After a long hot and dry spell, the monsoon has finally arrived in Pakistan. The much-awaited season was once cheered for cooling down temperatures and promising a better harvest for the farmers.
Times have changed now and excitement surrounding the rainy season has subsided. The monsoon season now brings more misery than joy for the people of Pakistan due to ineptness of the government and lack of preparedness for the heavy rains. Every year since 2010, these summer torrential rains have resulted in massive floods to displace millions of people, and destroy their precious crops and livestock. The super flood of 2010 alone killed over 2,000, affected 21 million and caused a loss of about $10 billion to the agrarian economy of Pakistan.
After being hit by these disastrous floods in recent years, Pakistan would have been expected to develop an effective flood management and disaster relief plan. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. As heavy rains lash most parts of Pakistan, another grave crisis is unfolding in densely populated regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Punjab. Initial reports by National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) suggest that more than 250,000 people have been affected by floods that have inundated about 900 villages all across Pakistan. The devastation, which is expected to worsen with more rains, has hampered relief and rescue operations in some of the worst affected regions.
The government has shifted entire blame for monsoon devastation on changing weather pattern in Pakistan. Although environmentalists believe that these “abnormal” weather conditions will be the “norm,” the NDMA and other government agencies are still struggling to cope up with the situation.
This highlights the need to invest in early warning systems for improved predictability of weather conditions to avert the risks from impending floods. Despite warnings by international donor agencies that Pakistan was ill-prepared for another natural disaster, the government has shown incompetence and non-seriousness in stepping up efforts to minimize the damage from floods. Instead of adopting a well-thought, holistic and multi-disciplinary approach, the government has at best taken ad-hoc and insufficient measures to overcome the flood crisis.
Therefore, it is not surprising that same mistakes of the past are repeated in the absence of a contingency plan.
Although the provincial disaster management authorities claim to have stockpiled relief supplies for areas that face imminent danger of flooding, much more needs to be done. Today, most relief operations are dependent on the expertise of Pakistan’s armed forces as the district level disaster management bodies remain ill-equipped and untrained.
The rehabilitation of flood affected also remains a missing link in the overall flood relief operations carried out in Pakistan. In fact, many of the victims refuse to leave their homes and cattle in the hope that flood waters will recede.
The occurrence of floods in 2015 is also likely to once again spark debate about construction of large dams in Pakistan. In the best national interests, a water scarce and energy deficient country like Pakistan should optimally use water resource for a more sustainable future.
Such large projects should be part of a long-term and robust strategy to mitigate the risks from natural disasters. The controversy surrounding these dams show that lack of political will seems to be the biggest hurdle in embracing a new approach to water and flood management policy in Pakistan.
