Australia’s foreign minister has announced humanitarian assistance in response to devastating floods in Pakistan.
Answering Pakistan’s foreign minister‘s calls for help, Penny Wong said $2 million would be delivered through the UN’s World Food Program (WFP), contributing to urgent aid already delivered by Turkey and The United Arab Emirates.
According to Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), the floods have impacted more than half of the country. So far, officials estimate there have been more than 1,000 deaths, tens of billions of dollars worth of property and infrastructure damage, and 33 million people displaced as a result of the natural disaster.
Pakistan’s climate minister, Sherry Rehman, said the unprecedented floods had turned Pakistan into a climate dystopia.
“We’re on the front line of a global crisis,” Rehman said.
“What we saw recently in the last eight weeks is unrelenting cascades of torrential rain that no monsoon has ever brought with it, ever before.
“Climate knows no borders and its effects can be disproportionately felt,” she said.
WFP Pakistan director Chris Kaye said that although the floods were much greater than those that devastated Pakistan in 2010, Pakistan was comparatively well prepared.
“That’s particularly evident in terms of the systems and the structure that it has to provide for people in these types of situations through its social protections scheme,” Kaye said.
A climate response analysis released by WFP in December last year said the risks of catastrophic floods in Pakistan were likely to increase as the impacts of climate change worsen.
The report identified drought, impacts on agriculture, disease spread, and internal displacement as the areas of highest risk from climate change in Pakistan.
It indicated that although precipitation was likely to be more erratic, this may or may not contribute to more flooding in the future.
“At the national level, mean temperatures are projected to rise by 2050 without a corresponding increase in mean precipitation,” the report said.
“Rain-induced flash flooding will, in the aggregate, likely remain below critical levels through 2050.”
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