Monsoon on steroids
Issue 111 - 30 Aug 2022 (9-min read)
When I was in university in Lahore, which is in the central plains of Pakistan, there was a running joke. "There are two things that are sure to come out during a rainfall: bugs and Karachiites." And we, the people of Karachi, accepted this wholeheartedly. When monsoon is a one-hour event that happens once every two or three years, of course it’s celebrated. The joy only matched by a cricket victory, which too happened just as rarely.
This was the case 17 years ago but climate change has made rain a frequent visitor to Karachi, cricket victories not so much. And UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres is right. This year in particular has brought monsoon on steroids.
This week, The Global Tiller looks at the devastating floods that have hit Pakistan this summer and what caused them. What is the scale of the disaster, what is the scale of intervention needed and what are some reliable sources through which to send help to the flood victims.
The entire country suffered through a disastrous monsoon spell, with the provinces of Sindh and Baluchistan receiving the heaviest rainfall since 1961. To get an idea of just how much it differed from the usual, you should know that Sindh received 522% more rain than the normal downpour, Baluchistan received 469% more. Other parts of the country were no different — Gilgit-Baltistan had 99% more rain than usual, Punjab had 90% more and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had 31% more.
But monsoon rain isn’t the only source of water this year. Pakistan is home to over 7,200 glaciers — the highest concentration outside the polar region — and they are melting fast, making the rivers downstream swell to catastrophic proportions. If you have come across this video of River Swat, you should know that’s not just rain water but melted glacier too.
As a result, nearly one-third of the country is under water. The death toll has climbed up to 1,136, including four friends who waited on a rock for three hours until the gushing water swept them away. The entire province of Baluchistan has been cut off from the rest of the country with roads and train tracks washed away, and storms interrupting mobile and internet connectivity.
The rains have abated since a week now but the gushing water that brought down hotel buildings on river embankments in the north is now making its way down south, towards rivers that are already flowing above capacity and through villages that are already submerged in water.
There’s a lot of blame to go around for what’s happening in Pakistan — for rich countries whose intense carbon emissions have caused global warming at such scales and the lip service they pay in the name of climate reparations, and for the local government in Pakistan, who is criminally negligent in its lack of preparation for the rains each time and is woefully unprepared for the catastrophic fallout these floods will have.
We’d like to believe that climate change does not discriminate but that’s just not true. Natural disasters give breaks to the rich the same way our governments do, or more accurately, the rich have hoarded the tools that protect them from natural disasters and are not willing to share. When the residents of Nowshera evacuate their homes on an hour’s notice, the chief of that province waves merrily from a helicopter, the same one he couldn’t spare to rescue those young men waiting for help in the middle of the river. A feudal lord in Sindh washes his mud splattered feet with a bottle of mineral water as the villagers line up in front of him begging for food rations and money for reconstruction. Even I get to take pictures of my cat from the safety and dryness of my house as the country around me drowns.
This is a calamity that will not only be resolved by sending tents, food supplies and machinery to the flooded zones. There are already 33 million people displaced by these floods and over 50,000 have already arrived in Karachi to live in camps set up by the government, with an average of 4,000 displaced persons expected to arrive every day. Where will they be housed and how will they make money? Where will their children go to school and which hospitals will give them care when soon enough the flood waters will cause waterborne diseases?
The task ahead is huge and Pakistan will not be, and should not be expected to be, able to deal with it by itself. The rest of the world has to take responsibility and start walking the talk on climate reparations to cover the cost of rebuilding the lost infrastructure, and to prepare for the other climate events that are bound to happen in the future. Who knows, maybe if the price tag on climate inaction goes up, we would be moved to rethink the systems that are causing irreversible damage to our planet and its people.
Until next time, take care and stay safe!
Hira - Editor - The Global Tiller
Helping hand
If you are looking for ways to help Pakistan deal with the aftermath of these floods, here are some resources that you may find helpful:
You would recall from our previous issue on Effective Altruism that donations, while crucial in the early stages of a disaster, do not address the structural changes that are needed. No NGO or welfare group that can match the scale of impact that a government can have whether it is about collecting funds or about introducing policies that will bring long-term solutions. So at some point we should be thinking what are really some effective ways to make sure countries, like Pakistan, are prepared for these not-so-unprecedented disasters.
…and now what?
Climate change is a tough narrative to follow. That’s probably why not many movies are made about it. Its storyline is complex, the heroes unknown and there are too much cliffhangers and plot twists to make it a nice Saturday night watch.
See for yourself. It’s been years that we in the Pacific have managed (finally) to grab the world’s attention on our situation about climate change. And it’s true, our islands are under threat: sea-level rise, depletion of fresh water resources, extreme events like category 5 cyclones. The future seems grim for our populations. Yet, for any visitor coming to Tahiti, it’s hard to really understand the situation. Tahiti and its neighbouring islands are seen as a haven of calm and climate stability these days. We’re just finishing a chilly winter that was not so unusual, slightly wetter but not by that much. Are our islands under threat? Yes, definitely. When? Well hard to tell…
On the other hand, Pakistan, which has never really been on the radar for climate threats (and way too often and too tragically on other radars…) is now ground zero of climate change, along with China with its world record for a lasting heatwave. The storyline has moved. Can we follow?
Europe is dryer than India, Pakistan is wetter than tropical forests…the story makes no sense. And maybe that’s why we’re struggling to take action, the narrative doesn’t fit our understanding. And because of this we simplify, we find sense when there’s none, we look for heroes when it can’t be just one.
And these simplified stories turn our efforts upside down. As I was talking to CSR managers last week, they finally came to realise that telling stories of doom and gloom, even if that’s the reality of it, is not the way to get people to commit. Focusing on the loss of some rare species is not the hero (or antihero) people are looking for. As for now, we’re living the story of the Titanic: we know the iceberg has hit, we know the ship is not an unsinkable titan, we know that there are not enough life boats. We all know this, the information is readily available. So what do we do? Well as the end of the story is known and it’s looking bleak, then we stay with the orchestra and we enjoy our last moments.
Last week, I was telling you about the need to believe, to hope, to find optimism as a way to counteract those scenarios that make us reject the future. Looking at the pictures of Pakistan and then watching huge car traffic jams emitting Co2 on such a tiny island where no one is willing to get on a bus, it’s heartbreaking and discouraging. But that doesn’t mean we should give up. The complexity of climate change is no reason to not try to do anything about it.
I then shared with you the wise words of Georges Amara, a French futurist, calling for a poetic and ethical prospective who challenged us to love the future as a parent loves a child: openly and freely.
Today, continuing on that reflection, let me share with you the wise words of Joe Brewer, a cognitive scientist at the Evolution Institute. Reflecting on how to build the narratives on climate change, with such complexity and, too often, hopelessness he tells us:
So to live a story that combines hope and doom is to walk courageously into the pain of loss, knowing that there’s something worth doing that for. And the best way to do that is to have something in the future that you love, that you cannot let be lost…
So as we walk courageously into a future that we need to love no matter what, let’s make sure that we build authentic stories that, like all the good old times stories mix love with hate, pain with hope, despair with light at the end of the tunnel. It’s some effort for sure, but in the words of the wise Sam Gamgee:
It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.
Philippe - Founder & CEO - Pacific Ventury