Explained: The ‘monster monsoon’ ravaging Pakistan

Pakistan on Monday woke up to more worries as the flood fury continues. The death toll has reached 1,061 since June, according to figures released Monday by the country’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

The neighbouring nation is facing one of the worst floods in history, with 110 of the 150 districts affected. Sindh and Balochistan have been badly hit, leaving thousands homeless. The flooding, which has been caused because of unusually heavy monsoon, started in July and has worsened over the last couple of weeks.

Pakistan Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif has declared an emergency and asked for international help to respond to the disaster.

33 million affected; homes, roads destroyed

At least 28 people had died in the last 24 hours. Authorities are still trying to reach cut-off villages in the country’s mountainous north, reports the news agency AFP.

According to officials, this year’s monsoon flooding has affected more than 33 million people – one in seven Pakistanis – destroying or badly damaging close to million homes. Nearly 15 per cent of Pakistan’s population is homeless or living without adequate shelter.

The NDMA said more than two million acres of cultivated crops have been wiped out, 3,457 kilometres of roads destroyed, and 157 bridges washed away.

Millions of acres of rich farmland have been flooded by weeks of non-stop rain, but now the Indus is threatening to burst its banks as a result of torrents of water coursing downstream from tributaries in the north.

“Our crop spanned over 5,000 acres on which the best quality rice was sown and is eaten by you and us,” Khalil Ahmed, 70, told AFP. “All that is finished.”

‘Monster monsoon’

Pakistan’s Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman called it “the monster monsoon of the decade”. This year’s floods are comparable to 2010 – the worst on record – when more than 2,000 people died and nearly a fifth of the country was under water.

“…it is already clear that the scale of this disaster is many times greater than that of the 2010 floods which, devastating as they were, were riverine floods. This time, the water is everywhere. And it is relentless,” Pakistani journalist Zarrar Khuhro writes in the newspaper Dawn.

“More than half of Pakistan” is inundated and half a million people have been evacuated and shifted to safer places, another Dawn report says.

Rescue operations

Pakistan Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said on Sunday that the armed forces were being deployed in the wake of the floods. He said the troops have been called in under Article 245 of the Constitution which empowers the government to summon the army in aid of the civilian administration to deal with an emergency.

Much of Sindh is now an endless landscape of water, hampering a massive military-led relief operation. “There are no landing strips or approaches available… our pilots find it difficult to land,” one senior officer told AFP.

The army’s helicopters were also struggling to pluck people to safety in the north, where steep hills and valleys make for treacherous flying conditions.

Many rivers in the area have burst their banks, demolishing scores of buildings including a 150-room hotel that crumbled into a raging torrent. The government has appealed for international help On Sunday, the first aid flights began arriving from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

In the flood-affected regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a significant number of people were airlifted to safety on Sunday.

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced a grant of Rs 10 billion for Balochistan to cope with the destruction caused by floods. After a visit to the flood-hit areas of the Nasirabad division, the premier said that he had never witnessed such destruction in his life. “The devastation caused by floods and persistent rains is horrifying,” Sharif said.

The reasons for the floods

The annual monsoon is essential for irrigating crops and replenishing lakes and dams across the Indian subcontinent, but with each year comes a wave of destruction. Two months of unprecedented monsoon rains have triggered the devastating floods this time.

According to officials in Pakistan, human-caused climate change has brought stronger monsoons and more damage. Corruption, poor planning and the flouting of local regulations also mean that thousands of buildings have been erected in areas prone to seasonal flooding, reports Deutsche Welle.

Minister Sherry Rehman said last week that Pakistan was witnessing its eighth cycle of monsoon, whereas it normally witnesses three to four cycles of monsoon rains. Citing data, she warned of another cycle re-emerging in September.

The month of August has been exceptionally wet in Pakistan, which witnesses monsoons from July to September. The active rainfall is only for a month and a half.

According to Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) data shared by Rehman, August had produced two and a half times its normal rainfall — 176.8 mm against the expected 50.4 mm. In Sindh, it has rained almost eight times the normal amount during this period; Balochistan has received over five times more, reports The Indian Express.

“Pakistan has never seen an unbroken cycle of monsoon like this. Eight weeks of non-stop torrents have left huge swathes of the country under water. This is no normal season. This is a deluge from all sides, impacting 33 million plus people which is the size of a small country,” Rehman said on Twitter.

The PMD director general said that the flood situation in the country could have been even worse had it not been for the timely forecast. The predictions for very heavy rainfall were made in April and May, which gave government agencies time to prepare.

The fallout of the floods

Pakistan is among the top ten countries worst hit by climate change. Before the floods, it experienced an unprecedented heatwave that caused wildfires in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and an extremely dry spring season with 62 per cent less rainfall.

The large-scale devastation caused by the floods will lead to a huge loss to farmers, leading to a need to import more food in a country where 43 per cent of the population faces food insecurity.

In Sindh alone, almost all of the cotton and sugarcane crop has been destroyed, affecting not only farmers but also the textile industry. The loss in agriculture will hit the entire agribusiness chain, from middlemen to pesticide and fertiliser manufacturers, sales agents and other staff, reports Dawn. Hundreds of thousands of heads of livestock have also been lost in the floods.

“In economic terms, the cumulative losses mean a huge blow to Pakistan’s GDP and the very real possibility of massive food shortages,” the newspaper reports.

The repercussions of flash floods may include higher imports, compromise on exports and rising inflation, which will undermine efforts of the government to tackle the macro headwinds, The Express Tribune newspaper reported.

The unusual heavy monsoon rains and devastating flash floods have been estimated to cost cash-strapped Pakistan’s economy over USD 4 billion in the current fiscal, according to a research report.

“Based on our preliminary estimates, the current account deficit may increase by USD 4.4 billion (1 per cent of GDP) – assuming no counter-measures are taken, while around 30 per cent of the CPI (Consumer Price Index) basket is exposed to the threat of higher prices,” the daily reported, citing a report by JS Global Research.

With inputs from agencies

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