Islamabad/Lahore/Karachi, Sep 1: Pakistan’s top climate and environmental experts believe that the effects of global warming are throwing up surprises as they warned that the devastating floods in the country are just a beginning and weather changes will be harsher and more extreme in the coming years.
Pakistan is witnessing unprecedented floods that has claimed more than 1,100 lives, destroyed infrastructure and crops, and affected 33 million people or one-seventh of the country’s population. The natural disaster has forced the government and the United Nations to launch a Flash Appel this week for USD 160 million in assistance to help the country overcome the impact of the floods.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who met some foreign diplomats recently in Islamabad, said that more than 33 million people had been badly affected by the flash floods and torrential rainfalls. He said that Pakistan’s carbon emission footprint was negligible but it was ranked at the 8th position among the countries exposed to the horrors of climate change.
Related Posts:
Sharif said authorities have been assessing loss to the economy, which could run into billions of rupees.
“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,” warned Dr Seema Jillani, an environmental scientist in Karachi.
Dr Jillani and other experts like Dr Aamir Alamgir, an assistant professor at the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of Karachi, are working with the South Asian Network on Security and Climate Change – a study funded by International Alert.
“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 Jillani warned.
Dr Alamgir agreed that there were clear links between climate change and the 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.
He pointed out that the heat wave that hit Karachi some five years back was deadly because no one was prepared for it. Around 2,000 heat wave related casualties were reported at the time.
“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.
Dr Jillani said that climate change has already put several developing countries at risk and added that South Asia has grown more disaster-prone.
She explained that Pakistan is geologically located in a region where the effects of climate change are being felt fairly strongly and the problem of floods had started back in the 1960s.
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.
Health experts have warned that around five million people, including children, may fall sick due to the outbreak of water-borne and vector-borne diseases such as typhoid and diarrhea in the next four to 12 weeks.
Renowned public health expert and Vice-Chancellor of the Health Services Academy (HSA) Islamabad Dr Shahzad Ali has warned that an outbreak of acute watery diarrhea, and other water-borne diseases could kill hundreds of children and adults if immediate preventive measures were not adopted.
It is estimated that a disease outbreak would initially require medicines and medical supplies worth Rs 1 billion. (PTI)
