Vulnerable to disaster

Cyclone Biparjoy – literally meaning Cyclone Disaster – has been headline news for Pakistan the past few days. And rightly so; Cyclone Biparjoy was initially moving with a speed and direction that would have engulfed a larger part of Pakistan’s coastal areas than what is now expected – the cyclone on Wednesday having shifted more to the northeast towards India. That obviously does not mean that our coastal areas will not feel its atmospheric impact though. As Cyclone Biparjoy makes landfall today between Keti Bandar in Sindh and Kutch in Indian Gujarat, some of what to expect in Pakistan is widespread wind-dust/thunderstorm-rain and squally winds. Some of the less ‘natural’ impacts could be an increase in power loadshedding, and in some cases power outages in case of urban flooding. Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan has already tweeted out about a “temporary decline in RLNG-based electricity generation and temporary increase in loadshedding”, clarifying that is because of RLNG shipping having been disrupted due to the cyclone.

As the cyclone turned east on Wednesday, Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman was quick to emphasize that there was still absolutely no reason to be complacent, warning people against what she called ‘disaster tourism’. Indeed, this is not a ‘moment’ to capture for social media accounts. More than 60,000 people – around 80 per cent of the population in vulnerable areas along the coast – have been evacuated in Pakistan. The number is naturally larger in India, which faces the inevitability of having to face a stronger, fiercer impact of Cyclone Biparjoy. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued weather warnings in several states, and the government of India has issued an emergency situation in the state of Gujarat which is possibly going to face its worst cyclone yet. In Pakistan, as vulnerable communities are moved out of harm’s way, the city of Karachi braces for urban flooding due to heavy rainfall. Even that – given Karachi’s lack of planning and its reclamation of land from the sea – is enough for places like DHA to issue voluntary evacuation orders for some of its residents. For Pakistan’s Keti Bandar area, evacuations are not an optional notion as the area will probably bear the brunt of the cyclone on our side of the border.

More important is how Minister Sherry Rehman chose to highlight the cyclone’s link to climate change, calling Pakistan “a hotspot of climate change”. The vulnerabilities we face as a result of climate change are complex. Glacier melt has deposited carbon-soot pollution in river systems, and there are threats to water resources generally, as well as food production and food security and depletion in an already depleted and poorly-functioning energy sector. Add to this the fact that the developed, rich nations of the world have continued to – are continuing to – add carbon emissions that lead to countries like Pakistan facing the fury of climate change and we have a situation that should be taken on as an emergency. Constant pressure needs to be placed on uninterested governments. Much like COP27 and the deft negotiations handled by our climate change minister there, there has to be a constant push to get the richer nations to make amends for what they have already done and to stop what they are doing to the environment. Cyclone Biparjoy and other ‘natural’ disasters are a window to a very dark future. Just because we get lucky once or twice doesn’t mean we will keep being spared. The next 30-50 years are going to see galloping desertification, increasing salinity, the major dams increasingly silted, a decrease in forest cover that will increase topsoil erosion, rising sea levels and warmer seas leading to increased cyclonic activity and conflict over diminishing water resources. We need to tell the world that this is not an ‘if’ or ‘but’ or ‘maybe’. This is happening and it is happening now.