Daily Times

Just months after floods of biblical proportions had forced Pakistan to realise it stood at the edge of a climatic precipice, yet another round of torrential rains has returned to spread chaos and death across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Heavy downpours and thunderstorms have already claimed 30 lives as 140 more sustained serious injuries.

Considering the perfect storm is in no mood to lose its strength, the rain-battered province might brace itself for more destruction. But as many, many more houses get destroyed, and people grasp any straws that offer even a semblance of salvation, the discomforting questions are back to haunt the authorities.

Since the last monsoon, the government has left no stone unturned in ringing the alarm bells in all neighbourhoods with hopes that someone’s heart will melt at the hapless sight. However, the fact that Pakistan is ground zero for the consequences of global warming was no excuse to take some time off from the deadly wave headed our way.

A lot was written about how this deluge was the first in the series of many, far too critical climate change disasters. Even if the state did not know when and where the wrath of mother nature would strike next, it should have spent the calm before the storm working on its defence mechanisms. While Karachiites keep their fingers crossed and invoke divine intervention as cyclone Biparjoy looms large, people on the other end are exasperated, as to what horrors the next rains would bring.

In an ideal world, a considerate state would have invested heavily in small dams and early warning systems so that its people were not forced to rely on prayers alone for relief. But sadly, so politically charged is the administration that little to nothing has yet been achieved in building resilience. That most of this inaction has resulted from the never-before-seen scope of its economic trouble cannot be denied but Pakistan is in no shape to sit through this climate crisis and blame it on the greenhouse gas emissions of industrialized countries. We need solutions and that too, today. *