A Plea From Pakistan’s Sindh: ‘Our Village Drowned. You Might Still Have Time to Save Yours.’

We knew catastrophic climate change was coming. But for #Pakistan it has already arrived

Previously, when the riverbed area flooded, people would take shelter on the river’s embankments. For Pakistan’s 2010 #floods, Khairpur provided refuge for several people displaced from the katcho. When the water receded, they returned home. Health authorities helped prevent water-borne disease outbreaks and most displaced people received some meals at relief camps. We heard of a few people dying from the flood waters, but largely, we didn’t hear of large-scale deaths from starvation or preventable and treatable water-borne diseases in our district.

All of that has changed. Relentless monsoon rains, following on the heels of unprecedented heatwaves, overwhelmed irrigation drains and flooded areas before the Indus River overflowed its banks. Following the rains, peoples’ homes started falling. Both katcha and pakka — cemented and uncemented — homes fell. In our haveli — a collection of family homes sharing a common compound –– the rich and poor lost their homes, though of course the poor suffered infinitely more.
#SOSPakistan #PakistanFloods #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #TomorrowIsTooLate
https://thediplomat.com/2022/09/a-plea-from-pakistans-sindh-our-village-drowned-you-might-still-have-time-to-save-yours/