Why are the deadly floods continuing Pakistan

When the villagers carried the bodies of two children, dirt, the large crowd looked irresistible.

They gathered in a small village in the area of ​​Slobbi Hyber Saven after the flash of the flood washed away several houses, grabbing dozens under constipation.

Some of them watched the dead children, others continued their conversations, and the rest – together with several rescue staff and soldiers – continued to look for those who survived with their instruments and bare hands.

There were no tears, there was no panic. But there was anger.

For many village residents, this was that the floods came without warning.

“Why didn’t the government have warned us before?” were preferred moods.

But there was also anger with the alleged lack of support for local officials.

“We need the right equipment to fulfill this salvation,” Arif Khan told us, who helped dig bodies.

“There were about 15 houses here, we need an excavator.”

Although the emergency teams and the military were there to help, Arifa’s equipment asked for a few hundred meters, unable to walk on the flooded road.

“An ambulance, medicine and excavators are very strongly on the way,” Nazar Ahmad, authorized by Mardan, told us. But they were still unable to get to the village from the scale of the flood. Throughout the day, the villagers continued to remove the garbage as well as bodies.

Such scenes in Pakistan are not new. Monsoon rains have killed about 800 people across the country since June.

In 2022, about 1700 people were killed by Mussane rains, which cost Pakistan $ 14.9 billion ($ 11.1 billion) in loss and $ 16.3 billion in the needs of restoration and reconstruction, the World Bank reports.

And only in June this year, at least 750 people across the country died.

So, if the story is repeated, why Pakistan can’t better protect himself from the onslaught of the flood?

Pakistan’s geography makes it extremely vulnerable to climate change – if the country has to fight not only heavy monsoon rains, but also extraordinary temperatures and drought. Its melting glaciers also created new lakes that risk glacier outbreaks.

These trends deteriorate from the climate change, according to Dr. Saida Fisal Said, the chief meteorologist in the Pakistani meteorological department (PMD).

“Monsoon rains are likely to increase in the coming decades, so this issue is not the only correction,” he says.

However, it is a bitter pill to many, given that Pakistan makes less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

There is a feeling that he pays a great price for “international sins”, says D -Ramjad Ali Khan, a member of the National Assembly of Highbrace Smoke, who advises the Chief Minister for Climate. His province is where most of the deaths are recorded during the monsoon this year.

These are the moods that are divided into a political spectrum. Former Federal Climate Minister, Senator Gray Rehman, recently claimed that “when life is lost in the south of the world, when Rivers breaks its banks, and when the livelihood disappears, there is no real money for climatic countries such as Pakistan.”

Some claim that the country is fighting how to spend its money.

Climate resistance is likely to always fight other priorities – such as defense – as shown this year’s federal budget.

Against the backdrop of the total reduction of the budget on the Ministry of Climate change, approximately $ 9.7 million (£ 7.6 million) decreased. Protection costs have reached about $ 9 billion (6.93 billion pounds).

Mrs. Rehman slammed the cuts and claimed that they were sending the wrong message. When the budget was announced, she asked, “If we do not see us in stability, why would others support us?”

The Ministry’s budget does not reflect the climate funding in Pakistan, says Ali Tawker Sheikh, a climate management expert.

According to the IMF agreement, the federal government has also allocated more than $ 2 billion in climates. However, Mr. Sheikh states that he includes some existing projects such as dam and hydropower.

He says in Baku’s budget, the sectors have more than 1000 unfinished development projects.

Without short -term climate change, early warning about these extreme weather events is a priority for the Pakistani meteorological department (PMD).

Extreme weather such as Cloudbursts is difficult to predict in advance. They are caused by a sudden rise in the humid, humid air, leading to a heavy and localized rain. In the last days, they crashed the villages.

But Dr. Said said that as long as they cannot be predicted in a few days, the general conditions that may lead to CloudBurst can be determined.

