THIS new year, I’ve made a simple promise to myself — to cut back on chai , cheeni and ghee . It is not just about my own health — though my waistline surely needs it. It is a stand against habits that are quietly bleeding Pakistan dry. Sweet milky tea, sugary sweets and ghee-drenched parathas are everyday comforts that cost us over $4 billion for edible oils, $600 million for tea, and significant subsidies and spikes for sugar. They fuel our shocking 31.4 per cent diabetes rate, the highest in the world. And as climate-triggered disasters ravage us again, we see their hidden climate toll. What was once warmth and hospitality has become a national vulnerability. It is time to face facts and find fixes. Our consumption pattern: Pakistanis drink a lot of tea. At 1.5 kilogram per person annually, we rank sixth globally — more than twice India’s rate. That is four to five cups daily in most homes, loaded with sugar and milk. We consume over 25kg of sugar per head yearly, much of it in chai and mithai. Additionally, a major share comes from juices, sodas, confectionaries and bakery products. Over the last decade, this has caused our import bill to explode. Total edible oil imports exceeded $4bn in 2024, with those high in saturated fat alone accounting for nearly $3bn. To grasp the scale: this exceeds Rs1,100bn that is nine times Pakistan’s combined federal budgets for education and health, and over 100 times what the treasury received from the PIA privatisation . The combined import bill for tea and edible oils has surged over 40pc in five years. If consumption and population growth remain unchecked, this could hit $7bn annually by 2030, entrenching the ‘triple burden’ permanently. This is money we cannot spare when climate catastrophes wipe out billions every few years. Health-planet nexus: Our consumption habits assault both human health and planetary systems in parallel. The saturated fats in ghee and trans fats in cheap vanaspati drive up bad cholesterol, making heart disease the leading cause of death. We rank first globally for diabetes prevalence, with nearly 30pc of adults hypertensive. The sugar in our chai often exceeds 60 grams daily. It fuels diabetes in one in three adults. These non-communicable diseases drain our GDP as families spend heavily on medical tests, pills and doctors, a burden worsened for the poor by widespread adulteration of unpackaged, loosely sold ghee and fake tea. The economic toll is staggering: NCDs cost Pakistan an estimated 2-3pc of GDP annually in lost productivity alone. Our consumption habits assault both human health and planetary systems. These same habits devastate our ecosystems. Sugarcane dominates 1.5m hectares (3.7m acres) of irrigated land, straining the Indus even as freshwater flows shrink. This expansion occurs at cotton’s expense that generates far greater export earnings per acre. Sugarcane’s 2,000-litre-per-kilogram water demand depletes aquifers that should irrigate wheat. While cotton strengthens our industrial base, sugarcane thrives through a ‘playbook of distortion’ where mill owners secure near-free irrigation water, instead of paying a water-use levy based on cane procured that would internalise water costs into sugar pricing, thereby reducing reliance on subsidies. Governance failures: Evidently, Pakistan’s sugar, tea and edible oil sectors share a common playbook where artificial price supports and export quotas create shortages despite ample supply, while the dysfunctionality of oversight bodies enable smuggling and adulteration. In the sugar sector, operational mills benefit from near-free irrigation water. In the tea sector, the absence of the Pakistan Tea Board (defunct) enables annual smuggling losses via Afghan transit while some elite importers allegedly block local plantations through lobbying. Similarly, in the ghee sector, waivers sustain high margins despite global price drops, and loose ghee evades health regulations and enforcement. Collectively, these networks are believed to misallocate over $4.6bn in annual forex, entrench elite capture and corruption at public expense. These distortions amplify Pakistan’s climate risks, particularly in flood-prone sugar belts. The governance failure extends into the climate crisis, where the sugar elite has mastered the art of turning climate-triggered disasters into profit. While the 2022 and 2025 floods devastated smallholders, destroying up to 61pc of yields in some districts, the sector paradoxically saw an export boom and value increase of over 20pc. By leveraging flood-induced local shortages to justify stockpiling and price spikes, politically wired millers ensure their unquestioned profits. This systemic capture not only sidelines high-value crops like cotton but also entrenches a water-intensive monoculture that leaves Pakistan increasingly vulnerable to the very climate shocks these elites allegedly exploit for gain. Cultural tradition: The Indus Valley civilisation knew sugarcane and produced gur for millennia, but today’s industrial sugar dominance is recent. Pakistan’s culinary past offers alternatives our grandmothers understood instinctively: carrying both ceremony and wellness. The path to breaking this ‘triple burden’ lies in dismantling the vertical integration and regulatory capture that have turned our kitchens into profit centres for the elite. We must move to shed the entire ecosystem of ‘fried and sweet’ consumption. A critical first step is to tax high-sugar beverages and industrial trans-fats, with revenues ring-fenced to fund public health awareness. Finally, we must internalise the true cost of production by replacing near-free irrigation for sugar with a water-use levy that reflects our national scarcity. This would naturally pivot the agricultural economy back towards cotton and pulses. These crops build industrial capacity and food security instead of draining water for elite mills. Switching to canola and sunflower, which require far less water and yield per hectare in saline lands, could help cut import reliance and reduce our carbon footprint, and ease pressure on drying aquifers. Breaking this cycle requires more than technical policy; it requires the rejection of a governance model that leverages climate disasters like the 2025 floods to justify stockpiling and price spikes. My promise to cut back on chai , cheeni , and ghee is a personal refusal to fund these cartels. My first plain chai tomorrow is small, but it’s a start. Policymakers, join me. Turn this burden into strength. Our people — and our planet — deserve it. The writer is a climate change and sustainable development expert. Published in Dawn, January 1st, 2026