Support for Pakistan has ebbed away: PM Shehbaz
According to the prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, 33 million people were affected by the horrific rains and floods that struck Pakistan this summer, which left a stretch of the country the size of Switzerland under water and took 1,700 lives.
In an article for the Guardian newspaper, Shehbaz wrote: “International attention has receded, but the waters have not. Large parts of Sindh and Balochistan provinces remain inundated. The number of food-insecure people in Pakistan has doubled to 14 million; another 9 million have been pushed into extreme poverty. These flooded areas now look like a huge series of permanent lakes, transforming forever the terrain and the lives of people living there. No amount of pumps can remove this water in less than a year; and by July 2023, the worry is that these areas may flood again.”
“Pakistan is suffering not just from flooding but from recurring climate extremes – earlier in spring 2022, the country was in the grip of a scorching, drought-aggravating heatwave that caused forest fires in the west. The fact that some of the same areas that received record temperatures were subsequently submerged underlines the sharp swings in weather patterns that are becoming a norm,” he wrote.
“Pakistanis have responded to this latest calamity with exemplary resilience. Already facing severe economic headwinds, the government scrambled to generate funds enabling direct cash transfers of more than $250m (£200m) to more than 2 million households. In all, we managed to mobilise about $1.5bn in emergency relief out of our own meagre resources,” he added.
The prime minister declared that Pakistan is appreciative to its allies and the world community for their generous assistance in preventing the worst from happening. The World Health Organization (WHO) had declared the situation a high-level health emergency, but the government was able to quickly repair the damaged communication networks between towns and villages, preventing the spread of the feared water-borne diseases and localized epidemics, he said.
Nevertheless, he noted, more than 2 million homes, 14,000 km of roads, and 23,000 clinics and schools had been destroyed.
According to PM Shehbaz, the World Bank and the European Union (EU) collaborated on a post-disaster needs assessment (PDNA), which estimated that the damage caused by floods exceeded $30bn – a 10th of Pakistan’s entire GDP.
“These numbers only scratch the surface of the challenge at hand. They demand a response that would stretch and overwhelm the resources of any country. The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, witnessed the ‘unimaginable’ destruction first-hand during a visit to Sindh province in September. Terming it ‘climate carnage’, the secretary general found himself at a loss for words – ‘a flooded area that is three times the total area of my own country, Portugal’. This devastation has been greater than that caused by the 2010 floods in Pakistan, which the UN then described as the worst natural disaster it had ever responded to. Pakistan simply cannot do this alone,” he wrote.
“This is why the secretary general and I are co-hosting the International Conference on Climate Resilient Pakistan in Geneva on 9 January. We will be joined by world leaders, representatives of international development and humanitarian organisations, and friends of Pakistan to signal support and solidarity with a country that is grappling with a natural disaster not of its making,” he added.
“We will also present a comprehensive roadmap for post-flood reconstruction and rehabilitation, developed with the assistance of the World Bank, the UN, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the EU. The resilient recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction framework essentially envisages a two-pronged response. The first part relates to meeting the immediate challenges of recovery and reconstruction, requiring minimum funding of $16.3bn over a period of three years. Pakistan would meet half the funding from its own resources. But we will count on the continued assistance of our bilateral and multilateral partners to bridge the gap,” he further said.
Support for Pakistan has ebbed away: PM Shehbaz
According to Shehbaz, Pakistan’s long-term plan for constructing climate resilience is presented in the second section of the contribution to Pakistan’s reconstruction and rehabilitation. He added that improving communications infrastructure, a more reliable irrigation system, and developing effective early warning systems to lessen the effects of upcoming natural disasters are not just options but absolutely necessary for Pakistan and would require an investment of $13.5 billion over a ten-year period.
“Of course, I am conscious that the Geneva conference marks only the beginning of a long and arduous journey. But a substantive outcome will reassure millions of imperilled people – who have already lost everything – that they have not been forgotten; that the international community will help them to rebuild their lives,” he wrote.
“It will also remind us that we are all – increasingly – at the mercy of forces of nature that do not respect borders and can only be tamed by joining hands. It is, therefore, my sincere hope that our gathering in Geneva comes to symbolise our common humanity and generosity of spirit – a source of hope for all people and countries who may face natural adversity in the future,” he concluded.
