PROJECT MANAGEMENT AS AN ENABLER OF GREEN CONSTRUCTION FOR CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION IN PAKISTAN: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Abstract

Construction and buildings are responsible for roughly 37% of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. Pakistan is one of the world's most climate-vulnerable countries, experiencing rapid growth in its building stock, primarily constructed with energy-intensive traditional methods. Despite being recognized as an important mitigation avenue, green construction remains nascent in Pakistan, and the moderating role of project management in climate mitigation outcomes has been largely overlooked in the domestic literature. This research fills that knowledge gap by synthesizing the findings on the moderating effects of project management practices on the climate-mitigation outcomes of green construction in the country. We undertook a systematic review of the literature, following PRISMA guidelines. We searched Scopus, Web of Science, ScienceDirect and Google Scholar databases for 318 records published from 2014 to 2025. Duplicates were removed, and the studies were screened, reviewed and appraised for quality, leaving 42 included studies. We also included grey literature from the United Nations Environment Program, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Government of Pakistan, the Rocky Mountain Institute and the Pakistan Green Building Council. An analysis of themes was undertaken using the project-management life cycle: planning, procurement, execution and monitoring. Practices of green building, when coordinated through structured project management, may achieve operational carbon reductions of 20-35%, embodied carbon reductions of 20-45%, water savings of 30-40% and construction-waste reduction of 30-50%. But these results are systematically weakened when sustainability is added to designs, rather than being integrated as a project goal. Setting environmental performance targets at the project-planning stage, green procurement rules favoring low-carbon inputs, environmental monitoring on site, and environmental performance review during post-occupancy assessment are the four most effective project-management factors. This paper is the first Pakistan-specific review that considers project management as a moderating factor. It offers an integrated model of project-management impacts on climate-mitigation and a series of evidence-based policy, practice and industry recommendations for policymakers, professional bodies and construction companies