Imagining Life
A Landmark Initiative Merging Climate, Art and Collective Futures
Published
Karachi — 18 August 2025
Climate Action Center and Professor Sadia Abbas of Rutgers University, in collaboration with the National Academy of Performing Arts, launched Imagining Life — a multi-year, multilingual and multidisciplinary programme that reimagines human futures in the face of climate and planetary crises.
The two-day inauguration on 17–18 August at NAPA Karachi brought together scholars, artists, activists and community members in an exchange combining intellectual inquiry with artistic expression.
The programme forms part of CAC’s Climate Narratives initiative, which understands the climate crisis as both an environmental and cultural emergency and works through storytelling, art, education and public dialogue.
Indus Echoes and cultural memory
The first day included a special screening of ‘Indus Echoes’, directed by Rahul Aijaz and presented in collaboration with Anthem Films. The Sindhi-language feature connected the River Indus with people’s lives and explored how art can root ecological consciousness in cultural memory.
The screening established a cultural frame for the deeper conversations that followed during the programme’s second day.
Climate scholarship in Urdu
The intellectual centre of the launch was the release of the Urdu translation of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s book ‘The Climate of History in a Planetary Age’.
Chakrabarty spoke about the journey of writing the book and described the Urdu edition as the first complete translation into a South Asian language spoken across Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
Javeria Faiz shared the words of translator Ali Siddiqui, while a discussion brought together reviewer Tariq bin Azad, CAC Director Yasir Darya and the author. The conversation explored translation as a way to widen access while carefully retaining meaning across languages.
Professor Sadia Abbas described the translation as part of an intellectual project that makes knowledge accessible and creates multilingual spaces where artists and thinkers can engage without shame around native languages.
A continuing platform
CAC’s decision to bring the work into Urdu widened the reach of critical climate scholarship beyond academic circles and into Pakistan’s public sphere. The discussion also expressed an ambition to translate the book into Sindhi and other languages.
Niilofur Farrukh described Imagining Life as a platform connecting local academia, cultural activists and practitioners through a much-needed public space for socially informed dialogue.
The launch concluded with an open forum titled ‘What Should Imagining Life Do Next?’, moderated by Sadia Abbas with Abira Ashfaq, Hafeez Baloch and Qalandar Memon. The participatory session invited community voices to help shape the initiative’s future.
Imagining Life will continue as a long-term research, educational and creative platform for reimagining climate-conscious futures through art, scholarship and collective imagination.