Rebuilding flood-hit Pakistan
It is nearly five months since floodwaters swept away Muhammad Fazal’s general store in southern Pakistan. Today, he is rebuilding his shop on taller, sturdier foundations — hopeful he will be better prepared the next time floods hit his village.
Fazal, 28, who borrowed the money for the construction work from a nonprofit organisation, counts himself among the lucky ones — despite his Rs 400,000 ($1,495) loss — as many Pakistanis struggle to recover from last year’s devastation.
“I’ve raised the level of my shop and I’m rebuilding it better,” he said in his village of Gozo in Dadu, a densely populated district of Sindh province that was hard hit by the ruinous nationwide floods.
More than 1,700 people were killed and 8 million were displaced by the flooding, which also destroyed about a million homes and businesses across the country of 220 million people, disaster management officials say.
About five million people — mostly in Sindh and the southwestern province of Balochistan — are still exposed to floodwater months after monsoon rains and melting glaciers caused the disaster.
With waters still receding, international donors pledged more than $9 billion in Geneva last month to help the South Asian country recover and rebuild. Pakistan, which is mired in a deepening economic crisis, had sought funds to cover around half of a recovery bill amounting to $16.3 billion.
Now, it aims to use the money to implement its Resilient Recovery, Rehabilitation, and Reconstruction Framework, dubbed 4RF, a recovery strategy that sets out to build long-term climate resilience and adaptation.
That will mean boosting its flood defences to prevent a repeat of the loss of lives, livelihoods and infrastructure, and government officials say swift action is vital as climate change impacts gather pace.
“Developing countries like Pakistan face an accelerated onset of climate disasters before we can rehabilitate.
What if this summer brings fresh horrors? We are in a race against time,” the country’s climate change minister, Sherry Rehman, told the World Economic Forum in Davos last month.
PAST LESSONS
In 21 major floods between 1950 and 2011 — almost one flood every three years — Pakistan lost about $19 billion, according to an Asian Development Bank (ADB) study on devastating floods in 2010 that caused damage of about $10 billion.
An additional nine million people risk being pushed into poverty on top of the 33 million affected by last year’s floods, the UN development agency said on January 5, just before the Geneva conference.
This time, lessons must be learned, said Amir Ali Chandio, a political economy and human rights academic who recently retired from Sindh’s Shah Abdul Latif University, Khairpur.
Like many other experts, he says the loss of lives and property over the years has been aggravated by poor floodwater management at a time of rapid development and population growth.
“Natural waterways have been encroached upon. People have made their houses on waterways. Roads without bridges have also blocked the water path,” said Mustafa Mirani, chairperson of the Fisherfolk Forum civil society group.
Unchecked construction in floodprone areas is an aggravating factor, said Ajay Kumar, an official with the Sindh Provincial Disaster Management Authority, but he said heavy rains “did the real damage” last year.
Beyond repairing the immediate damage, the flood response must be holistic and far-reaching if it is to succeed in building climate resilience, said Muhammad Ismail Kumbhar, a rural development consultant and agricultural education extension expert.
“We need a climate action plan, a climate youth policy, climate-smart agriculture and livestock. People should know how to be resilient in the face of climate change. An insurance policy for crops and livestock should be introduced,” he said.
ABOUT FIVE MILLION PEOPLE — MOSTLY IN SINDH AND BALOCHISTAN — ARE STILL EXPOSED TO FLOODWATER MONTHS AFTER MONSOON RAINS AND MELTING GLACIERS CAUSED THE DISASTER