Poor Infrastructure
Monster monsoon has support to devastate
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Good Night!
While the torrential monsoon rains have inundated Pakistan ruthlessly, it's also time to think of the ways our country can minimize damage when rainfall is uncontrollable.
Rainfall itself did not claim as many human lives but the establishment of human settlements in unsuitable places allowed the intensity of rains to cause this devastation. Some of us might have seen the video of the flooded Swat River sweeping away hotels like a paper boat. Those hotels were built inside the riverbed.
Some experts like Ali Tauqeer Sheikh (an Islamabad-based climate change analyst) think that:
Part of the reason [for the flood damage] is climate change, part of it is poor infrastructure and poverty, and part of it is a combination of the two. However, when we fail to understand something or we don’t want to work on a certain area, we pin it on climate change [alone].
GRAPHIC OF THE DAY
Almost 65% of the flooded part of Pakistan is agricultural land (from July 1 to August 31, 2022). Satellite-detected water extents mapped by the UNOSAT indicate preliminarily that of 793,000 km2 of lands in Pakistan analyzed, around 75,000 km2 appear to be affected by floodwaters, including some 48,530 km2 appear to be croplands (which is equal to 30% of the total cultivated land)
TWEET
🇵🇰 🌊 News reports can’t explain the devastation that is being witnessed by those who are visiting the flood-affected areas.
What Else We’re Reading
Floods in Pakistan may reveal China as a fair-weather friend (Bloomberg)
The former prime minister’s political rebirth is putting pressure on the government as the economy teeters (Financial Times)
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