Floods roulette

Vagaries in the precipitation cycle are increasingly frequent, and the early onset by 10 days of the monsoon this year is a salutary case in point. Karachi was brought to a standstill and now there are fears that Rawalpindi is going to suffer likewise as its clogged drainage systems are not going to cope once the monsoon gets into its stride in earnest. Precipitation and glacier melt in northern areas build up a head of water flowing south and Punjab is in its sights. The water from the north taken together with monsoonal rain can produce catastrophic flooding and has done in the past. The Environmental Protection Department is formulating — a little late — a climate change policy which is underpinned by the Climate Change Act of 2017. This is designed to facilitate Pakistan in meeting its obligations under international conventions relating to climate change, the caveat being that this is more about longer-term solutions than immediate interventions that are going to head off looming disaster(s).

With the Punjab chief minister deciding to direct one per cent of all budgets within development programmes towards environmentally-friendly activities the winds are at least blowing in the right direction. Also welcome is the report that Pakistan is to upgrade weather forecasting radars which currently can only provide forecasts one or two days in advance and a 3-5 day outlook at best. The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) is to benefit from a soft loan of $135 million enabling the replacement of obsolete or dysfunctional radars with at least 14 new ones giving a national coverage of around 95 per cent. This is going to take five years to bring online, years in which extreme weather events are going to increase rather than decrease. It is for local administrations to discharge their duties rather more diligently than they have been as evidenced by a drowned Karachi.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 4^th, 2017.

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