Pakistan barely participates in global carbon excretion, but the face-off climate change it suffers is immensely devastating. Pakistan is one of those endangered countries which are more likely to be affected by the changes in the atmosphere. The rate of warning it faces is substantially above the global average, with a 1.3 to 4.9 degrees Celsius probable increase by the 2090s.
Pakistan has recently suffered from a major outbreak of flood which is still on the go with its extensive outcomes affecting over 14% of the total population. Above 1300 people have lost their lives which includes over 400 children. Million people are displaced and one-third of the country’s land is submerged under water.
As floodwater initially demolished villages and towns, drowning struck an instant danger, and many people lost their precious ones. But as water continues to rage to destroy crops and roads along which the goods are transported, starvation becomes a real problem/issue/ultimatum.
Not only being an unkind calamity, but the flood also damaged the delicate health framework that was in Pakistan and brought a number of fret health challenges.
An explosion of diseases occurring in Pakistan, including COVID-19, polio, acute watery diarrhea, dengue fever, and malaria are being far exasperated, especially in camps where water and hygiene facilities have been defaced. Way before the heavy rainfall and succeeding flooding, Pakistan had reported a total of 4531 measles cases and 15 cases of wild poliovirus in 2022. The flooding has deranged the polio vaccination campaigns in affected areas and all over.
Floods will lead to slow down economic growth to 2 %. Pakistan’s finance ministry in its latest economic outlook update has warned of the impact on critical seasonal crops, particularly cotton, which is key for Pakistan’s textile sector that makes up more than 60% of the country’s exports. The current account deficit may increase by USD 4.4 billion (1 percent of GDP. Assuming no countermeasures are taken, around 30% of the CPI (Consumer Price Index) basket is exposed to the threat of higher prices.
The agriculture sector is participating in 18.5 % of the total GDP of Pakistan. Agriculture loss has a significant impact on the rural economy. The major affected crops of Sindh and Punjab in this flood are wheat, cotton, and rice crop. In the first step flowing data is a major source to capture and visualize the situation. As per reported by different media sources, 2-million-acre crops are flooded which is over 8 % of the total agriculture production of Pakistan. Loss of cotton, rice, and sugarcane, crops are 2 million acres, 6 hundred thousand acres 7 hundred 30 thousand acres respectively. The impact on livestock is not more significant. The indicated number of losses is over 7 hundred thousand animals and that is 0.59 % of 137 million.
In the current economic situation, the coming year will create more economic disasters. Pakistan is not only facing the reality of climate change. We are only blaming climate change but do not have any policy to mitigate the impact of disasters even after being a victim of them. Besides climate change, there are other factors like bad governance, poor planning, and defective water management system.