EDITORIAL: All of the water in the Sutlej River is utilised by India under the Indus Water Treaty, leaving only a small quantity that eventually flows into Pakistan.
But thanks to heavy monsoon rains triggered by climate change, the Sutlej has been in high flood since July after India released excess water to ease the situation on its side, inundating large swathes in central and southern Punjab.
According to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), about 550 villages have been submerged, causing significant losses to property, livestock and infrastructure, while crops of cotton, corn, and fodder over 47,000 acres of land have been damaged.
A timely rescue and relief operation launched by NDMA and other agencies has evacuated some 112,137 people to safe locations. Medical camps have also been set up in the affected areas.
Water levels have begun to recede at headwork upstream of Bahawalpur from high flood to medium intensity. The Punjab Relief Commissioner told journalists that life is returning to normal and the displaced persons would return to their home soon.
The real extent of the devastation and its cost will be ascertained when people go back to their villages and find their homes and crops partially or fully destroyed.
For the life to rerun to normal these people will require financial assistance, which may not be readily available since the government is already cash-strapped. It remains to be seen if the moneyed class is willing to loosen their purse strings and partner with the government to help those needing to rebuild their lives.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan Meteorological Department has forecast a fresh wet spell of moderate intensity to start over the upper catchments of all the major rivers from September 2. The department reckons that it won’t cause floods in our rivers though the flow in the Sutlej is subject to the amount of water released by India.
That may happen yet again if the rainfall is heavy in India’s north-western region. And in the years ahead, weather patterns are to remain erratic, causing spells of floods and draughts. The major world polluters now themselves facing unprecedented heat waves, floods and forest fires may feel impelled to fulfil their commitments to cut greenhouse emissions below 1.5C to pre-industrial levels.
India, another polluter, despite being prone to widespread flood disasters is insistent on ‘phasing down’ rather than ‘phasing out’ greenhouse emissions, and to reach the net-zero goal by 2070 instead of the 2030 timeline set at UN climate change conferences.
According to a study report by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP), economic costs from the combined impacts of the disaster-climate-health nexus estimates show that Pakistan is to have the highest losses as percentage of GDP at 9.1 percent. It is about time our policy planners paid attention to adaptation and mitigation strategies.
There has been some talk of implementation of a clean air policy, elimination of other environment pollutants as well setting up a voluntary carbon market, but so far no implementation mechanism is in place.
Some of these goals Pakistan can achieve on its own provided there is a strong determination to offset the impact of global warming as far as possible within our limited resources.
For proper execution of its adaptation scheme this country with less than one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions needs to be compensated by the big polluters.
The developed industrialised nations’ pledge of $100 billion a year, plus matching private sector contributions, in climate finance for countries bearing the brunt of climate change has not fully materialised.
Even so Pakistan can benefit from what is available, like Bangladesh has. For that it needs to draw up a firm plan of action.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
Comments
Comments are closed.