Topics: News, Politics, World News, Environment, Climate Change
Pakistan is begging for international relief as one-third of the country is now underwater.
ABC News reports the South Asian country is pleading for help as almost 500,000 are left without homes due to the rampant flooding, which has killed 1,130 people, with more missing.
According to The Australian, officials and authorities are struggling to provide aid to the 33 million people affected, as critical roads and bridges have been destroyed.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has begged via Twitter for global leaders to step in.
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Over the weekend, he wrote: “Visiting flood affected areas & meeting people. The magnitude of the calamity is bigger than estimated.
“Times demand that we come together as one nation in support of our people facing this calamity. Let us rise above our differences & stand by our people who need us today.”
Information minister Maryam Aurangzeb confirmed that soldiers and rescue operations were currently evacuating residents from the southern Sindh, northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, eastern Punjab and southwestern Baluchistan provinces, as per PBS News Hour.
“Government has sanctioned sufficient funds to financially compensate the affected people and we will not leave our people alone in this tough time,” she said.
Pakistan's planning minister Ahsan Iqbal told Reuters that he believes the damage caused is estimated to be around $10 billion.
The minister warned that the country would experience significant shortages in the coming weeks and months.
Mr Iqbal called on first-world countries to provide relief as the disaster had been caused by ‘irresponsible development of the developed world’.
Pakistani senator and the Federal minister for climate change Sherry Rehman shared that this year’s flooding caused by the monsoon rains has escalated into ‘non-stop havoc throughout the country’, according to The Guardian.
She also admitted she had never seen a natural disaster of this magnitude before.
“Pakistan has never seen an unbroken cycle of monsoon [rains] like this,” she said.
She added: “Eight weeks of non-stop torrents have left huge swathes of the country underwater. This is a deluge from all sides.”
The Senator shared on Twitter that provinces in Sindh and Balochistan are recording more rain than ever since the start of the month, and these cities were not designed for such ‘torrential downpours’.
According to a 2021 study by Potsdam Institute For Climate Impact Research, global warming is increasing the monsoon season by five per cent.
Co-author of the study Anders Levermann said: “A more chaotic monsoon season poses a threat to the agriculture and economy in the region and should be a wakeup call for policy makers to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.”
