Climate justice: Who should foot the bill for record flooding in Pakistan?

First modification: 09/12/2022 – 16:06

The magnitude of the disasters left by the floods in Pakistan left the UN Secretary General speechless. After visiting the floods, Antonio Guterres declared that there were many humanitarian disasters but that he had never seen such a “climate massacre”.

About 1,400 people have died since June in the floods, caused by devastating monsoon winds. The floodwaters covered a third of the country – an area equivalent to that of the United Kingdom – and destroyed homes, businesses, roads, bridges and crops.

Pakistan, one of the 10 countries most exposed to the consequences of global warming, according to a study by the German Watch analysis center (read the report on PDFin French) suffered the worst flooding in its history with the accumulation of monsoon rains more frequent and intense than usual.

In some provinces such as Sindh, rainfall in August increased by 700% compared to the average. “You have to imagine a landscape where miles and square miles of fields, houses and roads are now covered in water. This means that reaching the population to assess needs and bring help is very complicated,” he tells RFI Federico Schivo, logistics manager at Doctors Without Borders, from the capital Islamabad.

“Nearly a million people have been left homeless. There are many people who live on the side of the roads, in schools or in humanitarian camps”, warns MSF.

The UN also estimates that 800,000 hectares of crops were lost to the flood. “In the Sindh region, for example, which produces for example rice and cotton, there are many destroyed crops. The damage to agriculture is enormous, which constitutes a risk for the food security of the country”, adds Federico Schivo.

Months before the torrential rains fell, the Pakistani population faced another extreme weather event: heat waves with temperatures exceeding 50 degrees in some cities. The succession of unprecedented heat waves and extreme rainfall has drawn the attention of scientists.

“Two phenomena were combined: it was very hot, with a classic glacial melt in the lower parts. But the phenomenon was early and was exacerbated by a heat wave that lasted for a long time. Since April the glaciers have melted. And this glacial melting was combined with a very intense monsoon in August with periods of intense and continuous rain that increased the flow of the rivers”, observes the French glaciologist Patrick Wagnon.

The scientist at the French Research and Development Institute (IRD) in Grenoble has worked on Andean glaciers and has been observing the evolution of Asian Himalayan glaciers for two decades. Last year he climbed a 7,000-meter-plus summit in northern Pakistan.

But to what extent can flooding be attributed to climate change? Wagnon clarifies that there is “a natural variation, with cold, dry years or with more rainfall.” However, the mathematical models that calculate “past trends and anticipate what may happen in the future at the climate level” leave no room for doubt. increases in temperature. And it turns out that there is a 95% probability that this current extreme weather event is due to climate changeWagnon concludes.

According to the glaciologist, if nothing is done to limit the increase in global temperatures, the projections anticipate an amplification of the frequency of heat waves like the one experienced by Pakistan before the floods. “Without climate change, we estimate that a year as hot as 2022 would only happen like this every 1,000 years,” while the frequency is 1 in 100 years with the current rise in global temperature. And if the thermometer rises one more degree, a comparable catastrophe “happened 1 time every 10 years”.

climate injustice

Given the magnitude of the catastrophe, a feeling of injustice arises in Pakistan. The country is paying dearly for the cost of climate change for which it is not responsible, Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s climate change minister, was outraged after the floods. “Pakistan accounts for less than 1% of global emissions. We contribute very little to the global amount of greenhouse gas emissions that turn our climate into hell”, the minister was outraged.

Pakistan, a country that suffers a lot but has contributed little to global warming… Based on this idea, NGOs like Amnesty International ask that the rich countries and those that get rich with fossil fuels that pollute the most, be the ones that pay the bill for climatic catastrophes.

The financial responsibility of the richest countries in climate catastrophes It will be debated at the next United Nations General Assembly in September. The archipelago of Vanuatu in the Pacific, vulnerable to rising waters, wants to go to the International Court of Justice to force States to account for climate policy.

And the Climate Action Network, the main coalition of environmental NGOs, calls for a mechanism to be negotiated at the next climate conference, COP27 in Egypt, to compensate for damages and losses caused by climate change, and thus , move towards climate justice.