These are the devastating effects that Pakistan’s deadly floods are having on the country.
Dubbed “the monster monsoon of the decade” by Pakistan’s climate change minister Sherry Rehman, torrential rains in the region have killed at least 982 people since June, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.
Every 24 hours, the agency lists hundreds of men, women and children who have been injured or killed by collapsing roofs, flash flooding or drowning.
“Pakistan is experiencing a serious climate catastrophe, one of the harshest in the decade,” Rehman said in a Twitter video. “We are, right now, at ground zero on the front line of extreme weather events in a relentless cascade of heat waves, wildfires, flash floods, multiple glacial lake outbursts, floods, and now the monster monsoon of the decade is wreaking non-stop havoc across the country.”
The unprecedented deluge, worse than Pakistan’s 2010 “superflood,” which affected 20 million people, has overwhelmed the country’s resources, prompting leaders to urge the international community to help with relief efforts.
One of the worst-affected provinces, Sindh, has requested 1 million tents for its displaced residents, Rehman told Reuters. But there are not enough tents and people are seeking shelter in makeshift shelters in schools and mosques, he said.
The streets are filled with stagnant sewage and the risk of waterborne diseases is high.
“This is clearly the climate crisis of the decade,” Rehman said. “It’s not our fault,” he added, noting that Pakistan emits less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Global warming is causing Pakistan’s 7,000 glaciers (the largest number outside the poles) to melt, causing glacial lake outbursts triggered by heat waves in the country.
This year, extreme weather events such as droughts, heat waves and floods are affecting all parts of the world.
In Africa, floods have taken a devastating toll on tens of thousands of people in Chad and the Gambia, while nearly 4.6 million children in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are threatened by severe malnutrition following a severe drought in the region, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Meanwhile, in Europe, falling water levels caused by drought are revealing underwater artefacts, while three ancient Buddha statues have resurfaced after water levels sank in China’s Yangtze River. And in Dallas, a summer’s worth of rainfall in one day wreaked havoc on the city in the midst of a Texas drought.
Climate disasters such as droughts are inextricably linked to human-induced climate change. The planet has already warmed 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880, according to NASA, and that’s making disasters worse. Stopping this vicious cycle will require dramatically reducing our dependence on climate-polluting fossil fuels.
