Guest Blog: Pakistan Flooding: Impacts, Attribution, & Adaptation Solutions
21/08/10 08:03
by Hammad Naqi Khan, WWF-Pakistan Programs Director
We cannot attribute these floods in Pakistan solely to climate change but labeling them as an extreme weather event that probably has a climate change component is logical; the current seasonal monsoon rains and flows in the Indus river and a few of its tributaries are a 1 in 100 year event. The signature of climate change will take some time to quantify, but 2010 has a confluence of weird weather that probably has a link to human-induced climate change. Consider: 2010 is the globally warmest year on record to date, the record high temperatures and wildfires in Russia, the exceptionally high rainfall and mudslides in China, the below average rainfalls in Bangladesh and most of India, and extremely high rainfall and flows in northern Pakistan rivers (which carry snow/glacier melt).
We cannot attribute these floods in Pakistan solely to climate change but labeling them as an extreme weather event that probably has a climate change component is logical; the current seasonal monsoon rains and flows in the Indus river and a few of its tributaries are a 1 in 100 year event. The signature of climate change will take some time to quantify, but 2010 has a confluence of weird weather that probably has a link to human-induced climate change. Consider: 2010 is the globally warmest year on record to date, the record high temperatures and wildfires in Russia, the exceptionally high rainfall and mudslides in China, the below average rainfalls in Bangladesh and most of India, and extremely high rainfall and flows in northern Pakistan rivers (which carry snow/glacier melt).
I also strongly believe that this particular event in Pakistan is largely human-caused due to following reasons:
· Weak management of watershed and catchment areas — a lot of deforestation has been going on for years, which alters runoff patterns.
· Bad regulation of existing reservoirs for flood control. Farmers were suffering and not enough water was released in early summer with a fear that less water will be available in winter, despite the met forecasts of above-average monsoons.
· Poor land-use and water resource management planning, particularly in floodplain (Katcha) areas and along northern Pakistani rivers. Historically, the Indus river used to flow in the Katcha area, which is between 5 to 25 kms wide. Now, one can see encroachments, human settlements, villages and huge area under agriculture in this floodplain due to long-term management that has ignored the historic flood regime.
· Failure of irrigation infrastructure due to natural reasons (because of heavy rainfall, farmers were not using water from the huge canal network, which resulted in breaches and overflows in some areas) and poor planning and corruption (millions of US$ World Bank–funded headworks and barrage rehabilitation projects failed as floodwaters bypassed these structures).
Another development is that all the politicians and technocrats from Punjab province are saying that we could have saved “all the damages” if only had we built large dams on Indus. WWF-Pakistan does not agree with this assessment and advocates a scientific assessment of the need to have small and check dams on the Indus and its tributaries, including additional storage capacity as the existing storage capacity has been reduced due to heavy siltation.
We plan to carry out an assessment of ecological damage of these “super floods” and the reasons for the failure of our existing institutional water management framework. We fully support the development of a comprehensive scientific study on rivers originating from the whole of the Tibetan plateau (which was span Pakistan, India, Nepal, China, Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia) to investigate shifting patterns in rainfall patterns and the linkages with climate change and shifting land and water management patterns.
We must develop effective intervention strategies to reduce the likelihood of events of a similar magnitude affecting such large areas, so many people, and such important ecosystems and species.
· Weak management of watershed and catchment areas — a lot of deforestation has been going on for years, which alters runoff patterns.
· Bad regulation of existing reservoirs for flood control. Farmers were suffering and not enough water was released in early summer with a fear that less water will be available in winter, despite the met forecasts of above-average monsoons.
· Poor land-use and water resource management planning, particularly in floodplain (Katcha) areas and along northern Pakistani rivers. Historically, the Indus river used to flow in the Katcha area, which is between 5 to 25 kms wide. Now, one can see encroachments, human settlements, villages and huge area under agriculture in this floodplain due to long-term management that has ignored the historic flood regime.
· Failure of irrigation infrastructure due to natural reasons (because of heavy rainfall, farmers were not using water from the huge canal network, which resulted in breaches and overflows in some areas) and poor planning and corruption (millions of US$ World Bank–funded headworks and barrage rehabilitation projects failed as floodwaters bypassed these structures).
Another development is that all the politicians and technocrats from Punjab province are saying that we could have saved “all the damages” if only had we built large dams on Indus. WWF-Pakistan does not agree with this assessment and advocates a scientific assessment of the need to have small and check dams on the Indus and its tributaries, including additional storage capacity as the existing storage capacity has been reduced due to heavy siltation.
We plan to carry out an assessment of ecological damage of these “super floods” and the reasons for the failure of our existing institutional water management framework. We fully support the development of a comprehensive scientific study on rivers originating from the whole of the Tibetan plateau (which was span Pakistan, India, Nepal, China, Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia) to investigate shifting patterns in rainfall patterns and the linkages with climate change and shifting land and water management patterns.
We must develop effective intervention strategies to reduce the likelihood of events of a similar magnitude affecting such large areas, so many people, and such important ecosystems and species.
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