It is two ways. Devastating rains and floods have broken records of all ties. The catastrophic flooding continues to cause widespread destruction in Pakistan, where 33 million people have now been affected, according to the government.
By ABDULLAH G ARIJO
The number of people who have died because of monsoon rain and flooding in Pakistan since mid-June now stands at over 1500, including scores of juveniles. The figure represents an increase of almost 300 deaths in the last week (flood list report).
“Pakistan is facing the worst humanitarian disaster of this decade and it has led to spectacular losses of lives, property, and livelihood,” the minister said. “The amount of water on the ground has inundated huge swathes of Pakistan, with 33 million affected, many stranded.”
A summer of torrential monsoon rains has affected millions, particularly around the Indus River. |
Sixty-six districts have been officially declared to be ‘calamity hit’ by the Government of Pakistan – 31 in Balochistan, 23 in Sindh, 9 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and 3 in Punjab.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) the situation remains dynamic, and many more districts have been affected; the number of calamity-declared districts is expected to rise as rains continue to fall.
Livelihoods are also being heavily impacted. According to UNOCHA, more than 793,900 livestock – a critical source of sustenance and livelihoods for many families – have died, of which some 63 percent are in Balochistan and 25 percent in Punjab. Around 2 million acres (810,000 hectares) of crops and orchards have also been impacted, including at least 304,000 acres in Balochistan, 178,000 acres in Punjab, and some 1.54 million acres in Sindh (Source: Flood Report).
Minister Sherry Rehman expressed the extremely high levels of rain were a result of “monster monsoon cycles”. Poor masses call it a natural disaster, while others call it severe mismanagement and high-level ignorance despite early prediction by the Mat department.
NASA Earth Observatory Reports “The worst flooding occurred along the Indus River in the provinces of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, and Sindh. The provinces of Balochistan and Sindh have so far this year received five to six times their 30-year average rainfall. Most of that arrived in summer monsoon rains.
Whatever this may be, the situation has unearthed the roots of masses including millions striving for food and shelter. There has been quite a good help from NGOs and national and international aid, but it is the right time to think and frame workable parameters including reforestation/afforestation to restore the biotic and abiotic factors of the ecosystem.
The current situation has not come overnight. We, as a nation have never paid attention to this terrible situation. As a matter of fact, Pakistan is not even a micro contributor of CFC gasses that deplete the ozone layer and ultimately become a source of glacier melting which produce enormous water that our river can’t hold due to capacity concern.
In the past few decades, there has been encroachment inside the riverine area and mass-scale deforestation, as the result of heavy floods, has added huge water into rivers that don’t capacitate to accommodate water. The effect of the monsoon rains has been compounded by the continued melting of Pakistan’s 7,000 glaciers. The country holds the most glacial ice found outside the polar regions. Climate warming and recent heat waves have precipitated
several glacial-outburst floods. In the rugged northern part of the country, the combined rain and meltwater have turned slopes into hill torrents.
Therefore, there is a dire need to address the issue at the national level and raise it at the international level or the poor Pakistani masses will have to pay the price for the commodity that we never produced to add to climate change.