Monsoon mayhem

The 2025 monsoon season is in full swing, and it has been a lethal and devastating one. As of the writing of this column on June 23, the National Disaster Management Agency had reported that a total of 234 people had lost their lives because of the rains, including 113 children. The most badly affected and battered province has been Punjab, where 135 people have so far lost their lives, followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with 56 deaths.

Given that the monsoons are far from over and the Pakistan Meteorological Department has forecast more rain in the coming days, it is likely that this death toll will rise.

I am not a climate change sceptic by any stretch of the imagination, but have to say that why must everything bad that’s happening in Pakistan of late, because of the heavy monsoon rains, be attributed to climate change?

Of course, climate change leads to extreme weather, but a significant portion of the death and destruction caused by urban flash floods in cities like Lahore and Islamabad, as well as in built-up areas of Swat and other places in the north, is due to unplanned and often illegal construction.

If you’re going to build a luxury hotel on the side of a large lake or build a housing scheme right next to the natural flow of a rain-fed nullah or river, then don’t be surprised when these get flooded or even destroyed by the flood. That’s not caused by climate change, but by allowing the construction of hotels and housing societies in places that, for thousands of years, have provided natural paths for rainwater and floodwater from monsoons.

Building hotels literally on the banks of a rain-fed river, or a resort on the side of a large lake in the Karakorams created by a series of earthquakes, has nothing to do with climate change.

A very basic understanding of climate change is that over the past many decades, temperatures all over the world have increased, and we see more cases of extreme weather (very high temperatures, very low temperatures, very high rainfall, and extreme weather happening in places not otherwise known for such weather phenomena) and natural disasters caused by these fluctuations.

In the case of Pakistan, there is the phenomenon of a GLOF (Glacial Lake Outburst Flood), which occurs when large discharges of water from melting glaciers take place. Several such instances have taken place in Chitral as well as Gilgit-Baltistan, unfortunately often with devastating effect.

A significant portion of the urban flooding during the ongoing monsoon has been affecting people living in relatively new housing societies situated near rain-fed streams and rivers. Dozens of people, including a family from Lodhran in Punjab, remain missing after flash floods swept away the vehicles they were in. In Islamabad’s DHA, a tragic case of a father and his 25-year-old daughter being swept away in their vehicle was caught on camera, and the clip quickly went viral on social media, highlighting how even urban areas are not safe when it rained heavily.

In the same locality, video footage emerged of the rain-fed Sawan River in very high flood, its waters flowing very close to the edge of the housing society not far from dozens of homes. The fault here is not of Mother Nature but of humans who see nothing wrong in building a housing society right next to the natural path of a rain-fed river.

In a nutshell, when many cities in Pakistan expanded to provide housing for residents who could afford luxury homes, the housing societies built as a result often had little regard for environmental, building, and zoning laws and regulations. And the unplanned – and often illegal – construction continues with the relevant municipal agencies either looking the other way or becoming willing accomplices and partners in what is nothing but a commercial for-profit enterprise.

Given that such unplanned and often illegal construction – of not just housing societies but also hotels – continues in both the cities and in the north where tourists throng, it is unlikely that we will see any change in the depressing statistics of rain damage to physical property and human life in the coming years.

However, certain measures can be taken to minimise the loss of human life in such situations. This should include disseminating weather bulletins through all digital and social media platforms, and issuing prompt warnings to tourists intending to visit the mountainous north, where numerous flash floods have washed away roads and cars with people in them.

The relevant governments and local administrations should also be more proactive in areas visited by tourists that are known to be prone to flash flooding, as well as landslides, and cordone these off in advance of a predicted spell of heavy rains. Such measures can help minimise the increasingly lethal effects of the monsoon on life and property in Pakistan.

The writer is a journalist based in Karachi. He tweets/posts @omar_quraishi and can be reached at: omarrquraishi@gmail.com