Pakistan ranks eighth on the list of countries most affected by extreme weather events (1998–2017 data), according to the 2019 Global Risk Index. With increasing global temperatures, severe weather and water events, like monsoons and droughts, are likely to become even more frequent and extreme in the future. Since the 1960s, Pakistan has observed changes in temperature and precipitation. By the end of the century, Pakistan’s temperatures are expected to be significantly higher than the global average.

In recent months, the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) has been in the headlines – and for all the wrong reasons.

In January, over the objections of indigenous groups that live there, the government of Ecuador sold oil exploration rights to 500,000 acres of the Amazon to a consortium of Chinese companies. Whenever we hear about stories like this, there is a tendency to think: How can this happen? How can obscenely rich investors run roughshod over the land, livelihoods, and rights of impoverished local communities, and with utterly no consequences?

When we think about countries on the Indian subcontinent with destabilizing demographics, Pakistan comes to mind immediately. First, it’s a country with a very young population. Almost two thirds of its nearly 200 million people are under 25, and the median age is about 22. Second, this youth cohort is highly susceptible to radicalization. Nearly every terrorist attack in Pakistan since 9/11 has been perpetrated by someone under 30. In recent years, the Wilson Center has focused on Pakistan’s youth demographic challenges in detail. India, however, needs to be included in this conversation as well.

Pakistan, long a nation defined by its large rural populations and dominant agricultural industries, is undergoing a dramatic urban shift.

According to UN Population Division estimates, the country is urbanizing at a three percent annual rate – the fastest pace in South Asia. In barely 10 years, nearly 50 percent of Pakistan’s 180 million people will live in cities (a third do today). Pakistani government projections using density-based rather than administrative definitions of urbanization suggest that Pakistan’s urban population has already reached 50 percent.

Last month, Oxfam made an extraordinary request. It asked the World Bank to freeze its investments in agricultural land.

At a time when urbanization and growing service industries are bringing great neglect to agricultural sectors across much of the developing world, why would Oxfam want the World Bank to suspend its generous levels of agricultural funding?