Death toll in Pakistan passes 1,110 as monsoon floods reach historic levels

Historic flooding in Pakistan has now killed 1,100 people and caused $10 billion in damage since mid-June. At least 33 million people have been impacted and one-third of the country is submerged. Sara Hayat, a lawyer specializing in climate change and adjunct professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan, joined Amna Nawaz to discuss the growing disaster.

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  • Amna Nawaz:

    We return to Pakistan now, which is reeling from the devastating floods caused by monsoon rains. Pakistani officials estimate that one in seven people in the country have been impacted. At least 1,000 people have been killed since June. UNICEF says one third of them were children.

    Across Pakistan, communities have been reduced to this: skeletal remains of buildings washed away by historic flooding since mid-June.

    In the southeastern Sindh province, Rehan Ali and his family are among the millions digging through the debris of what was once their home.

  • Rehan Ali, Flood Victim (through translator):

    I don't know how to rebuild my destroyed house. I don't have anything to feed my family. I lost everything. I don't know where to go. God help me.

  • Amna Nawaz:

    More than 33 million people have been affected by flooding this summer alone, leaving one-third of the country submerged.

    Higher-than-normal rainfall inundated spots along the Indus River, running the length of the country from the Tarbela Dam in the north to the riverside city of Kotri in the south. Over the weekend, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was seen dropping supplies from a helicopter, part of a military relief mission in the hard-hit Balochistan province.

    He also announced a new relief package.

  • Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistani Prime Minister (through translator):

    From the central government, I announced a grant of 10 billion rupees for the Balochistan province. The National Disaster Management Authority, along with provincial government, will plan relief works.

  • Amna Nawaz:

    But even with more funding on its way, many people are feeling abandoned by their government.

  • Ghaus Ahmad, Flood Victim (through translator):

    We are looking towards the government to provide some sort of relief to us. We don't have food to eat. We don't have shelter to sleep in, no clean drinking water. I urge the world to come save us.

  • Amna Nawaz:

    Nearly 300,000 homes have been destroyed in the deluge so far, leaving millions scrambling for shelter.

    Half-a-million people have piled into relief camps set up in government buildings. Others have taken to staying on roadsides. The flooding is being fueled by a relentless monsoon season, with rainfall measurements coming in at three times higher than the 30-year nationwide average. These extreme weather events are exacerbated by rising temperatures in the country.

    Pakistan's top climate official is referring to the events as a — quote — "serious climate catastrophe" and warning about the road ahead. And the climate emergency's impact reaches further than just property, causing large-scale damage to crops and infrastructure.

    Economic losses could top $10 billion, the country's planning minister said today. That includes this date farmer, Abdul Lateef Jagirani, whose harvest is a total loss.

  • Abdul Lateef Jagirani, Orchard Owner (through translator):

    The date crop is harvested once a year. We worked very hard and spent a lot of money on the farm this year and hoped for a very good crop and to earn a good profit from it, but these rains ruined all our hopes. Nothing could be saved.

  • Amna Nawaz:

    Roads and highways across the country have been rendered impassable too.

  • Nawaz Khan, Pakistani National Highway Authority:

    This flood devastated our network at many locations. Now our strategy is that, initially, we have to temporarily restore the traffic flow, and then, after that, its permanent rehabilitation will take time.

  • Amna Nawaz:

    Pakistan is calling for international support. Countries, including Turkey, have sent rescue teams.

    Meanwhile, Pope Francis addressed the suffering during a sermon in Italy over the weekend.

    Pope Francis, Leader of Catholic Church (through translator): I pray for the many victims, for the injured and the evacuated, and so that international solidarity will be prompt and generous.

  • Amna Nawaz:

    For more on the floods in Pakistan, I spoke earlier today with Sara Hayat, a lawyer specializing in climate change and an adjunct professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

    I began by asking her who in Pakistan is hardest hit.

    Sara Hayat, Lahore University of Management Sciences: Well, pretty much all provinces are hit at some level or the other, and the country itself, all of Pakistan, really.

