Environmental and climate experts in Pakistan believe that the severity of the devastating floods currently ravaging the country is a result of climate change and warn that it is just a taste of what’s to come and that future weather changes will be harsher and more extreme.
Unprecedented flooding hit Pakistan recently, claiming more than 1 000 lives and submerging almost a third of the country under water, destroying vital infrastructure, drowning crops and affecting 33 million people.
India’s Financial Express reported today that the disaster had forced the government and the UN to launch a Flash Appeal this week for $160 million (R2.72 billion) in assistance to help the country overcome the impact of the floods.
Pakistan's Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, told the media at a press conference that Pakistan’s carbon emission footprint was negligible, but it was ranked at the eighth position among the countries exposed to the horrors of climate change.
Sharif said authorities had been assessing losses to the economy, which could run into billions of rupees.
Dr Seema Jillani, an environmental scientist in Karachi, warned: “What climate change does is, it throws surprises at us. What is happening in Pakistan and even in other parts of the world is the nightmare of climate change.”
The Financial Express reported that Dr Aamir Alamgir, an assistant professor at the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of Karachi, warned that ”what we have seen in Pakistan this monsoon season is just a beginning, because in years to come, the weather changes will be harsher and more extreme and we have to be prepared for this”.
Dr Alamgir also agreed that there were clear links between climate change and extreme weather conditions. “In Pakistan, and particularly in Karachi, we have not seen such continuity in torrential rains and flash flooding that we are seeing now,” he said.
“This is what has happened in Pakistan this year also. No one was really prepared for the heavy rains and floods and it has led to untold destruction, damaged infrastructure and left thousands homeless and sick,” he said.
The 2020 Inform Risk Index study noted that Pakistan had “some of the highest disaster risk levels in the world, ranked 18 out of 191 countries”. Experts believe that climate change has put Pakistan’s income, housing, food, and security in danger, and that the government needed to take urgent measures to combat the detrimental effects of climate change.
Dr Moazzam Ali Khan, director of the Institute of Environmental Studies, noted that in developing countries like Pakistan, the extreme weather changes brought about by climate change, had become an issue of development and, ultimately, an issue of better governance.
“Good governance is essential to deal with the effects of climate change, and we are witnessing this in our country from one corner to another,” he said.
According to Dr Alamgir, the floods would result in severely reduced “agricultural productivity, increased variability of water availability, increased coastal erosion and seawater incursion, and an increased frequency of extreme climatic events”.
Islamabad-based Regional Lead for South Asia and the Middle East for Climate Analytics, Dr Fahad Saeed, blamed climate change for the floods, explaining that a recent study on the heatwave that hit Pakistan and India in March and April this year, found that climate change was responsible for those heatwaves as well.
“So based on that study, we can say that climate change is likely responsible for rain and flooding in Pakistan, but we also need further studies to prove it scientifically,” Saeed said.
“Pakistan is among the top ten countries worst hit by climate change and it should plan right now how to deal with future natural disasters which the changes in the environment can cause,” he said.
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