precedent Hassan cites is Congo, where chimpanzee and ape reintroduction turned wildlife tourism into the third-largest source of revenue for the region. “Tourism particularly emanating from wildlife tourism — that’s the third biggest source of revenue from Congo.” The parallel to Pakistan’s markhor conservation is also made: when communities received a share of hunting licence revenue, poaching stopped without any policing. “Wahi wali baat hai — agar aap Bahawalpur ke logon ko yeh bata den ke yaar yeh tumhara hai.”

By a ten-year projection, the target is thirty-two to thirty-three rhinos roaming freely in Lal Suhanra.

Electric vehicles, carbon credits, and the leapfrog argument

By the end of the conversation, Muzamil raises the electric vehicle question — specifically a conversation he had with former climate minister Amin Aslam about electrifying Pakistan’s transport fleet. The argument Amin Aslam made was threefold: reduce carbon emissions, reduce the dollar-denominated fuel import bill, and increase electricity demand to absorb the excess capacity that drives circular debt.

Talha and Hassan’s response is to redirect the focus from cars to motorcycles. Fifteen bikes are sold in Pakistan for every car. Motorcycles are easier to charge, the volume is far larger, and the economics work at the household level even at full electricity prices because the fuel cost differential is so large. “Every car that’s sold, there are 15 bikes that get sold.”

The carbon credit layer adds a further dimension. A manufacturer of electric bikes generates carbon credits through the emissions reductions its products enable. Those credits can be used to subsidise the purchase price, making the premium over a petrol bike effectively disappear for the consumer. “The consumer is incentivized — mujhe usi price se mil rahi hai aur ulta heavy fuel par bhi nahin chalegi.”

Hassan adds the aggregation point: Lahore’s metro ridership rose 20% after fuel prices spiked. Every commuter who shifts from a private vehicle to public transport reduces emissions at scale, and that aggregate reduction is documentable, creditable, and financeable. The infrastructure challenge — fast charging, grid load, indigenisation of components — is real, but Hassan and Talha both frame it as a sequencing problem rather than a fundamental barrier.

Muzamil closes by asking both guests how they see Pakistan in 2050. Talha’s answer is direct: “Pakistan becomes that kind of green capital for the world where hamari industry — not just textile but automotive, refrigeration, air cooling — we are building products that are green, we are using them locally and exporting them.” Hassan adds the equity dimension: equitable water distribution unlocking cultivation in Balochistan, Sindh, and arid southern KP; energy access reaching every part of the country with surplus left to export; and Pakistani climate expertise being exported to the region and the developed world alike. “I don’t think we have a choice to look at it in any other way.”