Pakistan Floods – Pakistan Needs a Fresh Disaster Mitigation Strategy

16 NOVEMBER, 2015 BY SCIDEV.NET IN ASIA

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The rural economy takes a huge hit from frequent floods that can be better managed, says Ibrar ul Hassan Akhtar, writing for SciDev.Net.

The history of disasters in South Asia reveals what is at stake in the face of climate change. Analyses of data for natural disasters — from the international disaster database EM-DAT, and covering hazards including droughts, epidemics, floods and landslides — shows that India is the country that has been most affected by these events since 1900, followed by Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.[1]

Every year, agricultural losses related to disaster cost Pakistan an average of US$15-20 million. This is due to poor governance, rural communities residing inside flood-prone areas, a lack of adaptive agricultural research and a resistance to changing what has become a ‘flood business’ — the government compensating those affected by floods and then resettling them back to the same flood-prone areas. This spells a need to rethink the country’s national framework for disaster management to protect its agricultural economy.

Rising Disaster Risk

According to EM-DAT data, the risk of natural disasters in Pakistan has increased over the past 100 years: four per cent (four events) of the global total of natural disasters occurred in the country during 1900-1947, rising to 64 per cent (79 events) during 1948-1990 and 32 per cent (40 events), in just the past 15 years, from 1991-2015.

Development policy has also changed, alongside these trends, over the past few decades. There is no doubt that Pakistan has shifted towards industries based on agricultural raw materials such as cotton ginning (separating fibres from seeds) or rice exports — much less agricultural growth is occurring among farming communities. The agro-industrial sector contributes around 21-25 per cent to national GDP (gross domestic product).

Wheat, cotton, sugar cane and rice are the crops of major economic importance for the country. Wheat is mainly grown in the Rabi growing season (October-May), which generally avoids the floods caused by monsoon rains that typically fall from June until September. It follows that extreme monsoon events and floods harm the national economy directly — through losses to life and of crops, livestock and houses — and indirectly, through the huge investments the government then needs to make to rehabilitate affected areas.

Cotton, sugar cane, rice and other high-value crops are mainly grown in Kharif season (July-September), when they are most at risk from the monsoon floods. Cotton contributes an average of around 1.5 per cent to GDP, with rice providing 0.7 per cent, sugar cane 0.6 per cent and maize 0.4 per cent.

“Although geospatial technology can help to map and monitor areas at risk of disaster, this is not enough. The adoption of policies to reduce the impacts of flooding needs legislation.” –Ibrar ul Hassan Akhtar

The numbers on losses speak for themselves. During the flooding that took place in each of the past six years (2010-2015), Pakistan lost cumulatively more than an estimated 1,359,000 hectares of cotton, 372,000 hectares of sugar cane and around 1,391,000 hectares of rice. [2-4, unpublished data 2013-15]

No doubt, the 2010 floods were the worst in terms of geographical extent and damage to crops. But they also highlighted the lack of a preparedness infrastructure and mechanisms in Pakistan.

Life on the Edge

Systems that rely on satellite technology, such as remote sensing and geographic information systems, have helped improve the country’s management of disasters, through near-real-time situation analysis, coverage of a wider area than could be monitored physically on the ground, and through spatial analysis. Crucially, this technology has also enabled us to understand how many of the country’s rural population live inside or near flood-prone areas and rely on smallholdings for their livelihood.

In the province of Punjab, 531,000 hectares (4.4 per cent) of agriculture is practised inside the floodplain; in Sindh province, the figure is 489,000 hectares (7.4 per cent).

During the monsoon season, rising rivers can easily flood crops up to five to ten kilometres around the river channel. Geospatial analyses have identified several districts in Punjab and Sindh with significant areas of crops growing inside floodplains during the July-September flood season.

But although geospatial technology can help to map and monitor areas at risk of disaster, this is not enough. The adoption of policies to reduce the impacts of flooding needs legislation — to permanently relocate families to safer zones, adopt flood-resilient cropping practices as a preventive measure, and promote research into cropping systems adapted to floods. In essence, it needs a revised disaster-management framework.

