Pakistan Floods Linked to Humanity¡¯s Biggest Threat

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   Recent, rainstorms in Pakistan have killed nearly 1,500 people over the past three months. Pakistan has been greatly affected by the monsoon season, which is said to have been the most severe deluge in a decade, causing record-breaking floods in the country. There is shared concern across the world about the floods that have brought deadly chaos to all parts of Pakistan.

¡ã A family lost their house because of the flood. (Photo from Concern Worldwide)

   This climate disaster, regarded as Pakistan's worst-ever floods, has left a third of the nation’s land submerged and the homes of its people disappearing. According to the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA), more than 1,300 people have died across Pakistan since June, when the rainy season began earlier than usual. More than 3,000 kilometers of roads, 130 bridges, and 500,000 houses in the country have been lost or seriously damaged. The situation is getting worse. The spread of various waterborne infectious diseases threatens the health of the people. In addition, the 5,000-year-old UNESCO World Heritage Site "Archaeological Ruins at Moenjodaro" was seriously damaged in the floods. The Pakistani government has declared a state of emergency.

   In the midst of this seemingly endless nightmare, Pakistan's restoration process must proceed immediately. Ahsan Iqbal, Minister for Planning, Development, and Reforms, now estimates that the cost of restoration is well over $10 billion, and a complete recovery will take more than a decade. Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s Ministry of Climate Change, also called for international relief, calling the floods a “climate-induced humanitarian disaster.” In order to repair the damage done to the nation and its people, countries around the world are trying to raise much needed funding to transport relief supplies, but they are having trouble achieving their goals. To make matters worse, restoration is being delayed because of unstable political conditions in Pakistan.

¡ã The victims are struggling to escape the flood. (Photo from Yonhap News Agency)

   Understanding the root cause of this disaster is also important when addressing the problems being experienced in Pakistan. Floods caused by monsoons are not unusual in Pakistan due to uneven precipitation throughout the year. The country has a yearly monsoon season from June to September, which provides 65 to 75 percent of the nation’s annual water supply. However, climate emergency conditions were responsible for this year’s unprecedented ‘super flood.’ Pakistan faced record-breaking heat waves earlier this year that intensified the monsoon rainfall. This is because warm air holds more moisture and the high sea surface temperature increases evaporation. In accordance with a Reuters report published on September 1, “The country has received nearly twice as much rain than the 30-year average in the quarter through August this year….Sindh province, with a population of 50 million, was the hardest hit, getting 471 percent more rain than the 30-year average.” Officials in the Pakistan Meteorological Department also said that they are associating the heat waves with climate change.

   In addition, the intense heat is melting glaciers, causing flash floods. Melting glaciers in the northern mountain regions flow through the Indus River, which passes through major cities. The heat, however, caused massive amounts of water to flow into the river at once. As reported by local media, the level of glacier lakes increased by 40 percent in 20 days during the month of May. It should be noted that the British Meteorological Office estimated that this extreme heat is 100 times as likely due to climate change. In short, the climate crisis is the fundamental cause of the flooding in Pakistan, with the warming temperatures resulting in extreme monsoons and melting glaciers.

¡ã Flooded Houses and Living Spaces (Photo from Concern Worldwide)

   To find out how nations should best respond to the global climate disaster such as the floods in Pakistan, the Dankook Herald interviewed a representative from the Inter-religious Climate & Ecology Network (ICE NETWORK), which is working with Asian organizations, offering capacity-building programs for activists in Asia to encourage responsible action in advanced countries.

   ICE NETWORK emphasizes that civil societies in advanced countries, including South Korea, should urge their governments to increase the size of climate fund support for developing countries and provide subsidies instead of loans for projects to combat the effects of climate change. Developing countries have a more difficult time than advanced countries when it comes to accurately predicting the scale and characteristics of climate disasters and preparing for them. Thus, at the Copenhagen climate change conference, advanced countries acknowledged the need to fund mitigation projects in developing countries, but these efforts failed to offer the support the countries were seeking. ICE NETWORK assumes the reasons for the failure were that more than 70 percent of the funding was in the form of loans, while the climate adaptation projects demanded by developing countries were comparatively less supported. They also stressed that when discussing a vision for social transformation and how to realize it, consideration of the pursuit of economic growth and participating in everyday activities in civil society are necessary when responding to the problems of climate change.

   Pakistan is responsible for less than 1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Nonetheless, it is one of the most vulnerable countries to the climate emergency. Developed countries should acknowledge that they have benefitted from excessive greenhouse gas emissions in the past and take action. While the priority is to fix the immediate wreckage, it is also important to provide a foundation for addressing the damages long-term and preventing them from reoccurring in the future. Furthermore, every government should recognize the seriousness of the climate crisis and strictly limit greenhouse gas emissions. No one country alone can solve this terrifying global crisis.


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