Climate Change: Pakistan Requires Massive Assistance to Recover From Catastrophic Floods

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan is dealing with the aftermath of the worst floods in the country's history.  Over a thousand Pakistanis are dead. About 33 million people in two southern provinces are homeless. Sindh is inundated with 784% of normal rainfall so far this year. Balochistan has seen 522% of average rainfall. Both provinces suffered their worst ever heatwave prior to this unprecedented deluge. Nearly a million livestock have been lost, over two million acres of farmland is underwater and 90% of the crops in Sindh and Balochistan have been damaged. This is a massive humanitarian crisis. Pakistan can not deal with it alone.

Pakistan Flood 2022 Map. Source: DW

Satellite Image of Qambar, Sindh Before/After Floods 2022. Source: ...

Satellite Image of Shikarpur, Sindh Before/After Floods 2022. Source: NASA

Balochistan and Sindh Worst Affected by Monsoon22. Source: The Econ...

Pakistan's population is about 2.6% of the world population. The nation contributes less than 1% of the global carbon emissions. It lacks the resources needed to deal with the consequences of this man-made disaster. The Industrial Revolution in Europe and the United States was fueled mainly by fossil fuels such as coal and oil believed to be responsible for climate change.  The following map from Professor Jason Hickel shows that the countries in the global north are the biggest polluters while those in the global south are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. 

Climate Injustice: Low Emitters Global South vs Big Polluters in In...

Average Annual Cost of Floods in Vulnerable Countries. Source: Bloo...

Comparison of 2022 and 2010 Floods in Pakistan. Source: WWF

It will take hundreds of millions of dollars to provide immediate relief to 33 million people, followed by tens of billions of dollars in assistance to rebuild the lives and livelihoods and the infrastructure destroyed by this catastrophe. Pakistan's gross capital formation is only 15% of its GDP. Among the world’s top 20 economies by population, only Egypt has a lower rate of gross capital formation than Pakistan, according to Bloomberg. It is time for the rich industrialized world to help developing nations such as Pakistan to deal with the massive impact of climate change. 

Low Gross Capital Formation in Pakistan. Source: Bloomberg

All Pakistanis and non-Pakistanis need to pitch in with donations to help finance immediate disaster relief activities. Beyond that, Pakistan will have to be helped by international experts to build disaster preparedness capacity. The new housing and infrastructure will have to be funded and built to ensure its resilience in future climate disasters which are likely to occur more often with greater intensity. There is an urgent  need to prepare western and multilateral financial institutions to deal with such climate catastrophes in developing nations. Mechanisms also need to be put in place to provide and manage funding of these projects in a transparent manner. 

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[Riaz Haq]

Monthly December 2022
ECONOMIC UPDATE & OUTLOOK Pakistan

https://www.finance.gov.pk/economic/economic_update_December_2022.pdf

The government has decided to include
transgenders in the Benazir Kafalat
programme for the first time to mobilize
this marginalized community, so that the
maximum number of transgender
persons could benefit from this policy.
PPAF through its 24 Partner
Organizations has disbursed 41,369
interest free loans amounting to Rs 1.70
billion during the month of November,
2022. Since inception of interest free loan
component, a total of 2,142,190 interest
free loans amounting to Rs 78.54 billion
have been disbursed to the borrowers.
During January-November 2022 Bureau
of Emigration and Overseas Employment
has registered 762,767 emigrants and
71055 emigrants during November, 2022
for overseas employment in different
countries.

According to WHO, cases of malaria,
cholera, acute watery diarrheal diseases,
and dengue fever are declining in most of
the flood-affected districts. Overall,
malaria cases have reduced to around
50,000 from over 100,000 confirmed
cases in early October. Malaria cases
have declined by 25% in Balochistan, 58%
in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and 67% in
Sindh provinces. However, high malaria
and cholera cases are still being reported
in some pocket districts in Sindh and
Balochistan where standing water
remains. In November 2022, around 70
suspected cases of Diphtheria were
reported from the flood-affected
provinces of KP, Sindh, and Punjab.
There are about 1.6 million children with
Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) across
all the flood-affected districts who need
treatment with Ready to Use Therapeutic
Food (RUTF). About 400,000 of these
children are in the 34 Government High
Priority Districts (GHPD). Bridging the
nutrition budget gap for an aggressive
sector-wide response is therefore very
critical. (OCHA, Flood situation report on
Pakistan, December, 06, 2022).

