FLOODS IN PAKISTAN
Source: indianexpress
Why in news?
While Europe, China and some other regions of the world are experiencing a severe drought, Pakistan is facing one of the worst floods in its recent history.
Reports say about 110 of the 150 districts in the country are affected by the flooding.
Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said on Sunday that over 1,000 people were confirmed dead in the floods so far.
Key takeaways
- The current flood is a direct result of an extremely wet monsoon season this year. The same southwest monsoon that brings the bulk of India’s annual rainfall causes rain in Pakistan as well.
- The monsoon season in Pakistan, however, is a little shorter than in India. That is because the rain-bearing monsoon winds take time to travel northward from India into Pakistan.
- The official monsoon season in Pakistan begins on July 1 and extends until September, although most of the rainfall happens during July and August. The active rainfall season is only one and a half months.
- The normal rainfall for Pakistan as a whole during this three-month monsoon season is 140 mm. But because the season is quite short, there is a wide variation in the monsoon rainfall every year.
- The rainfall situation in Pakistan has been quite different from that of India so far, though incidents of extreme rainfall and flooding have occurred here as well.
- In August, India received rainfall that is barely 6 per cent more than normal. For the entire season so far, the country has received 7 per cent more than normal rainfall.
- However, because India is such a huge country, the overall numbers hide marked variations at the regional and local levels. Just last week, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand experienced torrential rainfall, triggering landslides and flashfloods that killed over 30 people.
- In August, central India, comprising mainly Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and parts of Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra, received 26 per cent excess rainfall.
Possible reasons
- The season began in June, a month earlier than usual, after a nearly two-month-long drought. In August, the country received more than three times the normal rainfall.
- Though scientists can’t yet affirm the extent to which the catastrophe has been aggravated because of climate change, there is near unanimity that the deluge bears the imprint of a global-warming-induced extreme weather event.
- Swollen rivers cause more havoc because drainage systems in cities have not received adequate attention from the country’s planners.
- In several parts of Pakistan, embankments that have not been repaired for years have been swept away.
India vs Pakistan
- The similarities between the calamity confronting Pakistan today and India’s recent experiences with weather vagaries are striking.
- This shouldn’t be surprising because of the two countries have shared colonial legacies in urban planning and flood management.
- The same southwest monsoon that brings the bulk of India’s annual rainfall causes rain in Pakistan as well.
- The melting glaciers in the Himalayas do not respect borders. The ecological continuities in the Subcontinent make the case for regional cooperation on climate-related matters compelling. India and Pakistan do come together during negotiations at the UNFCCC
- They are a part of an informal coalition that often asks for more financial action from developed countries to check climate change.
- The outlook of South Asian governments towards forces of nature seems to be frozen in an era when the place of river and mountain systems in diplomacy is determined by economic and political considerations.
Conclusion
The Subcontinent could learn from ASEAN’s initiative to draft a State of Climate Report on the eve of COP-26 last year — it outlines opportunities for cooperation and collaboration in the region for combating climate challenges. Data sharing mechanisms on river flows, flood alert systems, even a common renewable energy-dominated electricity grid, could substantially reduce the climate vulnerability of people in South Asia.
