About

Our Story

The story of Indus Climate Fund begins not in a boardroom, but on a farm in Gharo, a small town in the Thatta district of Sindh, Pakistan.

1978 — 2024

1978

In 1978, Raees M. Irshad and Dr. Zainab Irshad purchased a farm in Gharo. An engineer and a doctor by profession, they farmed as a hobby and donated the money generated from farming back into the local community. They funded sanitation projects and medical care, and provided seed money to the local community to start small businesses.

A teenager at that time, Khurram Irshad would accompany his parents while they tended to the farms. From a young age, he saw firsthand how the rural population struggled with access to basic healthcare, water and sanitation, and education; this exposure instilled in him a lifelong commitment to give back to the community.
2001

In 2001, Raees M. Irshad established the Irshad Foundation and set up a school, Noor Begum Model School, to provide quality education to disadvantaged children.

Noor Begum Model School especially prioritizes the education of young girls, providing economic incentives to encourage girls to graduate from high school in a community where their education otherwise gets sidelined. The school also functions as a community healthcare centre, hosting free medical camps that provide consultations, blood tests, and medicines, along with coverage for surgical care.
2014

As a trustee of the Irshad Foundation, Khurram continued building on his parents' work. In 2014, he introduced energy crops to Pakistan, where he saw soil that had become vulnerable and agricultural practices that had fallen behind.
2022

Then came the devastating floods of 2022. One of the worst climate disasters in Pakistan's history, these floods swept away livestock and crops, destroyed homes, and shattered farmers' sense of security. For Khurram, this was a call to act with greater urgency.
2024

In 2024, Khurram founded Indus Climate Fund to accelerate and scale climate work in Pakistan. That same year, he established Indus Biochar, recognizing that biochar offers a profound and multi-faceted solution for Pakistan's farmers. In January 2024, Indus Climate Fund provided a $50,000 grant to International Biochar Initiative (IBI), which supported a groundbreaking biochar project in Pakistan. Regarding the funding from Indus Climate Fund, IBI’s Executive Director stated, “This initiative will serve as a case study for addressing environmental challenges with biochar production and also transforming communities with positive social and economic support for those most vulnerable to climate change impacts.”
Indus Climate Fund backs a growing portfolio of programs, including Indus Biochar's soil restoration work, LandIQ's geospatial intelligence platform, and the Irshad Foundation's decades-long investment in education and community healthcare. Together, these programs address food security, water security, and women's empowerment not as separate causes, but as the interlocking conditions of a climate-resilient Pakistan.
Until now, Indus Climate Fund has been funded by the founding family. But the scale of Pakistan's climate crisis demands more — and we're now inviting donors to join us in expanding much-needed programs.

Indus Biochar · LandIQ

Our Work and Programs

The link between education, healthcare, and climate resilience is not abstract. When a farming family's income is stable — when their soil is productive, their crops are healthy, and their yields are reliable — they can afford to keep their children in school. When drought, floods, or soil degradation erodes that stability, it often is the girls who are pulled out of school first, and the women who absorb the consequences of food and water insecurity most acutely.

Indus Biochar

Indus Biochar supports farming communities by converting locally available waste streams into a resource with multiple benefits. Crop failure due to flooding and drought means there is more agricultural waste available. Instead of burning or disposing off this waste — which would cause air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions — heating it in a low-oxygen environment in a process called pyrolysis converts the waste into a carbon-rich material called biochar . Biochar mixed with inoculated compost helps with soil water retention, which allows farmers to maintain yields through periods of drought and erratic rainfall. It improves soil structure, increases nutrient retention, and reduces irrigation needs.

Through the partnership with PlantVillage+ at Penn State University, Indus Biochar provides farmers with AI-powered crop monitoring that gives early warning of disease and nutrient deficiency. A farmer whose income is protected is a farmer who can feed their family, keep their children in school, and invest in the next season rather than survive it.

LandIQ

LandIQ is a geospatial intelligence platform that identifies exactly where climate interventions will have the greatest compounding impact across Pakistan and other climate-vulnerable geographies. Where most climate platforms map damage and vulnerability, LandIQ maps restoration opportunity — finding the districts where water stress, soil degradation, farming costs, and community need converge, so that a single intervention produces multiple outcomes at once.

The platform operates across eight intelligence layers — Geophysical, Water, Biosphere, Farming, Feedstock, Livestock, People, and Convergence — with the final layer identifying the precise districts where all others point to the same coordinates. These are what LandIQ calls "trigger points": sites where one investment compounds into five outcomes simultaneously. A district with high fertiliser costs, available crop residue, and declining water tables is not three separate problems — it is one location where biochar reduces input costs, builds soil health, and restores water retention at the same time.

Eight intelligence layers

Geophysical
Water
Biosphere
Farming
Feedstock
Livestock
People
Convergence

LandIQ also conducts original atmospheric research into Pakistan's terrain, drawing on 45 years of climate data to understand why the country is not capturing the rainfall it is physically capable of receiving — and modelling what land restoration could do to reverse that.

LandIQ provides the intelligence layer that ensures every program and every dollar is directed to where it will travel furthest — turning climate data into clear, targeted action.

For information & collaboration

Indus Climate Fund is a United States 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization