Hasaan Khawar Brings Reform, Resilience, and Delivery Experience to BRAVE-IS

July 10, 2026

Hasaan Khawar has joined DAI to lead the Institutional Strengthening component of the Building Resilience and Addressing Vulnerability to Emergencies in Pakistan project (BRAVE-IS).

Funded by the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), BRAVE-IS supports Pakistan’s federal and subnational governments to better anticipate, plan for, finance, and respond to climate-related shocks and stresses by strengthening systems across federal, provincial, and district tiers.

Hasaan is a senior governance and development professional with decades of experience across government, donor programming, and advisory roles. He has served as Team Leader and Technical Director of the FCDO’s Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) project in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, for example, and as Lead Advisor for the FCDO-funded National Governance Programme.

Hasaan has also held cabinet-level assignments in Punjab; advised federal and provincial governments on institutional reform, public financial management, investment mobilization, political economy, and delivery systems; and worked with the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, the United Nations, and other partners on governance and economic reforms. His experience spans public sector reform, project design, adaptive management, value for money, public-private partnerships, and investment, giving him a practical understanding of how to effect reform in complex political and institutional environments.

“For BRAVE-IS, success will not be measured only by the quality of technical advice we provide, but by whether that advice helps government systems work better when climate shocks arrive,” Hasaan said. “Our ambition is to support practical, politically feasible reforms that make resilience part of everyday planning, budgeting, and decision making.”

The BRAVE-IS team has already engaged extensively with federal and provincial government counterparts, who welcomed BRAVE-IS as an initiative that can provide demand-led technical support, rather than creating parallel systems.

A clear theme emerging from these discussions is that climate resilience is not only a humanitarian or environmental issue; it is increasingly a governance, fiscal, and liability issue. Repeated disasters create direct and contingent liabilities for governments through relief, compensation, and reconstruction costs, and through foregone development gains. BRAVE-IS will therefore support institutions to move from reactive crisis management toward better risk-informed planning, stronger preparedness, more credible disaster risk financing, backed by public investment decisions that reduce future losses.

“At its core, BRAVE-IS is about helping Pakistan manage climate risk before it turns into crisis,” said Hasaan. “Our vision is for BRAVE-IS to become a trusted technical partner to government, combining adaptive delivery, political economy insight, and a clear focus on impact. This means assisting governments to translate climate and disaster risk into practical reforms in planning, budgeting, public investment, institutional coordination, and financing. It also means working with reform champions, using data and political economy insights to identify the right entry points, and ensuring that technical assistance strengthens systems rather than producing standalone reports.”