Disaster aid transparency

Amount is less than one-third of $10b committed for flood relief by donors at an international conference in January

About $3 billion worth of development projects have been approved so far for areas suffering from the 2022 floods, but while the amount seems significant at face value, it barely makes a splash when compared to the $30 billion-plus worth of damage caused by the natural disaster. For that matter, the amount is less than one-third of the $10 billion committed for flood relief by donors at an international conference in January.

A good transparency measure is the decision to set up a dashboard to “ensure real-time monitoring and provide information to the public as well development partners about the execution of development projects in the flood-affected areas”. But since the dashboard won’t be available for the public till later this week, we can’t be sure whether or not it meets the expectations of donors, bilateral lenders, and local critics.

Our track record with international disaster relief aid has been less than spectacular. Whether it was the 2005 Kashmir Earthquake or several floods and other natural disasters since then, funding has been curiously rerouted to areas where no disaster occurred, while relief goods regularly pop up in local markets rather than disaster areas. While not officially stated by any country, such malfeasance is bound to make governments think twice about giving Pakistan any money — a voter in a Western democracy may be keen to help Pakistani flood victims, but they are probably not enthused by the thought of their taxes paying for a political crony’s hotel repairs or, allegedly, adding to a federal minister’s tent collection.

The government must ensure that flood relief efforts focus not only on rehabilitation, but also mitigation, if we are to placate donors and ensure that they are still willing to help us the next time we need help, because the unfortunate reality is that, as one of the world’s most climate-sensitive countries, extreme weather events will keep occurring in Pakistan. We can only hope to mitigate them from ‘disasters’ into ‘nuisances’.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 9^th, 2023.

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