Pakistan and weather disasters

Rina Saeed Khan in the Express Tribune (Pakistan): Pakistan faces a range of threatening climate change impacts: sea water intrusion into the Indus Delta, valley glaciers melting in high mountain areas, the water scarcity/food security challenge and flooding caused by changing monsoon patterns. Things are getting so bad that for the past couple of years, Pakistan has been topping the list of the Global Climate Risk Index produced by Germanwatch, an NGO that works on global equity issues. In 2010, Pakistan was listed as the number one country in the world affected by climate related disasters (due to the massive 2010 floods); in 2011, it was ranked as number three. This year’s report, released during the UN Climate Change talks currently being held in Warsaw, listed Haiti, the Philippines and Pakistan as hardest hit by weather disasters in 2012.

The Global Climate Risk Index is compiled from figures supplied by the giant reinsurance company Munich Re. Haiti topped the list in this year’s Index because of the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 that left 200,000 people homeless. The Philippines came second due to the large number of typhoons that are now battering its islands (it will be number one in next year’s list because of super-typhoon Haiyan). Pakistan came third because of its increasing vulnerability to floods and droughts.

The major issue at the conference in Warsaw, given the current Philippine disaster, is how to finance the ‘loss and damage’ caused by an increasingly unstable climate. Christoph Bals, policy director of Germanwatch, said: “The report illustrates that the self-help capacity of countries is being overwhelmed by the scale of the climate disasters they are facing. These are the countries that have contributed least to climate change because they have tiny emissions. Yet, they are the countries that are suffering most from it. Developed countries that have caused the problem have a moral responsibility to help.”

Muhammad Irfan Tariq, director general of the Climate Change Division of the Pakistan government, who helped launch the report in Warsaw, told the Climate News Network: “The report makes it clear that my country is already adversely affected by climate change. Loss of glaciers, floods and droughts are causing suffering and loss of life, not to mention the economic losses in a mainly agricultural economy … We are suffering so many other problems that it is not a priority for us.”...

US Army photo of Pakistan's 2010 flooding