33% of Pakistan Land Currently Underwater
The comments here are not fruitful, pointing fingers at each other like juveniles and meme-ing will not solve the problem. We are better than this, let&#x27;s act like it.<p>____<p>I don&#x27;t think people understand the scope of just how bad things are. As a local, let me give you guys a run down of the situation:<p>1- Our Economy is not even worth calling weak, we are just.... unwanted. Despite being the 5th most populated country in the world, we simply don&#x27;t produce and export anything of global significance. I remember when there was a flood in Thailand and it caused a world-wide shortage of hard drives. We are flooded and no one notices.<p>This means that our currency has no global cache, and we are constantly in the hunt for Dollars, so we can actually import anything. If it wasn&#x27;t for our population abroad sending back forex in the form of remittances, we would be bankrupt.<p>This means that, even <i>before</i> this situation, we were already running around with a begging bowl, asking for a few hundred million here, and maybe a billion and a half there. And this all flows into the ever gawping black hole of expenses, it doesn&#x27;t actually <i>lead</i> to anything. As much as we like to blame corruption and illiteracy, the bitter honest truth is that that it&#x27;s just mundane incompetence.<p>----<p>2- So now that I have set the base line, I need you to understand the climate side of it. Unlike the 2010 floods, the events happened so slowly and randomly that until recently we didn&#x27;t even realise what was happening. First was one of the hottest summers we had, burning and drying the summer crops, reducing yields, so we thought, oh it is that sort of year, and then the rains came and we were actually happy.<p>----<p>3- The problem is, honestly, not the monsoon rains, atleast not completely, but a few random rain related events.<p>In one area, we had sudden hill torrents and flash floods; in yet another area, we had a cloud burst; in a third, our glaciers that had melted because of the drought before overflowed. In each situation, the Monsoon rains added the icing on the cake, making each individual climate disaster worse.<p><i>THIS</i> is how you know this is a climate disaster. The monsoon rains is a recorded phenomenon and it follows a (slightly predictable) pattern where we see a sort of wave wash from the in from the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea, and goes across the Indian subcontinent like a traveling waterfall. But you don&#x27;t hear much about floods in the other countries in the region, as there usually are in other times.<p>That&#x27;s because the OTHER freak events, all separate from each other, all in addition ( and a bit unrelated) to the monsoon; meant that in an area where you perhaps predicted X amount of rain from Monsoon, you had Y amount of additional water coming from an unrelated source.<p>----<p>4- And that water had no where to go. Remember, the thirsty rivers and parched fields of the summer were already full with monsoon water, they can&#x27;t absorb this extra water; especially not in the absurdly short time all this water was dumped in one go.<p>And water flows. So when an area overflowed, it lead to another area, which also was already already full. And these climate disasters struck in a cascade, so one area was already being flooded because of glacier melt, then the floods from ANOTHER area upstream, which had suffered random cloud burst also came through, so it was double the trouble. And the monsoon passed through on it&#x27;s own merry way.<p>---<p>5- So a country that was already on the brink was flooded through. Even if you, a random, poor bonded [1] farmer somehow survived, your home was destroyed, your crops destroyed, your animals were killed, and your field will no longer be workable for sometime, even if you wanted or had the ability to work.<p>And this means that, I, who thankfully lived in the sliver of land NOT affected by all this problems, will soon also be affected in another way; shortages. I went to the market yesterday and food was already short and prices hiked horrifically.<p>I simply could not afford to buy all my necessary groceries, and in fact could not even if I had the ability, because some of the things simply weren&#x27;t on the stalls.<p>And remember this is not 1st world supermarket where foods are graded; I couldn&#x27;t find even the usual bruised and halfway-to-rotten goods I usually buy. Partly because that tomato I was going to eat was flooded away, but also maybe because the truck it was going to come on was washed away, or maybe the bridge that truck was going to cross no longer exists. Or maybe the people who run these supply chains are dead or injured.<p>Either way, while I, thankfully, am blessed to somehow afford my groceries regardless, there will be yet additional LARGE group of people, who will be starving simply because the supply chains that fed them are gone.<p>----<p>6- And the kicker of this all; with all that extra water from glacier melts flooded away and washed down the drain into the Arabian sea, our usual frozen water stores are reduced, and we will have possibly a drought next year. Our luck just doesn&#x27;t end.<p>____<p>Here is an article you might like to read, for more information on the floods and the effects they will have on our economy.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;profit.pakistantoday.com.pk&#x2F;2022&#x2F;08&#x2F;29&#x2F;death-devastation-and-now-starvation-what-is-the-cost-of-this-catastrophe&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;profit.pakistantoday.com.pk&#x2F;2022&#x2F;08&#x2F;29&#x2F;death-devasta...</a><p>---
For some bonus misery content
[1]:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dw.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;life-of-slavery-the-perpetuation-of-bonded-labor-in-pakistan&#x2F;a-51792298" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dw.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;life-of-slavery-the-perpetuation-of-bo...</a>