[Riaz Haq]

Monthly December 2022
ECONOMIC UPDATE & OUTLOOK Pakistan

https://www.finance.gov.pk/economic/economic_update_December_2022.pdf


Real Sector:
For Rabi season 2022-23, wheat crop
has been sown on an area of 20.77
million acres . The input situation is 1
expected to remain favorable due to
incentives announced in Kissan Package
2022 that will boost agriculture
productivity. The better input situation is
expected to increase crops production in
Rabi season. According to IRSA the
irrigation water supply recorded at 6.32
MAF for November 2022 against the last
year's supply of 5.50 MAF, increased by
0.82 MAF.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) recorded
at 23.8 percent on a YoY basis in
November 2022 as compared to 26.6
percent in the previous month

[Riaz Haq]

Can Pakistan break the cycle of destruction in flood rebuilding?

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/02/03/asia-pacific/pakistan-...

Past lessons
In 21 major floods between 1950 and 2011 — almost one flood every three years — Pakistan lost about $19 billion, according to an Asian Development Bank (ADB) study on devastating floods in 2010 that caused damage of about $10 billion.

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GOZO, PAKISTAN – It is nearly five months since floodwaters swept away Muhammad Fazal’s general store in southern Pakistan. Today, he is rebuilding his shop on taller, sturdier foundations — hopeful he will be better prepared the next time floods hit his village.

Fazal, 28, who borrowed the money for the construction work from a nonprofit organization, counts himself among the lucky ones — despite his 400,000-rupee ($1,495) loss — as many Pakistanis struggle to recover from last year’s devastation.

“I’ve raised the level of my shop and I’m rebuilding it better,” he said in his village of Gozo in Dadu, a densely populated district of Sindh province that was hard hit by the ruinous nationwide floods.

More than 1,700 people were killed and 8 million were displaced by the flooding, which also destroyed about a million homes and businesses across the country of 220 million people, disaster management officials say.

About five million people — mostly in Sindh and the southwestern province of Balochistan — are still exposed to floodwater months after monsoon rains and melting glaciers caused the disaster.

With waters still receding, international donors pledged more than $9 billion in Geneva last month to help the cash-strapped South Asian country recover and rebuild.

Pakistan, which is mired in a deepening economic crisis, had sought funds to cover around half of a recovery bill amounting to $16.3 billion.

Now, it aims to use the money to implement its Resilient Recovery, Rehabilitation, and Reconstruction Framework, dubbed 4RF, a recovery strategy that sets out to build long-term climate resilience and adaptation.

That will mean boosting its flood defenses to prevent a repeat of the loss of lives, livelihoods and infrastructure, and government officials say swift action is vital as climate change impacts gather pace.

“Developing countries like Pakistan face an accelerated onset of climate disasters before we can rehabilitate. What if this summer brings fresh horrors? We are in a race against time,” the country’s climate change minister, Sherry Rehman, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month.

Past lessons
In 21 major floods between 1950 and 2011 — almost one flood every three years — Pakistan lost about $19 billion, according to an Asian Development Bank (ADB) study on devastating floods in 2010 that caused damage of about $10 billion.

[Riaz Haq]

Can Pakistan break the cycle of destruction in flood rebuilding?

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/02/03/asia-pacific/pakistan-...


An additional nine million people risk being pushed into poverty on top of the 33 million affected by last year’s floods, the U.N. development agency said on Jan. 5, just before the Geneva conference.

This time, lessons must be learned, said Amir Ali Chandio, a political economy and human rights academic who recently retired from Sindh’s Shah Abdul Latif University, Khairpur.

Like many other experts, he says the loss of lives and property over the years has been aggravated by poor floodwater management at a time of rapid development and population growth.

“Natural waterways have been encroached upon. People have made their houses on waterways. Roads without bridges have also blocked the water path,” said Mustafa Mirani, chairperson of the Fisherfolk Forum civil society group.

Unchecked construction in flood-prone areas is an aggravating factor, said Ajay Kumar, an official with the Sindh Provincial Disaster Management Authority, but he said heavy rains “did the real damage” last year.

Beyond repairing the immediate damage, the flood response must be holistic and far-reaching if it is to succeed in building climate resilience, said Muhammad Ismail Kumbhar, a rural development consultant and agricultural education extension expert.

“We need a climate action plan, a climate youth policy, climate-smart agriculture and livestock. People should know how to be resilient in the face of climate change. An insurance policy for crops and livestock should be introduced,” he said.

He called for mapping of high-risk areas, and the opening of natural waterways. Houses in areas next to coasts or riverbanks, or in other flood-prone spots, should be built on raised platforms, and farmland should be rehabilitated.

