INSIGHT
Pakistan this year seems to have escaped a major disaster in the form of floods as the feared monsoon rains were not as lethal as they were over the past several years.
This year’s rainfall, however, exposed how better prepared are municipal administrations of our big cities to cope with floods.
The images of inundated roads and residential areas in the big cities like Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar in newspapers showed that the civic authorities of these cities have a long way to go to handle such eventualities.
Though, hundred percent accurate predictions for natural phenomena are not possible yet devastations caused by them could be easily curtailed.
The frequent erratic weather patterns throughout the world, including Pakistan, are largely attributed to climatic change but our authorities are least prepared and give scant attention to getting ready for any abnormal situation.
We have become used to fire-fighting drills to deal with emergency situations while we never bother to take long term measures to minimise losses caused by climate-related disasters.
Our seriousness towards climate related issues could be gauged from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s disjointed speech at the UN Climate Summit held in Paris last year.
In order to highlight Pakistan’s concerns over the environment related issues, the PM’s speech was reported to be full of criticism on coal power generation, which is the single biggest global contributor to the rise in carbon emissions, which scientists say is causing rise in the earth’s temperature.
Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, who was accompanying the prime minister in the tour, reportedly went through the PM’s speech and pointed out that coal generation is a major plank of Pakistan’s power generation policy and the Chinese are making huge investment in this sector.
Eventually, the portion of the speech related to coal power generation was struck off; leaving a shortened and disjointed version that was delivered in the summit.
The climate related issues, whether natural or those caused by human activity, need to be tackled properly to minimise their negative impact. The government needs to plan out better strategies to deal with climate change.
Experts for years have been highlighting the impact of climate changes in Pakistan and the unusual rains are one of the causes of these changes.
Pakistan has regularly been facing severe floods since 2010 which have caused huge devastation across the country.
Luckily, this year, the spell was not as severe as predicted before the advent of the monsoon season.
But there have been small erratic weather patterns in the country over the past one year and so.
In June, the prime minister ordered an inquiry into Pakistan Meteorological Department’s failure to forecast the severe flood at the beginning of the month that struck Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Islamabad, causing death of seven people and injuring dozens.
Last year too, a storm hit Peshawar unexpectedly, causing devastation and loss of life on the day for which the Met office had forecast dry weather. Interestingly, even when a storm was hitting Peshawar, the concerned departments were circulating Met Office report suggesting dry weather for the day.
The Meteorological Department has now sent a proposal to the Prime Minister office seeking to revamp the weather forecasting system throughout the country.
The new system is estimated to cost 19 billion rupees. Experts say this investment is just peanuts as compared to losses caused by the floods to the country.
Total economic impacts of floods in Pakistan, which are considered to be one of the major disasters to hit the country, are estimated to be as much as 43 billion dollars.
The Met Office proposal includes purchase of 21 state-of the-art weather radars to be installed in different parts of the country.
Dr Ghulam Rasool, director general of the Pakistan Meteorological Department, says the existing weather forecasting radars are not “totally obsolete” but latest technology would, of course, help them in making more accurate predictions.
“We are making the best of our efforts to predict as accurately as possible with the existing equipment,” he told Money Matters. “But if we are given the latest technology, it will be more helpful,” he added.
Weather experts say weather prediction could improve up to 90 percent if latest weather system was installed in the country.
Experts say apart from latest weather forecasting technology, there is also a need for creating more awareness among the people to deal with climate-related issues.
Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, special advisor to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General for Asia, said Pakistan needs to develop “climate resilient” infrastructure to mitigate devastation caused by weather-related calamities.
For example, he said, when a road is wiped away during floods it should be replaced by the one that should withstand the vagaries of weather.
“We need to create awareness among people as well so that they build climate-resilient houses,” he said, adding that so far not much attention has been given to this sector.
Chaudhry said since the government was also signatory to the Paris Agreement on climate change, it was its responsibility to abide by this agreement.
He said though the government has initially laid emphasis on the installation of coal-fired power plants in big numbers in the country to overcome the power shortages, the focus was now being shifted to the renewable energy resources.
“Now the focus is more on power generation through LNG than on coal, which is a good step.”
Analysts say the government needs to give due attention to climate-related issues as Pakistan is considered to be one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change because of its geographic, demographic, and diverse climatic conditions.
More so, the economic losses faced by the country due to climate change are believed to be far more than those caused by terrorism.
“We need to launch a massive campaign about climate change among the masses to educate them and prepare them about this issue,” Chaudhry said.
“Unfortunately, so far, in Pakistan there has been less sensitisation on climate change as compared to other countries and we need to give due attention to this matter,” he added.
The writer is a senior journalist based in Islamabad
