Dr. Syeda Sultana Rizvi
The recent floods in Pakistan are being counted among the worst natural disasters in the recent history of this region, and as a symptom of climate change caused by ever-increasing global warming. Hanging over for the last 3 months, the calamity is not over, yet. With over 1600 people reported dead and thousands injured, one-third of the country still remains submerged in water and faced with severe, food, health, and livelihood crises
Nearly 33 million people including 16 million children have been badly affected by the mammoth calamity that swept away 2 million homes. 7 million people have been displaced amidst life-threatening situations like drowning in water and injuries from debris and are faced with hunger and outbreak of diseases.
Most tragic, of course, is the loss of human lives as more dead bodies might be recovered once the water recedes completely, which is followed by the misery of survivors and then the impact on livelihood. The economy has encountered a loss of over 30 billion dollars due to the destruction of infrastructure and public facilities besides the damage to food and cash crops.
According to UNICEF 3.4 million children, faced with increased risk and life-threatening situations need assistance as they are exposed to outbreaks of diseases like diarrhoea, typhoid, and malaria having no choice but to dwell close to stagnant water. Many of the hardest-hit areas are amongst the most vulnerable in Pakistan, where children already suffer from high rates of malnutrition and poor access to water and sanitation.
Serious food shortage is impending not only for flood-hit areas but for the entire country as the inundations caused by heavy monsoon rains, since late July this year, have wiped out huge swaths of crops including food crops. The personal grain stores that the majority of the rural population rely on, round the year, are also washed away. Thus, leaving already impoverished families in the worst situation.
Crops on 4 million acres have been completely destroyed. Nearly 15 percent of Pakistan’s rice crop and 40 percent of its cotton crop have been lost. Besides Baluchistan, the southern Punjab and Sindh have been hit hardest where 80 percent of the rice crop and 70 percent of cotton were destroyed, devastating the livelihoods of the small farmers.
More than 75% of Baluchistan, which covers half of Pakistan, is partially or completely damaged. Fields are still inundated, and people’s homes and patches of land remain submerged. In Baluchistan, hundreds of orchard owners worry about their future after losing crops of grapes, apples, and other fruits.
In this situation, Pakistan is compelled to import wheat and other food items. With its huge population, the country may have to import as much as 2.5 million tons of wheat in the next year. Any delay in the import of wheat may cause a food shortage. Importing food in the present global circumstances of soaring prices of food commodities is even more challenging when the country is strapped for foreign exchange.
The financial situation of Pakistan will further be affected by the flooding as it has caused a blow to important cash crops. This means lower exports of rice, which earned $2 billion in the previous year. Cotton losses could hurt the country’s biggest export, textiles, and clothes, which brought in more than $20 billion annually in recent years.
The heart-breaking scenario is blamed in part on climate change coupled with ill planning of the country, which had no planning to cope with the obvious impact of climate change. In Pakistan, this year, first it was drought as an early heatwave brought an abrupt end to spring, badly affecting the crop yields and at the same time increasing the rate of glacial melt. This was followed by unprecedented heavy monsoon rains across the country beginning from July.
Pakistan’s geography has sensitive hotspots in the jigsaw puzzle of global climate change. The North of Pakistan having 8 of 15 eight thousanders including the world’s second highest peak K-2, is referred to as the third pole due to the presence of the world’s largest glaciers outside polar regions situated in the mountain ranges spanning across Pakistan, China, Nepal and India.
These glaciers function as a water reserve whose 10 major rivers flow downstream from these mountains and sustain more than 1.5 billion people of this region. It is feared that with the rise of global temperatures, by 2100, a third of the ice sheets in this region will be gone, even if the world limits itself to the global warming target of 1.5C.
The floods experienced by Pakistan are being seen as one of the early signs of this crisis, as temperatures are rising higher than that, thus an earlier onset of doomsday. Despite the fact that Pakistan contributes less than 1% in global emissions it is ranked among the top 10 on the Global Vulnerability Index: the countries most at risk due to climate change and global warming.
The situation calls for a set of matching global action. At Cop26, the response of major polluters failed to match the scale of the climate crisis. It could be inferred that the biggest polluters, despite mounting evidence of deadly climate events such as heatwaves, droughts, and floods, are still not willing to compromise on a trade-off between economic growth and saving the planet.
As far as Pakistan’s own planning and preparedness go, the level of sensitivity and action is extremely low. There are loads of questions such as: would the situation be the same if there was a viable water management system in Pakistan including big and small dams and better drainage systems coupled with sustainable houses? Were warnings arising out of weather forecasts, communicated to people effectively and well in time to secure themselves in advance?
The country fails to show any preparatory measures. It lost a lot of time with no action plan for mitigating climate change until 2013, when the previous government of Pakistan Tehreek – e -Insaf (PTI) of Imran Khan, started a campaign for the plantation of 1 billion trees, first in the KP province where they were able to form the government and then at the national level since 2018 after coming into power at the federal level.
In Pakistan, PTI is the only political party having an agenda for climate change mitigation. It brought the subject of Climate Change to the forefront as an important issue to be dealt with by the government and also started campaigns for building dams to harness the flow of water and overcome power shortages by clean hydel power.
Now Pakistan stands in a difficult situation that is an outcome of insensitivity and lack of action both at the global and national levels. Floods in Pakistan are symptoms and warning signs, which call for both short and long-term remedies at the global and national levels and on the sides of cure as well as prevention.
At the moment focus of humanitarian help has to be on the rescue of people from life-threatening situations besides the supply of clean drinking water, food, medicine, and shelter. But, the second phase of rehabilitation must embark on sustainable solutions like helping in water management systems, clean energy, and sustainable town planning to say a few. Scientific and technological advancements in Europe can be of great help in these areas.
With that, a global move to take Climate Change as a serious problem is also required to nudge the biggest contributors to global warming to take matching actions for mitigation. The situation that Pakistan is faced with today may occur anywhere else tomorrow. When Pakistan was undergoing spells of torrential rains, at the same time Europe was experiencing the other way round. Climate acts in a chain that runs beyond man-made boundaries. Hitting one little part at any part may have a huge impact, even at the farthest end.
20.10.2022
CAST 