Such a framework would also reinforce the role of technology, by promoting tools that are more time-effective and reliable. For example, conventional approaches to data collection in Pakistan rely on centuries-old administrative systems; they need to be revamped with state-of-the-art geospatial technologies that can visualise and measure every inch of land surface in the country.

Capacity building is important too: those running management systems lack proper technical skills, adding further to improper planning and the tendency towards unscientific approaches to tackling natural disasters.

Pakistan needs a framework that promotes proper assessments of climate change, develops mitigation strategies, maps risk-prone areas by classifying multiple disasters and supports research for agricultural adaptations that can add resilience to cropping systems. The country’s bureaucratic approach to disaster management needs to turn into a technocratic one.

File photo: Floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2010. Photo: Oxfam International

About the Author

Ibrar ul Hassan Akhtar is a scientist at Pakistan’s Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission, Islamabad. The views expressed in this article are his and do not reflect the official view of his organisation.

References

[1] Guha-Sapir D, Below R and Hoyois Ph. EM-DAT: The CRED/OFDA International Disaster Database (, a
[2] Pakistan: floods/rains 2010 — Rapid crop damage assessment, series no. 1, series no. 2. (Suparco and FAO, 2010)
[3] Pakistan: floods/rains 2011 — Rapid crop damage assessment, series no. 3 (Suparco and FAO, 2011)
[4] Pakistan: floods/rains 2012 — Rapid crop damage assessment, series no. 4 (Suparco and FAO, 2012)

This article was originally published on SciDev.Net. Read the original article.

Flood Disaster 2015 in Pakistan

BY ADMINISTRATOR JULY 24, 2015

Years of floods have taught us nothing. A human catastrophe is already underway in the Chitral valley as floods have swept away 40 link bridges and over 100 houses in the scenic valley. As torrential rain continued for a seventh day, more villages were hit by flash floods in the area. The government has declared the area to be calamity hit, with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif finally being able to reach the area, and announcing Rs1 billion in aid. Luckily, locals have migrated to safe places mitigating human casualties, but the failure of government departments to give an accurate estimate of the flood damage should be an indicator of the systemic failure of the state to plan for increased floods. The complete annihilation of roads and suspension bridges means that locals are unable to leave the area, with aid being delivered via army helicopters. While the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister’s office has claimed that schools are being converted into shelters, the deputy commissioner’s office seems to respond to the assertions with ignorance. There is no better proof of a complete communication breakdown in the response to the floods.

With both Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif away in Saudi Arabia when the flooding season began, it is clear that the priorities of the elected representatives of the country lie elsewhere. The directives to the National Disaster Management Authority to speed up relief and rescue efforts mean absolutely nothing when there has been no upgrading of disaster management and weather prediction systems. The bulk of the relief effort in Chitral has remained in the hands of the army, the civilian government for now sticking to promises of compensation. Punjab is set to experience high floods after a Met office warning that River Indus is in high flood at Taunsa Barrage and set to rise. There is still time for emergency measures to mitigate the flooding and pre-warn affected populations where the breaches in the dykes are likely to be made. In Layyah alone 223,000 people have been affected by the floods as dykes have washed away in Dera Ghazi Khan. A total of 244 villages in Punjab are said to have been affected. In terms of showing a complete absence of planning, the Punjab chief minister’s home city, Lahore, offers a glaring example – having been converted into a swamp by lunch time. That the drainage and sewerage system in the capital of Punjab choked after a few hours of rain shows that the priorities of the government are in delivering glossy infrastructure without any of the basic requirements of planning being met. With the level of water in the Hub Dam up by three feet and 15 people having drowned in the region, the next likely target of the floods is Sindh. The infrastructure in Karachi is so poor that 117 feeders tripped on Wednesday night after the first monsoon rain. Each year Pakistan faces floods. Each year they catch the administration by surprise. The governments are clearly not interested in safeguarding people from floods. And now the demand for security from floods may need to emerge more strongly from the people. With more thunderstorms on the way in Sindh, Bilawal Bhutto’s directives to the Sindh government to prepare for flooding will hardly mitigate the effects of decades of neglecting the country’s water infrastructure.