    One in seven Pakistanis are sleeping out in the open these days. That is the scale of devastation, really. So, in 2010, Pakistan was what we hit was hit with what we call the super floods. At that point, 20 million people were left homeless. The kind of destruction that we faced was unprecedented.

    But these floods are worse than those, in terms of scale and the kind of the devastation they are posing.

  • Amna Nawaz:

    Sara, what can you tell us about the government response or any kind of aid? Has that been able to make its way to anyone in the country?

  • Sara Hayat:

    Pakistan has made calls for aid. And we have responses. The United Kingdom, the United States, the United Arab Emirates have all offered aid and are sending it.

    Turkey has sent relief workers. They are on the ground in Pakistan right now working with the government and the army. Everybody is donating whatever they can, organizations, companies. And the idea is to collect it and get it into trucks to deliver on the ground.

    The problem there, though, is that, because of these floods, we have lost thousands of kilometers of road, submerged entirely underwater. We have lost a lot of bridges. So, some parts of the country are literally severed. We cannot access them.

  • Amna Nawaz:

    Sara, when so many people have been impacted, to the degree they have, one out of every seven people, as you said, now sleeping out in the open, give us a sense of the need.

    What is it like there on the ground for people right now?

  • Sara Hayat:

    There has been some coverage of food packets being thrown from helicopters.

    This is very inequitable, because, when people are hustling to get to these packets, they trip, they fall, they hurt themselves. They fight amongst themselves. And when food and aid is distributed from — thrown from trucks, women never get them.

    So, it's a very gender-sensitive issue. We need medicines on the ground. There are reports of waterborne diseases, diarrheal infections that are coming from relief camps. We need basic necessities. These people have lost everything, everything. All they have is the wet clothes that they're wearing that are sticking to their bodies, pretty much.

    And hygiene products for women, those are becoming a problem. And women are in desperate need of those as well.

  • Amna Nawaz:

    We should mention too it is not just Pakistan that has seen devastating floods so far this year, right? We have seen floods in Bangladesh and in India as well.

    What, broadly speaking, is going on, on the subcontinent?

  • Sara Hayat:

    It is scary, really. It is what we are seeing and what it is doing to people.

    Climate change is definitely one of the driving forces behind the kind of floods that we received in Pakistan this time. And the temperature rise in the global south, especially in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, this region, is higher than the rest of the world.

    And unless we control or curb climate change or global warming at this point, the temperature increase will be much — right now, it is 1.2 degrees higher. By the end of the century, we are expecting this part of the of the planet to be about 1.5 degrees warmer than global average.

    Pakistan gets monsoon rains every year. And they are devastating. But we get about three to four monsoon cycles annually. This time, we have eight cycles already. We've had those. And we're expecting more cycles.

    In the last 30 years — the average rainfall this year is about 400 percent more than the last 30-year average. So, I mean, you get a sense of what has happened.

    The second is glacial melt. As you know, that this part of the world holds the third largest glacial ice mass on the planet, nearly 8,000 glaciers in this part of the world. Those glaciers are receding because of climate change and global warming. And what that is doing is, it is causing flash floods. It is causing glacial lake outburst floods.

    And all that water is coming downstream.

  • Amna Nawaz:

    Based on the trends you have seen, based on the action or inaction you have seen, do you see more floods, more flooding, more damage like this ahead?

  • Sara Hayat:

    Pakistan is the 10th — is always — or is almost always in the in one of the top 10 most impacted countries by climate change.

    And so we are. And because this region is going to be very hot also and is getting very hot, I think it's fair to assume that we will be seeing more floods and more natural disasters themselves.

    But, that said, I do want to put it out there that Pakistan is not responsible for climate change. The global greenhouse gas emissions of the — from the country less than 0.8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. That's negligible. That's nothing.

    The only problem is that we aren't contributing to it, but we're facing the brunt of it because of our own vulnerability. And we need — we need the developed world to step up.

  • Amna Nawaz:

    Sara Hayat, joining us tonight from Lahore, Pakistan, thank you so much for your time.

  • Sara Hayat:

    Thank you.

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