The ADB report recommended beefing up flood forecasting and early warning systems and linking any efforts to build large reservoirs to cope with recent water and energy crises to flood management.

[Riaz Haq]

Can Pakistan break the cycle of destruction in flood rebuilding?

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/02/03/asia-pacific/pakistan-...

Transparency
Presenting the 4RF plan in Geneva, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the government would use “every penny” of the pledges to benefit flood-hit people, trumpeting the success of emergency measures including the distribution of cash grants to 2.7 million households.

The strategy details plans for thorough third-party auditing and mechanisms to ensure transparency and well-targeted spending.

About 90% of the commitments for the recovery will be rolled out as project loans over the next three years, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said after the Geneva meeting. The rest is aid.

Ensuring the money gets spent on the right projects is vital to the plan’s long-term success, said Malik Amin Aslam, a former aide to Pakistan’s prime minister for climate change.

“The efficacy of this funding will all depend on how transparently these funds are used to ensure they can be maximized for climate-compatible development,” said Aslam by phone.

While praising the plan, he said a more substantial chunk of the funding should be allocated to immediate and urgent relief for the millions of people still affected by the disaster.

Implementing the government’s strategy to develop “climate-resilient, sustainable and adaptive infrastructure” will only be possible if local officials are on the same page, said Ahmad Rafay Alam, an environmental lawyer.

“For this to work, we also need to capacitate local governments,” he said, noting that the $9 billion pledged by donors fell far short of the World Bank’s loss and damage estimate of $30 billion.

Resilience
Badly in need of immediate relief are people like Aziza, 25, a mother of six who lives in a small village in Dadu district.

The floodwaters destroyed the house that she and her husband managed to build after selling their buffalo, leaving them to salvage what they could from the wreckage, she said.

Now, all the family have for shelter is a one-roomed thatched hut perched on an islet surrounded by stagnant water. There is not even a toilet, and Aziza and her husband barely earn enough to buy food — let alone building materials.

When her neighbor Allah Wadhaya’s wife went into labor, they had to travel 20 kilometers by boat in floodwater from their village to the town of Johi.

The roads are no longer under water, but life is far from back to normal, said Wadhaya, a brick laborer.

“There isn’t much labor yet for us because there’s still floodwater standing in villages and fields. The relief packs we get aren’t enough and I’ve sold off whatever little gold I had,” he said, standing next to the ruins of his mud-brick home.

In several places, international aid organizations and local NGOs are supporting climate-resilient house reconstruction.

In the village of Pehlwan Khan Khosa in Sindh’s Jamshoro district, a project funded by the International Labour Organization paid villagers to rebuild their flood-ravaged homes.

HANDS Pakistan, a nonprofit, has helped people rebuild about 90,000 flood-resistant houses since 2012, training masons and providing technical support.

“Having tapered roofs, 80% of the houses we helped people build survived the (2022) flood,” said Anis Danish, chief services Executive at HANDS, showing off models of specially designed houses and bricks at his office in Karachi.

“Now we have to go for resilience religiously,” he said. “We need to break the cycle of destruction.”

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan is at risk of default
A balance of payments crisis is tipping a fragile economy over the edge


https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/02/07/pakistan-is-at-risk-of-de...

The floods and job losses are thought to have pitched between 8.4m and 9.1m more people into poverty, mostly in the countryside. In Dadu, an especially inundated district of Sindh, thousands are still languishing in tents. “Only those who had savings or outside help can afford to fix their houses”, says Rasheed Jamali, an aid worker. Foreign donors pledged $9bn in relief in January; less than $800m of a previous set of pledges had at that time arrived. With only half of Pakistan’s soggy fields sufficiently recovered to sow with winter wheat, much of the country is facing another lost harvest.

These political, economic and environmental crises are mutually reinforcing. Payments from the bailout programme agreed in 2019 were suspended a year ago after Mr Khan, facing a growing prospect of parliamentary defeat and ejection from office, reintroduced fuel subsidies. Mr Sharif’s government vowed to fulfil the fund’s conditions but backtracked in September when, panicked by the floods, it sacked Miftah Ismail, its pragmatic finance minister. His successor reversed some of his policies, prompting another suspension of payouts. “If the floods hadn’t happened I might have kept the job and we might have been OK,” Mr Ismail says.

Mr Sharif’s government seems to be bowing to the inevitable. In late January it stopped trying to prop up the rupee and raised fuel prices, as the imf had requested. If the current negotiations in Islamabad unlock the bailout funds, it might encourage other external creditors to extend credit lines or defer payments on existing loans. Unlike Sri Lanka, which owed a higher percentage of its debt to foreign creditors, Pakistan may be able to stabilise its position without its creditors being forced to accept a “haircut”.

