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Deadly Floods Devastate an Already Fragile Pakistan


Across Pakistan, floodwaters ripped through mountain slopes, washed buildings off their foundations and rumbled through the countryside, turning entire districts into an inland sea. More than 1,100 people have died so far, and more than a million homes have been damaged or destroyed.

After nearly three months of relentless rain, much of Pakistan’s farmland is now submerged, raising the specter of food shortages during the potentially destructive monsoon season in recent history. country.

“We are using boats, camels, whatever means we can to deliver relief supplies to the areas,” said Faisal Amin Khan, a minister in the mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which has been hard hit. hardest hit areas. “We’re doing our best, but our province is hit harder now than it was during the 2010 floods.”

That year, floods killed more than 1,700 people and left millions homeless. At the time, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, described the disaster as worst thing he’s ever seen.

This summer’s crisis is the latest extreme weather event in a country often ranked as one of the most vulnerable to climate change. Pakistan this spring begins to experience a period of intense heat, record drought, Scientists conclude 30 times more likely to occur due to human-caused global warming. Now much of the country is underwater.

While scientists can’t say yet how much current rainfall and flooding may have been made worse by climate change, the researchers agree that in South Asia and elsewhere, global warming is increasing the likelihood of severe rain. When it lands on an area that is also facing drought, it can cause special damage by causing strong swing between too little water and too much, too quickly.

“If that rainfall were distributed seasonally, it probably wouldn’t be that bad,” said Deepti Singh, a climate scientist at Washington State University in Vancouver. Instead, powerful cloudbursts are destroying crops and washing away infrastructure, with huge consequences for vulnerable societies, she said. “Our system is not designed to manage that.”

Pakistan has been beset by soaring food prices as well as political instability, which has shaken the government at a crucial moment in leadership. The former prime minister, Imran Khan, was forced to leave office in April and this month has been charged under anti-terrorism law in the midst of a power struggle with the current leadership.

In the port city of Karachi, Afzal Ali, a 35-year-old garment factory worker who earns just over $100 a month, said on Monday that prices for basic food items such as tomatoes have quadrupled in the past year. the past few days since the rain got heavier. again. “Things have become expensive because of rising gasoline prices, and the recent floods will make the situation worse,” he said.

On Monday, Pakistan’s Finance Minister, Miftah Ismail, was quoted by local news agencies as saying that flooding and the accompanying rise in food prices could prompt the government to reopen certain trade routes to India. Degree to ease supply problems despite persistent tensions between the two countries.

India itself has been hit hard by drought this year, which has resulted in a significant reduction in food exports. That decision has added to fears of a protracted global food crisis, partly due to sharp cuts in supplies of wheat and fertilizer following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a major wheat producer. .

Pakistan’s compound economic and political crises – exacerbated by economic stagnation in the pandemic era and weakened currency – will be followed by this year’s floods. Ahsan Iqbal, the country’s planning minister, said he estimated the damage at more than $10 billion and that it would take the better part of a decade to rebuild the country.

Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s climate change minister, called the floods a “climate-driven humanitarian disaster” and called for international aid. Only about $50 million was allocated to Pakistan’s Climate Change Department in this year’s budget, reflecting a cut of nearly a third as a result of the government’s attempt to cut spending.

One business owner hoping for government support is Muhammad Saad Khan, the owner of Riverdale Resort, a hotel along the steep banks of the Swat River in the Hindu Kush mountains near the border with Afghanistan. The hotel car park and part of the main building were washed away over the weekend.

He said: “The flow of the river was so high that water flooded the rooms even though the hotel was built far from the river and at a high altitude. “And we really are the lucky ones.”

Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority says 162 bridges have been damaged by floods this year and more than 2,000 miles of roads have been washed away. Abrar ul Haq, president of the Pakistan Red Crescent, says the combination of flooding and high temperatures means “the worst is yet to come” as conditions are perfect for the spread of diseases through water way.

Some have argued that Pakistan’s low level of resilience and ongoing need for disaster aid are not only a matter of poor governance but also of historical injustices. A protracted debate over the obligation of rich, polluting nations to help poor, developing nations deal with climate change has become a pivotal point in the debate. global climate negotiations.

Countries like Pakistan are much less industrialized than richer countries like the United States or Britain, which have colonized Pakistan. As a result, over time, Pakistan and other countries emit only a tiny fraction of the greenhouse gases that are warming the world, but they suffer heavy losses and also pay the price of modernisation. costly to limit the current pollution.

Nida Kirmani, a professor of sociology at the Lahore School of Management Sciences, said: “Any flood relief given should not be seen as ‘aid’, but as compensation for injustices. accumulated over the past few centuries.

The summer monsoon is central to life in South Asia, where a relatively reliable rainy season is essential for agriculture to thrive in an area of ​​more than a billion people. But scientists expect more of this seasonal rain to happen dangerous, unpredictable explosion as the planet continues to warm, largely for the simple reason that warmer air holds more moisture.

Noah S. Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at Stanford University, said that when the right atmospheric elements combine to produce heavy rainfall, more water falls from the clouds than it does. with before greenhouse gas emissions started warming the planet. studied the South Asian monsoon.

This is true even though the average rainfall at the peak of the rainy season in central India, which scientists call the monsoon “core”, has decreased somewhat between 1951 and 2011, Dr. Diffenbaugh and others His colleague discovered in a Research 2014. The reason for this apparent “paradox,” he said, is that the monsoons have become more erratic: Stronger downpours alternate with longer-lasting dry spells. Instead of steady rains that reliably nourish crops, more rainfall comes intermittently.

In the process, the extreme shift between periods of drought and hurricanes may become part of a broader cycle of economic and social pressures.

“Floods are incredibly destructive and affect so many people in a short period of time,” said Jumaina Siddiqui, senior program officer for South Asia at the American Institute of Peace. “But drought, food insecurity, inflation – these are climate-related disasters that are happening across the board, before, during and after these floods.”

Zia ur-Rehman in Karachi, Pakistan, contributed reporting.



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