Pakistan — As the mortality toll from the “monster monsoon” season of 2022 surged past 1,000, Pakistani authorities made an urgent plea for international humanitarian relief. Hundreds of thousands of people are now without a place to live due to flooding brought on by weeks of heavy rain in the south Asian country, which was already suffering from a severe economic crisis.
Sunday night, Pakistan’s foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari issued a dire warning, predicting that the nation will need financial assistance due to the floods brought on by this year’s exceptionally heavy monsoon rains as well as meltwater flowing down from Pakistan’s glaciers.
“This kind of devastation is unheard of. It’s quite hard for me to express, “said he. It is too much to handle. After intense monsoon rains in Pakistan’s Charsadda region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, a father pulls his little kid across a flooded area on August 29, 2022. Getty Images/ABDUL MAJEED
Out of Pakistan’s 220 million inhabitants, Bhutto-Zardari estimates that at least 30 million have been impacted by the floods.
Floods claimed lives and destroyed houses.
At least 1,061 people have died as a result of the deluges that started in mid-June with the seasonal monsoon rains, and the death toll is expected to go up further because many communities in the mountainous northern regions are still cut off by rivers that have been swollen by floodwaters and washed away roads and bridges.
In the north, where difficult flying conditions result from steep slopes and valleys, army helicopters were battling to rescue civilians cut off by rushing floods and transport them to safety.
When the monsoon rains aren’t falling, the area is a beautiful tourist destination. However, several of the area’s rivers have broken their banks, destroying dozens of structures, including a 150-room hotel that collapsed into a raging torrent.
Tens of thousands Pakistani civilians in the northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province were forced to evacuate their homes and seek refuge in relief camps put up in public buildings due to the swelling Swat River. However, Kamran Bangash, a spokesman for the province administration, said that many evacuated residents were just camped out on roadside ditches, frantically seeking higher ground to escape the water.
According to Bangash, only communities in the districts of Charsadda and Nowshehra had almost 330,000 residents evacuated. Balochistan and Sindh, two provinces in the south, have also experienced severe destruction.
Bhutto-Zardari said at least 1 million tents were among the aid items needed most urgently, to temporarily house those left homeless by the inundations.
“Climate catastrophe” leaving Pakistan underwater
By the time the “monster monsoon” flooding of this year subsides, a third of Pakistan might be under water, according to the country’s climate minister. Pakistan has three to four bouts of monsoon rains on average every season, but this year has been particularly brutal. The nation is now experiencing its ninth stretch of nonstop rain this summer.
Sherry Rehman, a senator from Pakistan and the Federal Minister for Climate Change, said on Sunday that “We might very easily have a quarter or a third of Pakistan flooded.”
She said that a “major climatic disaster” was occurring in Pakistan.
“The monster monsoon of the decade is spreading non-stop devastation across the nation,” said Rehman. “We are at the moment at the front line of the severe weather events, in an unending cascade of heat waves, forest fires, flash floods, repeated glacial lake eruptions, flood disasters.
She issued a warning that the effect of the torrential rain will be exacerbated since the glaciers in Pakistan’s mountainous north were melting more quickly due to global warming. More glaciers than any other country outside of the polar regions may be found in Pakistan, 7,532.
Officials say Pakistan is unfairly bearing the consequences of irresponsible environmental practices elsewhere in the world. The country ranks eighth on the Germanwatch organization’s global climate risk index, which lists countries deemed to be the most vulnerable to extreme weather caused by climate change.
“Pakistan has been facing increasingly devastating climate-induced drought and flooding. Despite producing less than 1% of the world’s carbon footprint, the country is suffering the consequences of the world’s inaction,” the IRC’s Country Director in Pakistan, Shabnam Baloch, said in a statement on Monday.
But domestic problems aren’t helping matters. Corruption, poor planning and the flouting of local regulations mean thousands of buildings have been erected in areas prone to seasonal flooding.
A call for help
Bhutto-Zardari said Sunday that the floods would take an even greater economic toll on Pakistan than the coronavirus pandemic, and he made it clear that help was needed as soon as possible.
Much of this year’s crops have been wiped out, he noted, and in a nation where so many people rely on agriculture as a means of providing for themselves and their families, “obviously, this will have an effect on the overall economic situation.”
The non-profit organization International Rescue Committee declared a fundraising emergency and said that more than 30 million people were “in urgent need” as a result of the floods.
“The monsoons have devastated 495,000 dwellings, 130 bridges, and 3,000 kilometers of road since mid-June. With even more monsoon rains expected in the following weeks, Sindh and Balochistan provinces have had 784 and 500 percent more rain than usual, respectively. The IRC predicts a rapid rise in food insecurity and a serious effect on the economy as a result of the more than 4 million acres of crops devastated and the over 800,000 cattle slaughtered “said the relief group.
Pakistani authorities expressed similar worries and made it plain that they would want assistance from anybody who could provide it.
The foreign minister, Bhutto-Zardari, said that she expected “not just the Entire Monetary Fund, but the international community and international institutions to properly realize the amount of destruction.”
On August 29, 2022, humanitarian supplies from the United Arab Emirates is discharged at Nur Khan Airbase in the Punjab region of Pakistan to aid those affected by floods brought on by a “monster monsoon” season. Pak Ministry of Information and Broadcasting handout
The governments of the United States and the United Kingdom have each given around $1 million in emergency help, and on Monday, aircraft from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates were bringing the first foreign supplies into Pakistan.
Bhutto-Zardari said he hoped the flooding emergency would persuade the IMF’s board this week to release $1.2 billion as part of the next installments in an already-running national bailout program from the global rescue fund. Pakistan already faced high inflation, a depreciating currency, and a cash deficit.