Yet any relief is likely to be temporary. The current imf programme expires in June; Mr Sharif’s term will expire in August. A caretaker administration will then preside over what promises to be a two-month political vacuum before the scheduled elections. They will be messy. It is hard to think of Pakistan in such circumstances carrying out the additional reforms, including raising taxes and electricity tariffs, required to secure more imf funding. They would inflict more short-term pain on the country’s wretched people than even an astute Pakistani government might dare to. And especially if Mr Khan, currently nursing his wounds after a failed assassination attempt, has his way, the next government may be even worse than the current one.

[Riaz Haq]

SCALING-UP OF GLACIAL LAKE OUTBURST FLOOD (GLOF) RISK REDUCTION IN NORTHERN PAKISTAN

https://www.undp.org/pakistan/projects/scaling-glacial-lake-outburs...

Project Summary:
Due to rising temperatures, glaciers in Pakistan’s northern mountain ranges (the Hindu Kush, Himalayas and Karakorum) are melting rapidly and a total of 3,044 glacial lakes have developed in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). Of these, 33 glacial lakes have been assessed to be prone to hazardous glacial lake outburst flooding (GLOF). GLOF are sudden events which can release millions of cubic metres of water and debris, leading to the loss of lives, property and livelihoods amongst remote and impoverished mountain communities. Over 7.1 million people in GB and KP are vulnerable; in these areas, 26.7 percent and 22 percent of the population, respectively, are below the poverty line.

The Scaling-up of GLOF risk reduction in Northern Pakistan (GLOF-II) project is a continuation of the four-year ‘Reducing Risks and Vulnerabilities from GLOF in Northern Pakistan’ (GLOF-I) project. GLOF-I helped vulnerable communities prepare for and mitigate GLOF risks through early warning systems, enhanced infrastructure and community-based disaster risk management.

Objectives:
GLOF-II builds on the measures piloted by GLOF-I and aims to empower communities to identify and manage risks associated with GLOFs and related impacts of climate change, strengthen public services to lower the risk of disasters related to GLOF, and improve community preparedness and disaster response. The project will also support the development of sustainable options for livelihoods in project areas, with a particular focus on the participation of women in ensuring food security and livelihoods.

Expected results:
GLOF-II will scale up GLOF-I from its original two districts (one each in KP and GB) to cover 10 districts, benefiting 29 million people or 15 percent of the population of Pakistan. Expected results by the end of the project are:

At least two policies reviewed and/or revised to address or incorporate GLOF risk reduction.
In target communities, 95 percent of households able to receive and respond to early warnings and take the appropriate action.
At least 250 small-scale engineering structures established to reduce the effects of GLOF events on livelihoods, such as tree plantation, controlled drainage andmini dams.
Fifty weather monitoring stations to collect meteorological data in catchment areas; 408 river discharge sensors to collect river flood data. This data will inform hydrological modelling and help develop village hazard watch groups.
To improve food security and reduce flood risks due to deforestation and inefficient water use, 65,000 women will be trained in home gardening, 240 water-efficient farming technologies will be installed and 35,000 hectares of land will be reforested

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistani villages recover slowly from epic floods


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/03/pakistan-punjab-flo...

With houses still damaged and water scarce, farm families in south Punjab tend surviving animals and parched fields

RAJANPUR, Pakistan — Cradling his infant son in one arm, a village farmer brought out a wooden trough he had nailed together from broken boards. His brother poured grain into it. Hearing the sound, the family cow trotted across the yard and buried her nose in the feed. The little boy waved his arms, and everyone laughed.

Rajanpur, a rural district of southwestern Punjab province, sits at the edge of a vast fertile belt that has long been known as the breadbasket of Pakistan, growing much of its wheat, sugar, feed corn and cotton, as well as mangoes and green vegetables.

But seven months after the Indus River overflowed its banks and the picturesque Sulaiman Hills unleashed torrents of water amid heavy monsoon rains, decimated farm communities are still recovering from Pakistan’s worst natural disaster since its founding in 1947. Nationwide, more than 1,700 people died and over 30 million were displaced. More than a million farm animals also perished, swept away in fast waters or succumbing to hunger and cold.

In another hamlet nearby, two men on motorbikes unloaded heavy metal containers full of water, which they had filled at a town pump several miles away. Since the floods, the local water has remained too salty for either humans or farm animals to drink.

“It’s going to take a long time before things recover here,” said Mohammed Ali, a day laborer in his 40s who helps fetch the containers every morning. “It’s still hard to grow anything on the land. People have lost their homes and their belongings. But at least this way they can have some sweet water in the morning.”

