Social costs of extreme weather

Rural poverty, meagre forests render country vulnerable to climate change

KARACHI:

Pakistan is ranked among the most vulnerable countries on the Global Climate Risk Index, which tracks the social and economic costs of weather extremes. Recent torrential rains in Karachi and Balochistan are continuing to pose a great threat.

According to the latest National Forest Reference Emissions Level (FREL) findings, the country is maintaining only 4.786 million hectares (5.45%) of land under forest cover.

Climatic conditions, rural poverty, dependence on natural resources, meagre forest cover and high rate of deforestation have rendered the country one of the most vulnerable to the climate change effects.

Karachi is what Japan used to be. But can Karachi be what Japan is now? Here’s a cautious optimism.

It is a structural issue. Consider your fingers as the upper portion of the country and your wrist as the Arabian Sea. The palm is Karachi. Only water is getting into the sea if the palm overflows. That palm has to overflow to make the water flow into the sea.

Karachi with glow at night, busy streets, revenue generation, uptown malls and hotels is a financial hub where it is estimated that half of the inhabitants are forced to live in informal settlements.

Residents and businesses in Karachi are experiencing a city that is struggling to maintain its growth spurts or meet the basic needs of residents and local businesses in an equitable manner. Water and sewerage networks, for example, also serve only about half of the city’s needs.

Each year floods turn major thoroughfares into rivers. Houses have been flooded by sewage spewed from manholes. Electricity has been turned off for hours or days to prevent bare power cables from contacting water in the streets and impaling people.

Karachi’s storm water drains are two seasonal rivers, Lyari and Malir Rivers. Both originate in the foothills of Kirthar Range and run parallel to each other with additional small extensions from the surroundings.

This entire network, from smaller nullahs to larger nullahs and then the two rivers, connects and eventually falls into the sea.

Karachi’s four main drains and their beds are encroached upon by illegal houses. Those drains have also garbage, which chokes the flow of water and these are also not cleaned time to time, causing blockage and increasing the level of flowing waters. But is this the only solution of urban flooding in Karachi? Highly unlikely!

What would encroached free drains do when there is continuous solid waste floating in them? Solid waste generated by the city increased from 6,500 tons to around 15,000 tons between 2001 and 2020, becoming increasingly difficult to manage in the absence of proper management and control. This has had serious consequences for Karachi’s overall drainage system.

Karachi, having a population of approximately 16 million people, has only two landfill sites, both of which are in District West. This means trucks full of waste have to carry it from the eastern side of the city to the west to dump them.

Flooding is also caused by both technical and design issues. For example, all storm water from buildings and real estate projects is released onto roads adjacent to them because there is no drain.

When it rains, this water enters the existing sewerage system, which is also on roads, or when it rains heavily, it turns roads into fast flowing rivers that mix with sewage.

Karachi’s sewage treatment plants have a capacity of 151 million gallons per day. What would these treatment plants process when water is not reaching there?

Because sewage does not reach the plants, only 25 million gallons of water per day can be treated, and as the plants are so underutilised, severe maintenance issues arise.

Urban flooding and equal to no infrastructure to come up with a solution is similar to the situation of Japan following the devastation of WWII. They had secured the drain edges to prevent erosion. They covered the nullahs/ drains and used their roofs as public space in appropriate places, creating sports grounds, children’s play areas, and community spaces for older people.

It is not only Karachi and Balochistan which are heavily impacted by climate change. Radical hydro-meteorological activities are becoming more common in Pakistan in a variety of forms, particularly flash floods in mountainous streams in the north.

It has been discovered, in particular, in water availability analysis of the Kabul River basin and Gilgit River basin, both of which are melting snow-fed basins, with a clear shift in the annual peak flow.

But in the case of Karachi, it’s not only just natural occurrence due to climate change. The situation is the result of a spoilt ignorant dish by too many cooks.

The writer is an expert on political economy, cities and governance, and is working as a research associate at the Centre for Social and Political Research

 

 

Published in The Express Tribune, August 15^th, 2022.

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