Shahzeb Khan
THE summer monsoon season is upon Pakistan now, which means we can look forward to a lot of rain for the next few months. While crucially important for supplying Pakistan with much of its water, the summer monsoon is also often dangerous. When it behaves erratically, it brings either flooding or drought. That is why Pakistanis have to be prepared for natural hazards at the start of every summer. The monsoon of 2020, however, could be vastly more dangerous than anything we have ever had to deal with before, as a result of an extraordinary confluence of circumstances. First, there is the locust invasion, the strongest in South Asia in three decades, also rampant all the way to Africa. Locust population thrives on wet conditions and the arrival of wetter conditions in summer all across Asia and Africa is predicted to make the swarms explode in numbers. Conditions are the wettest in South Asia’s summer monsoon. Locusts from Africa and the Mideast could invade Pakistan during the monsoon, while locusts breeding amidst the blooming vegetation could contribute to enormous swarms that, after the monsoon subsides, could decimate agricultural harvests provided by rainfall. Also, the main method employed to fight locust swarms is to spray large amounts of pesticides from airplanes, ground vehicles, and on foot. Such movement is not possible in the midst of severe storms and flooding. Floodwaters will just wash pesticides away.
Then, there is COVID-19, a pandemic so severe that it has brought the world to a standstill. In Pakistan, the outbreak is just getting started, with hospitals already being overwhelmed. A normal monsoon may not impact the management of the pandemic. However, outbreaks of diseases, both waterborne and vector-borne, often occur in Pakistan during monsoon rainfall and if even mild epidemics happen now alongside Coronavirus, our healthcare system could be catastrophically overwhelmed. Other routine problems created by the monsoon, such as landslides, could have a magnified impact when the country is being ravaged by a pandemic. If the monsoon season ahead turns out to be stronger than normal and causes major flooding in Pakistan, then the Coronavirus could become vastly more disastrous. Floods can displace people, compelling them to move from place to place and crowd together in dense numbers while being transported, living in refugee camps, or huddling wherever dry land is found. Quarantine and social distancing thus become impossible, a situation that makes the virus spread freely. Furthermore, floods tend to destroy and disrupt livelihoods, so people are compelled to work as much as they can during and after flooding in defiance of traditional COVID-19 countermeasures. Floods and severe weather can also deprive infected people of access to medical treatment and disrupt all our efforts to fight COVID-19.
The coalescing of circumstances described above creates the unprecedented crisis Pakistan faces this monsoon. Severe flooding, a pandemic, and a locust upsurge happening all at the same time can be overwhelming for the country to handle. When combined, each hazard can also multiply the impact of the other. Lockdowns to fight Coronavirus can be extremely harmful to the economy and deprive working-class Pakistanis of livelihoods. Destruction of agricultural harvests by locusts makes such conditions worse, so that people either starve even more or work ever more like the Orwellian horse. Flooding also fosters hunger by either destroying food or blocking access to it. When flood waters recede, what little agricultural harvest people have left could be wiped out by locusts. And of course, if the nation goes into overdrive, working to combat the conventional threats of locust and flooding, it will be the very opposite of going into lockdown. The latter seems increasingly to be the only option Pakistan has left to prevent catastrophic COVID-19 casualties. While the unique set of current conditions could worsen the consequences of the incoming monsoon season, it appears the summer monsoon itself is also likely act in an extreme manner. Early in June, Pakistan’s meteorological department predicted that the upcoming monsoon rainfall will be 10 percent higher than normal. More recently, global forecasters have suggested a high chance that a La Nina, which usually has the effect of intensifying the monsoon, will form in the Pacific in the upcoming months.
We also have to look at the fact that 2020 seems to be a year of extreme weather. It began in the wake of extreme wetness in Africa and extreme dryness in Australia, causing the respective locust upsurge and catastrophic bushfires. Since then, widespread floods in east Africa continue, the Atlantic hurricane season has had a record-early start, Siberia is seeing record heat waves, the strongest Saharan dust cloud in 50 years has crossed the Atlantic to America, and China is experiencing its biggest Yangtze River floods since 1940, to name a few anomalies. The entire globe’s weather is acting up and it is reasonable to expect that the Asian summer monsoon will join in. The next three months are an extremely dangerous time for us. We may be facing one of the greatest crises in Pakistan’s history, with ramifications extending into our long-term future. We don’t have much time to prepare anymore. We should expect the worst and urgently spring into action however we can. Our government will have to change its course and make headway in its disaster management efforts if we are to ensure Pakistan’s long-term well-being.
—The writer is Director at Pakistan’s People Led Disaster Management.