Although most of the flooding affected other provinces, Rajanpur and next-door Dera Ghazi Khan were among 84 districts across the country to be declared “national calamity” areas. In Rajanpur alone, according to news reports and officials, 12 people were killed — including a woman bitten by a cobra that washed down from the hills. Another 3,000 were injured, 300,000 acres of cropland were ruined and 28,000 houses were damaged or destroyed, along with 425 schools, 16 hospitals and numerous bridges.

On a recent visit to several villages, the only access was along narrow, raised dirt tracks between endless fields. The surrounding landscape looked as if a tornado had roared through it erratically, leaving a few areas lush and green but turning many others into barren, lifeless patches of cracked brown earth that no ordinary plow could till.

Along the way, large puddles of dirty brown water sat stagnant, covered with green scum. A few sandpipers scuttled around the edges — shorebirds from afar that had arrived with the floods and remained behind afterward for reasons of their own.

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistani villages recover slowly from epic floods


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/03/pakistan-punjab-flo...


As the villages came into view, they appeared grim and silent at first. Many mud-brick houses and farm sheds were still in ruins. Roofs were missing, doorways were hung with tarps or jute tents, and piles of nearby rubble had not been moved. Children and baby goats scampered in dirt yards, but little else seemed to be happening.

Under a shady tree, Mohammad Asghar, 35, was tending to his most valuable possession, a brown and white dairy cow named Honesty. Unlike many of his skeptical neighbors, he had planned ahead when the first flood warnings came, walking her to a high paved road before the water rose and taking a supply of fodder as well. “I wanted to make sure nothing happened to her,” he said. “She gives me 3.5 liters [about a gallon] of milk every day.”

Planting and tending new crops, however, has proved to be far more challenging. Most of the farmers’ stored seeds and tools were washed away or ruined. The surrounding cropland was submerged for several months afterward, leaving a soggy, useless mess.

A variety of government and private agencies have brought help to the area since the floods, but the bulk of it was devoted to initial emergency rescues. As in many other parts of Pakistan, thousands of Rajanpur residents fled their flooded villages or were evacuated in boats, then marooned for weeks on elevated paved roads. Aid teams provided tents and blankets, food and water, medical and veterinary services, and other immediate needs.

“Our first priority was to save lives,” said Mohsin Issaq, the south Punjab coordinator for a private charity called Muslim Hands, which delivered food, supplies and medical aid to more than 14,000 stranded people. Now that most have returned home, he said, the group is focusing on permanent needs to sustain farming and daily life, such as water pumps and desalination kits. It also offers families a Quran if theirs was washed away or damaged. Every home needs to have one, he said. “It is an important cultural value.”

But long-term support for farm rehabilitation across millions of unusable acres is far more expensive than emergency food and medicine, and the floods struck at a time when Pakistan was already facing a long list of economic woes — rampant inflation, dwindling foreign reserves, record-low currency rates, and a heavy foreign debt burden that raised the prospect of financial default.

One estimate by Pakistani and U.N. officials put the total costs for flood damage recovery and reconstruction at $16.3 billion. Early international response was low, in part because of reports of aid misuse during Pakistan’s last major floods, in 2010. A conference in Geneva in January, however, donors from 40 countries and institutions, including the European Union, the United States and Saudi Arabia, pledged over $9 billion to help Pakistan recover from the floods, exceeding its request for $8 billion.

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistani villages recover slowly from epic floods


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/03/pakistan-punjab-flo...



Still, Abid Qaiyum Suleri, an environmental expert in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, noted in an essay in the News newspaper in January that millions of poor people in flood-affected areas feel “as helpless today … as they were yesterday,” with their land useless, their homes still in ruins and scant prospects for the future. Physical reconstruction, he added, “is only part of what is required for a dignified recovery for flood survivors.”

One determined farmer in Rajanpur, a man in his 60s named Hamidullah, decided to take a chance two months ago and plant wheat on his four acres of land. He said he felt lucky because he and his wife and children had been saved from the flood by clinging to their large male buffalo, who was heavy and able to swim through the rushing water to higher ground.

“I used to grow cotton and rice, but none of that can grow here now. The land is too dry and they need a lot of water,” he said. He pointed to his small patch of emerald green outside the village, surrounded by larger, barren ground. “So far it is coming along,” he said. “We lost everything; our beds, our cooking pots, our clothes. But we survived, because of our buffalo,” he said. “If this wheat crop does well, maybe I can rebuild our house.”