Climate change and floods in Pakistan
PAKISTAN along with other South-Asian states is struggling against a non-traditional security threat that is climate change.
Pakistan has been ranked in the top ten countries most affected by climate change in the past 20 years.
The reason behind this include the impact of back-to-back floods since 2010. Climate change is one of the most unavoidable issues of our time, that is affecting the sea level and causing the intrusion of seawater into the Indus Delta.
This rising sea level paves the way for floods and ruin the productivity of agricultural land. Pakistan has become a major subject to disastrous floods mainly caused in Balochistan, Sindh and Southern Punjab due to highly excessive climate-change.
Balochistan and Sindh received rainfall more than five times as compared to the average rainfall recorded.
This depicts that climate change is a real existing threat. So, it is not wrong to say that global warming induced by man-made activities also provoked an intensification of the current situation.
Due to this calamity, around 33 million people suffered as their homes submerged under floodwater.
The urban flood has caused more devastation because of poor drainage and improper infrastructure.
Hence, the country which was still in a recovery phase from Covid-19 is now facing serious health issues like diarrhoea, malaria, dengue fever and infectious skin diseases.
These devastating floods caused the vast amount of standing water which provides the perfect breeding conditions for Aedes mosquitoes to spread the dengue virus.
In addition, majority of people are living out in the open with their families with no drinking water, no food and no livelihood.
The economy of Pakistan has been affected severely by widespread destruction brought by extreme flooding which has negatively impacted crops, slowed down the economic growth and increased inflation.
Agriculture has the potential to play a greater role in advancing Pakistan’s economy but the floods have hit agricultural lands hard, making them less fertile to cultivate major crops for the coming year.
This means a huge number of cultivators will be late for the sowing season. Pakistan’s economy is facing many crises and the country will fail to progress unless significant action is taken.
The set-back of the Covid pandemic and the floods have left the economy reeling and our government pleading for foreign aid.
However, this is only a short-term fix, the government needs to have a serious look at policies that can generate rapid growth.
Pakistan is facing the dark days of its history in the episode of the greatest flood of the century.
The damage caused by the catastrophic floods was exacerbated due to the volatile political condition unfolding in the country.
While 1/3 of the country was drowning in flood water, the political leaders took this disaster as an opportunity to promote their own parties’ agendas and narratives rather than taking it as a serious threat to human security.
The people on social media were focused on directing their anger towards political parties for not responding effectively to the situation.
People from all over the world expressed sympathies to flood victims and condoled the loss of lives in the tragedy.
—The writer is with International Relations at Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi.
