Raging floods have left one-third of Pakistan submerged and exposed to disease, demonstrating that government-level interventions to date have not been nearly enough in the face of climate change. To implement resilient disaster management in Pakistan, sources say the civil society, the private sector, and the academic community must all be mobilized alongside the government to prioritize a response to climate impacts. Some, including Shehbaz Sharif, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, argue that the international community must take a greater role in helping poorer nations deal with the carnage.
Most of Pakistan's 230 million residents live along the Indus River, a water system prone to flooding in July and August during the monsoon season. Further, Pakistan houses 7,200 glaciers, the most in the world outside of the polar regions. After extreme heat waves this summer led to unusually heavy glacial runoff, the resultant floods along the Indus River took the lives of 1,730 people. The UN Satellite Center estimates almost thirty-thousand square miles were flooded, of which nearly two-thirds were croplands.
As the water recedes over the coming months, more crises await the country. Stagnant waters are spurring water and vector-borne diseases. Food shortages are expected to arise from the floods’ destruction of 9.4 million acres of agricultural land and the loss of 1.2 million livestock. With already poor healthcare infrastructure and over 8,000 miles of damaged roads and bridges, it will be nearly impossible to reach many of the most affected communities.
Ahmed stands in the centre of the town of Khairpur Nathan Shah which had been totally submerged by ... [+]
TOPSHOT - A flood affected man walks over his collapsed mud house after heavy monsoon rains in ... [+]
“Vulnerable communities tend to experience the brunt of these climate exposures, and if we protect them, we will be making society as a whole more resilient,” said Amruta Nori-Sarma, assistant professor of Environmental Health at Boston University School of Public Health. ”By targeting interventions to try and reduce the health impacts of climate change on those most vulnerable communities, we’re naturally going to make everybody more resilient in the face of climate change.”
”By targeting interventions to try and reduce the health impacts of climate change on those most vulnerable communities, we’re naturally going to make everybody more resilient in the face of climate change.”
In Pakistan, the Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives led a Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) that estimates that 20.6 million people require humanitarian assistance, nearly 7 million children need urgent access to nutrition services, and 5.5 million people have no access to safe drinking water. The PDNA states that total damages and economic losses exceed $30 billion, and reconstruction and rehabilitation costs are over $16 billion. For a country with limited resources, it will be a heavy burden for Pakistan to overcome this amount of damage.
One aspect of the health impact Nori-Sarma is particularly focused on is the mental health burden. Nori-Sarma has found that rising temperatures increased rates of emergency department visits from 2010 to 2019 in the United States. “That was consistent across different mental health-related outcomes like substance use disorders, schizophrenia, and anxiety and mood disorders across adults of all ages. It was true among men and among women. This indicates to me that these rising temperatures have mental health impacts, regardless of where one lives, and regardless of background.”
In Pakistan, assessing physical health effects is a herculean task, and mental health impacts are nearly indeterminable due to the lack of and stigma around mental health services.
A girl sits on a cot as she crosses a flooded street at Sohbatpur in Jaffarabad district of ... [+]
Nori-Sharma also argues that mitigation and adaptation must be pursued in parallel. Though mitigation attempts to reduce further carbon emissions, extreme events will nevertheless still occur as the global climate system continues to adjust to the emissions of the last century. Adaptation - the process of learning to cope and adjust in the face of climate change - is therefore required to make communities more resilient.
Muhammad Uzair Qamar, associate professor in the Department of Irrigation and Drainage at the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan, hopes to adapt by first measuring the physical changes in the environment. He notes that there is a general lack of understanding about the impact of climate change on Pakistan. “Our agricultural system, which forms the backbone of our economy, depends on the flow of our rivers. There is no mechanism installed on our rivers that gives us an idea of the magnitude of how flows are changing over time. Our government needs to install these flow measurement mechanisms on the Indus River to have an idea of how the future will unfold and to communicate to our people what the impact of climate change will be.”
Qamar has developed a portable water monitoring system that he hopes will transmit live flow data across hundreds of kilometers from remote deployment sites. “We're developing a product that monitors two parameters: area of the channel and the velocity of the water flowing through the channel. Once we have these parameters, we can measure discharge/flow rate, and then transmit the data to a remote source.” He believes such instruments are the only possible way to predict natural disasters and improve the Pakistani public’s understanding of climate change.
Internally displaced flood-affected people take refuge in a camp at Kotri in Jamshoro district of ... [+]
Sidra Riaz, the founder of the Environmental Change Makers, is addressing the lack of awareness and education around climate change. Her mission is to explain that climate change permeates every facet of life in Pakistan- economic empowerment, health, food production, and water scarcity.
In addition to moving toward renewable energy, Riaz believes that the national institutional framework and research capacities in Pakistan need to be strengthened with every stakeholder taking responsibility, not merely one ministry of climate change charged with this duty.
“Climate change should be on the forefront of all political agendas, with a very proactive approach from the government. If this issue is left unchecked, the repercussions of our inaction and our negligence will wreak great destruction in Pakistan and millions of people will struggle even to subsist in the coming years,” said Riaz.
Riaz contends that Pakistan contributes less than half of one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, it has become a victim of climate injustice and should therefore be provided climate reparations. The climate reparations, Riaz said, would help to strengthen Pakistan’s institutional framework for building climate-resilient infrastructure. It would also defray the cost of restoration for the next ten years.
During the annual United Nations General Assembly, Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif warned the world of the destruction climate change has caused in his country and similarly called for climate justice.
“What happened in Pakistan will not stay in Pakistan. Hotspots like Pakistan fall in the ten most climate-vulnerable list of countries, but emit less than one percent of the greenhouse gasses that are burning our planet. It is therefore entirely reasonable to expect some approximation of justice for this loss and damage, not to mention building back better with resilience.”
Extreme weather events that are more frequent, severe, and longer lasting will continue to decimate countries, disproportionately and inordinately affecting vulnerable communities. In Pakistan’s environmental crisis, community-driven collaboration and decision-making are needed to drive sustainable and resilient environmental change and build a capacity to cope.
