Two years ago, Pakistan’s annual rainy season began like any other.
But this was no normal monsoon and no one could have predicted what was going to happen.
The country experienced its worst flooding in the summer of 2022, killing more than 1,700 people and affecting approximately 33 million. The World Bank estimates that damage and economic losses from the floods will exceed $30 billion.
“I helped with emergency relief efforts in the worst-hit provinces, including Sindh and Balochistan,” said Pervez Ali, policy adviser at Germanwatch and former coordinator of Fridays for Future Pakistan.
“Being with people in the floods and seeing them suffering the effects of water-borne diseases and traumatic experiences was hands down the worst experience of my life,” he recalls.
Mudassar Haider, a member of the GLF Asia Pacific project team, remembers hearing from his family about the floods that hit his home province of Sindh in 2005.
And in 2022, he saw the impact firsthand.
“Floodwaters rose to over 10 feet. [3 meters] “There was an explosion in front of our house,” he recalled. “It was a very frightening event for all of us.”
The two young activists now work with international organisations to prepare Pakistan and the world for future climate disasters.
“South Asia has always been highly vulnerable to floods during the monsoon season, but now we are seeing more severe floods, which is clearly a result of climate change,” Haider said.
According to Germanwatch’s Global Climate Risk Index, Pakistan was ranked 8th among the countries most affected by climate disasters between 2000 and 2019.
Climate scientists say the 2022 floods were mainly caused by a combination of rising temperatures and the La Niña weather phenomenon, which led to a sudden increase in rainfall and rapid melting of some of Pakistan’s 7,000 glaciers.
As a result, the five-day maximum rainfall in Sindh and Balochistan was about 75 percent stronger than it would have been in the absence of anthropogenic climate change.
How the floods changed Pakistan
The floods had a devastating impact on the country’s poorest and most vulnerable people, pushing between 8 and 9 million people into poverty.
Two years later, these communities are still recovering from the devastation.
“When the floods came, all our structures were destroyed – our fields, our houses, our schools,” Ali said.
“Right now, things are still recovering. Some schools damaged in the 2010 floods have yet to be repaired and it will probably take another 10 years or so to recover.”
Haider noted that most Pakistanis live in rural areas and the country’s economy is heavily dependent on agriculture, making it particularly difficult for small farmers to recover, he said.
“We were just about to harvest our crops when the floods came and we lost everything,” he said.
“Many farmers have had to finance their crops themselves and gone bankrupt unable to repay the interest. It can take years to get back on track.”
A report released last year by Islamic Relief found that more than a year after the floods, 40 percent of young children are stunted and rates of diarrhea, malaria and dengue fever have soared.
The disaster also took a major toll on mental health, with a recent study finding that almost half of survivors suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Ali said one of the most important yet overlooked issues currently is NELDS – non-economic losses and damages that affect quality of life and mental health.
“We also need to consider the psychological pressures and problems that will arise for families as climate change impacts communities,” he says. “These problems will continue well beyond the immediate emergency.”
“I foresee a very bleak future for the younger generation who are growing up in dire circumstances, with no idea what’s going to happen next summer or the summer after that.”
Ali says his experience with frequent floods has left him scarred.
“As a child, I hated summer because when it rained, everything flooded, schools were closed, playgrounds were closed, and I knew we had to move somewhere else,” he recalls. “It was traumatic.”
Provided by RedCircle
Calls for Climate Justice
At the time, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said how the world responded to the Pakistan floods would be a “litmus test” for climate justice.
Pakistan is the world’s fifth most populous country but produces just around 0.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, less than the UAE, which has 25 times the population.
“Developed countries need to realise that it is we who will face the consequences of their actions,” Haider said.
Many Pakistanis are already preparing for the worse: Haider said people back home were starting to build their homes at least 1.5 metres above ground level to prevent them from flooding again.
“We are being affected, displaced and losing economic value. The world must contribute to the development of Pakistan, India and other countries that are highly affected by climate change.”
Is this a sign of things to come?
So how can countries like Pakistan adapt and build resilience to the climate crisis? Ali believes that governments and local communities need to tackle this problem on multiple fronts.
“There are gaps that need to be filled. There are gaps in financial assistance to countries that are on the front lines of climate change. There are gaps in policy development. There are gaps in indicators that need to be considered as serious targets, not just written down and then nothing is done. And there are gaps in capacity building at many levels.”
Ali also stresses the importance of ensuring local communities form a key part of the solution.
“If someone from Islamabad or Germany comes and explains the situation to the locals and tells them how to address the problems, they may not understand,” he says.
“It’s important to think about how we get information out. We need to be more inclusive.”
Haider points out other alarming impacts of the climate crisis in Pakistan, including deforestation, loss of biodiversity and rising sea levels.
“In some coastal areas, rising sea levels will make the land so saline that farmers will be unable to cultivate it, eventually rendering villages uninhabitable,” he said.
“This means people are leaving rural areas and migrating to already densely populated cities like Karachi, creating further challenges.”
Unfortunately, this trend isn’t likely to change anytime soon. Modelling suggests that: Almost 2 a million Pakistani Climate disasters could force internal displacement by 2050.
The rest of the world is not immune to these struggles, Ali warned.
“Today it’s us, but tomorrow it’s the developed countries – the emitters.”
“We’re like a movie trailer. You see bits and pieces of what’s going on, but when you watch the whole movie, you see the destruction happening all around us.”
