While experts at the Met Department and the PDMA disagree on the precise definition of a cloudburst, monsoon rains this year have already recorded 50-60 percent more precipitation than last year. Deaths, injuries, livelihood losses and damage to infrastructures have highlighted the need for anticipatory action and robust early warning systems to mitigate risks for the vulnerable communities.
A rapid floods assessment report by OxDev (a legacy of Oxfam in Pakistan) and CHANGE Humanitarian Collective, a network of nine partner organisations on ground from across the country, says that between June 26 and August 17, as many as 108 districts reported casualties, damage and losses worth billions of rupees. The worst hit among them are Swat, Buner, Bajur, Torghar, Mansehra, Upper Dir and Battagram. The report says 672 people were reported dead and 931 injured. 2,463 houses were destroyed, 1,686 houses sustained partial damage, 451 kilometres of roads were damaged, 152 bridges were broken, and a number of shops, markets and other buildings, including schools, were affected
Humanitarian response, rescue and relief consist of recovery of bodies, rebuilding the lives of survivors (clearing rubble; providing temporary shelters; and treating the injured) and repairing and rebuilding infrastructure, especially roads, broken bridges and telecommunication networks. These are some of the tasks that require human and economic resources. The federal government has announced a Rs 5.8 billion relief package for the flood affected people. Anyone with a humanitarian economy background knows that the economic losses are likely to be three times the immediate relief needs, meaning that humanitarian response and action may cost around Rs 20 billion. The actual economic impact will be ascertained by post-disaster needs assessment (PDNA).
Apparently, the flood water coursed through streams that had not seen a massive flood in 100 years.
The PDNA is an assessment of economic impact of the disasters. It identifies economic needs for an adequately funded humanitarian response and revival of economic systems and markets to cater to the humanitarian needs and interventions. Markets/ private sector have a role in reducing vulnerabilities, facilitating humanitarian response and ultimately in supporting/ restarting life in the affected areas. This is done through immediate/ early rehabilitation of the vendors so that there are efficient markets available for continued supplies of essential commodities. Humanitarian response practice has moved recently from traditional supplies-linked actions to giving the people choice and agency with the provision of cash. This also helps scalability leading to quicker rehabilitation.
Humanitarian aid—cash or in-kind assistance—helps restore local businesses, jobs and revenues. Familiar challenges are demand-stress inflation and short supplies; potential dependency on aid; gaps in cost and benefits of aid; and residual economic impact of disasters. The political economy of humanitarian action focuses on the factors relating to humanitarian responses from governments and local non-government organisations as well as other humanitarian actors under, for instance, the auspices of the UN agencies, which typically develop a humanitarian response plan (HRP) in line with funding appeals and PDNAs done by the government and UN agencies. This plan represents the collective humanitarian actions by various actors in handling emergencies. The PDNA looks at economic factors, humanitarian needs and the effectiveness of different aid interventions. This helps in developing effective and sustainable humanitarian strategies.
Loss and damage determinations are based on damage incurred in infrastructure, agriculture, livestock and other affected sectors. Some sectors may go uncounted despite having a price tag. The lives lost in such disasters are counted as ‘bodies’ and not as valuable in terms of economic activity. However, policy makers count human losses for certain purposes using the concept of value of a statistical life (VSL).
The VSL commonly used by economists (on the basis of cost-benefit analysis, legal proceedings as courts may consider VSL estimates for compensation and insurance-policy coverage sums) ranges from $0.8 million to $8.7 million, depending upon the context and methodologies such as lifetime earnings, including future earnings of the deceased, which one could have earned if they had survived; quality of life-health, well being and contribution to society and risk aversion.
Humanitarian actors also count non-economic losses and damage during PDNAs. This information helps adequately fund rescue, rehabilitation and rebuilding work.
A comprehensive loss and damage assessment will come up in a couple of weeks. Besides material losses, the cost of human losses will run past $300 million per 100 people dead (using the standard VSL of $3 million per person). Based on the patterns of loss and damage estimates of the 2022 floods, the recent losses in Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa may run into hundreds of millions of dollars.
Today, Pakistan is facing diverse disaster risks. To save lives, livelihoods and infrastructure from disasters, we need to understand the risks; risk-governance and financing; and build a locally-accessed early warning system. We need to facilitate anticipatory actions with pre-arranged cash, response plans, build back better infrastructure strategies, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation financing. We also need to adopt sustainable behaviours: to conserve energy, water, food, natural resources and ecosystem for sustainability and climate resilience.
The writer is a humanitarian, sustainability and resilience specialist. He can be reached at shafmunirgmail.com.