“If the PMD warns of great rainfall, all counties should start preparing,” says D -Raid, although he admits that PMD needs to improve his system.

“I’m not saying it’s perfect.”

Within the framework of the World Bank, PMD acquires new radars and automatic meteorological stations, as well as working to improve short -term simulation.

A big problem is to find out the word. Some of the worst episodes this summer occurred in rural and mountainous regions, where the network connection is very bad. The weather app or the social media accounts will not make these communities.

PMD conducts a test of new methods to bypass it together with the United Nations Development Program.

From the capital of Islamabad PMD can cause sirens installed in the glacial valleys in northern Pakistan, which are vulnerable to extreme floods of glaciers. But officials admit that this is not a silver bullet, as the damage has shown this year.

The part of the reason is that the most vulnerable communities live on the channel. While several laws such as the “River Protection Act”, which prohibits the construction of 200 feet (61 m) from the river or its tributaries – were adopted, people not only did not move, but also continued to build in these areas.

“You would have erased the villages,” says D -Khan, adding that people live on these rivers for decades, and the law is impossible to implement.

D -Khan claims that legislators did not consider the culture of these communities that rotate around the tribal elders, and that the Girgos – tribal councils – had to consult to persuade people to move.

He also claims that it is “next to the impossible” if alternative housing and shelters are not funded and built for these communities.

The construction law is also violated in urban areas. Pakistan Karachi’s commercial capital has recently been paralyzed by floods, and officials forced to declare a state holiday to combat the consequences.

So far, about 30% of the deaths of the monsoon season this year according to the destruction of houses, reports the National Disaster Management (NDMA).

“Nobody complies with laws. Every street becomes congested,” said Dr. Yasmin Larry, climate architecture expert.

Karachi is also a victim of his bad drainage system.

Although hundreds of them in the city, they either narrowed or were blocked by illegal construction.

The Minister of Housing Sindus, in which Karachi is the capital, says the search for a place to create new was the problem, and when they tried to remove shops or buildings that cover them, their attempts were blocked in court.

Said Gani added that the new, more punitive law was conducted by the closing of legal crevices, and also contain the officers of the Sinda construction body if they approve the construction of the rules.

If this reveals the cost of fragmented management, the federal level has been efforts to try to provide additional assistance to the international community.

Pakistan’s fighting economy relied on several international rescue. Consistent governments prioritized to seek international support for their climatic programs.

They have provided financing the World Bank and the United Nations, except for the loans of the International Monetary Fund over the years.

The iconic moment was at the COP27 Climate summit. The floods of 2022 were fresh in the minds of visitors, and the destruction affected 33 million people. Pakistan and others have pushed the creation of the loss and damage fund to help countries suffer from climatic disasters.

Inside the country, there were plans for the restoration of natural flood barriers. In 2023, the government launched a “national adaptation plan” aimed at creating a nationwide road map.

But it is still necessary to learn how all this will develop in practice, in the country that has seen so much political upheaval and change in government.

At the end of most of the conversations, whether with officials, climatic experts or victims of these extreme weather events, there is some hopelessness. “Poverty is the worst,” says D -R -Larry.

Without enough money, whether from the international community, the federal government or the provincial budget, it is difficult to comply with the decisions they preached.

The best early warning system, new houses on a safer land resistant to climate infrastructure-all this is funding and any progress has not yet prevented the hundreds of dead people this year.

“Everything from top is,” Dr. Larry explains. He says there was too much dependence on governments without sufficient results. If there is no means of financing these solutions in Pakistan, it claims, it should focus on learning the population and creating “poverty ladder” at the grassroots level.

It points to its work in thousands of villages, sharing knowledge of climatic houses, food security and planting.

At the same time, the monsoon season did not end this year – and no feeling of loss and grief.

Returning to the village in the Swabi area, there was a funeral for those who found, just a few meters from the rescue operation.

The prayers were drafted into unison when the country prepared for warnings of stronger rains, and the more danger they fight for protection.