Pakistan Flooding: An Eyewitness Report
In Sindh, the majority of the province is under water at the moment. The disaster agency for Sindh said about two million acres of cultivated crops have been wiped out and many hundreds of thousands of livestock have been lost. This will lead to food shortages and food inflation over the coming months.
In the Columban-run parish of Badin, about 100 km SE of Hyderabad, the danger from the floods has been substantial. The parish is home to people of the Parkari Kholi and Sindhi Bheel tribal groups and also the Punjabi community. Fr Pat Visanti, after doing an initial survey, estimates that seven houses have been destroyed, a further 55 partially damaged and over 100 families in sudden unemployment are in need of food rations. It is a dire situation and will take a long time to recover.
Germanwatch, who do an annual Global Climate Index, rates Pakistan as the eighth most vulnerable country to climate change in the world. This is based on their research over 20 years (2000-2019) which shows 173 extreme weather events in that period, leading directly to the deaths of over 10,000 people. In my experience here, the summer temperatures are increasing steadily over recent years, as well as beginning earlier and extending into October. Equally, the monsoon season had become more unpredictable and with more torrential downpours, we have also experienced unseasonal rain in March/April which has done considerable damage to the wheat crop near to harvesting.
Source: ICN
