Islamabad: Pakistan must narrow the scope of its proposed climate country platform, embed provincial ownership into its design and place affected communities at the centre of project planning if the mechanism is to mobilize credible international finance for a just energy transition.This was the crux of a consultative discussion organized by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI). The consultation included two roundtables: one on strengthening policy credibility to mobilize finance, and another on embedding justice and equity principles into the country's energy transition finance framework.Dr. Crispian Olver, Senior Advisor at the Country Platforms Hub, said the newer generation of country platforms is distinguished by being government-owned and government-led rather than donor-driven, and needed to be programmatic, with medium to long-term goals aimed at sector-wide transformation. Drawing on his experience running South Africa's Presidential Climate Commission, he said, the country had mobili zed an $8.5 billion concessional finance package that helped unlock about $100 billion in private investment, but regulatory reform, rather than the investment package itself, had done more to move the needle. Discussing the unbundling of national utility, the creation of an independent grid company, and the lifting of cap on private electricity generation, he said, these measures had brought about 10 gigawatts of new private generation capacity online within two years.Nismah Rizwan, SDPI Research Associate, said the global climate finance gap remained large, noting that at least $6.5 trillion would be required by 2030, rising to about $8 trillion by 2035, to keep the 1.5 degrees Celsius target of the Paris Agreement within reach. The Country Platforms Hub has gained renewed international traction since the G20 put forward a reference framework for them in 2020, she said, adding that 14 new country or regional platforms were announced at COP30 in November last year, with at least 23 more in the pipeline.P akistan's own Climate Prosperity Plan, led by the Climate Vulnerable Forum and approved by the Ministry of Finance in April this year, named a country platform as its main implementation vehicle. He warned that a fragmented policy landscape, weak alignment between climate commitments and fiscal policy, and a shortage of bankable projects remain foundational challenges.Archie Gilmour, Senior Research Officer for Climate and Sustainability at ODI Global, said there is no single institutional model for a country platform and that arrangements should build on structures that already existed in the country rather than create new institutions that could duplicate existing mandates.Thomas McEwan, Director of Policy and Strategy for the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) at the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), said the alliance is the private finance partner in three country platforms, i.e. the Brazil Investment Platform, and the Just Energy Transition Partnerships in Vietnam and Indonesia. He said platforms performed better where there was strong country ownership, an empowered lead ministry and formal cross-ministerial coordination mechanisms. He emphasized that headline finance targets needed to be translated quickly into granular, measurable project pipelines.Hadika Jamshed, Country Engagement Advisor at the NDC Partnership, described an ongoing Water Energy Food Nexus country platform project for Pakistan, funded by the NDC Partnership and implemented with the Islamic Development Bank, which has collected close to 3,000 candidate projects from the provinces and is narrowing these to a top 10 to 15 per province.Opening the second roundtable session, Engineer Ubaid ur Rehman Zia, Head of Energy Unit at SDPI, said Pakistan's climate action had been undermined in the past by policy reversals, citing the government's recent shift from a net metering to a net billing regime for solar consumers as an example of a decision that had raised the cost of every subsequent investment conversation. He noted that electricity tariffs had risen by roughly 150 per cent, driven substantially by capacity payments under existing power purchase agreements.Afia Salam, an environmental communications consultant, said the language of justice in Pakistan's climate discourse needs to translate into genuine bottom-up participation rather than remain a top-down exercise. She argued that decisions were too often made in policy circles before being presented to communities as solutions.Hussain Jarwar, Chief Executive Officer of Indus Consortium, said past financing mechanisms in Pakistan had largely failed to deliver equitable outcomes because they were designed without community consultation. "Unless planning is inclusive and community participation is meaningful rather than superficial, any financial mechanism for energy transition will not reduce the disparities, but it will create more problems for the community," he said.Syeda Kashmala, a senior lawyer, said Pakistan's commitments to a just transition remained l argely procedural rather than substantive, noting that public hearings for the wind corridor project were held in Karachi rather than in the affected villages, and that consultations on a coal corridor project took place only after land had already been acquired. She proposed that any project seeking registration under a country platform should be required to demonstrate, in advance, that no disproportionate burden would fall on vulnerable communities.Eisha Jawaid, Research Associate at Alternative Law Collective (ALC), said Pakistan's solar uptake has been driven less by policy design than by public frustration with an unreliable grid. She cautioned that continuing to rely on standard grid-based mechanisms risked reproducing the same power imbalances between the state and citizens under a different energy source.Haris Sohail from Policy Research Institute for Equitable Development (PRIED), said financing decisions that relied solely on the levelized cost of energy understated the true cost of power gener ation.Dr. Khalid Waleed, Research Fellow at SDPI, said an effective country platform needs to function as a coordination mechanism among public financiers, private capital and philanthropic donors to avoid duplication of effort. He proposed that any platform be built around four elements: public sector, private sector, people, and partnerships. He said SDPI would share the discussion's recommendations with the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Climate Change and Environmental Coordination as both ministries consider the operational design of the platform envisaged under the Climate Prosperity Plan.