How climate change is worsening Pakistan’s deadly floods

Rescuers and relatives searched knee-deep in water for the body of one-year-old Zara. It was washed away by flash floods. The bodies of her parents and three siblings had already been found a few days ago.

“We suddenly saw a lot of water. I came up to the roof and urged them to join me,” Zara’s grandfather, Arshad, said, showing the BBC the dirt road they were taken down in Sambrial village in northern Punjab in August.

His family tried to join him, but it was too late. All six of them were swept away by the strong current.

Every year, the monsoon season brings deadly floods to Pakistan.

This year it began in late June, and within three months, floods killed more than 1,000 people. At least 6.9 million people were affected, according to the United Nations humanitarian agency, OCHA.

The South Asian country is struggling with the devastating consequences of climate change, despite emitting just 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

To trace its effects, the BBC traveled from the mountains of the north to the plains of the south for three months. In each province, climate change has had a different impact.

However, there was one common element. The poor suffer more than others.

We met people who had lost their homes, livelihoods and loved ones – and were resigned to going through it all again the next monsoon.

Monsoon floods have begun in the north, with global warming appearing in its most familiar form in the Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan region.

Amid the high peaks of the Himalayas, Karakoram and Hindu Kush, there are more than 7,000 glaciers. But due to high temperatures, they melt.

The result can be catastrophic: the meltwater turns into glacial lakes that can suddenly explode. Thousands of villages are at risk.

This summer, hundreds of homes were destroyed and roads damaged by landslides and flash floods.

It is difficult to warn about “glacial lake eruptions”. The area is remote and mobile phone service is poor. Pakistan and the World Bank are trying to improve the early warning system, which often does not work due to the mountainous terrain.

Community is a strong asset. When shepherd Wasit Khan woke up to rushing water, with chunks of ice and debris, he ran to an area with a better signal. He started warning as many villagers as possible.

“I asked everyone to leave their belongings, leave the house, take their wives, children and the elderly and move away,” he told the BBC’s Urdu correspondent Muhammad Zubair.

Thanks to him, dozens were saved.

The danger took a different form in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

In Jadon, the BBC found hundreds of villagers digging through piles of rocks with their bare hands.

A local official said a cloud storm caused flash floods early in the morning. This occurs when a sudden updraft in moist air results in heavy, localized rainfall. The current swept away several houses and caused a landslide.

Men from nearby villages rushed to help, which was invaluable – but it was not enough. Excavators that villagers desperately need have been trapped in flooded roads, some blocked by huge boulders.

One man told the BBC: “Nothing will happen until the machines arrive.”

Then silence suddenly covered the area. Dozens of men stood still in one corner. The bodies of two children, drowned in dark mud, were recovered from under the rubble and taken away.

Scenes like this were repeated across the province, with rescuers delayed by uprooted trees and the destruction of key infrastructure. A helicopter carrying aid crashed due to bad weather, killing all its crew members.

In villages and cities, millions have settled around rivers and streams, areas vulnerable to flooding. Pakistan’s River Protection Act – which prohibits construction within 200 feet (61 metres) of a river or its tributaries – was intended to solve this problem. But for many, settling elsewhere is too expensive.

Illegal construction makes matters worse.

Climate scientist Fahd Saeed blames this on local corruption and believes officials are failing to enforce the law. He spoke to the BBC in Islamabad, near a half-finished four-storey concrete building the size of a car park – and close to a stream that flooded this summer, killing a child.

“Just a few kilometers from Parliament, things like this still happen in Pakistan,” he says, looking frustrated. He added: “Because of mismanagement, the government’s role is to be a supervisory body.”

Former climate minister Senator Sherry Rehman, who chairs the climate committee in Pakistan’s Senate, describes this as “graft”, or simply “looking the other way” when building permits are granted in vulnerable areas.

By late August, in Punjab province to the south, floods had submerged 4,500 villages, submerging the “breadbasket of Pakistan” in a country that cannot always import enough food.

For the first time, three rivers – Sutlej, Ravi and Chenab – were inundated simultaneously, triggering the biggest rescue operation in decades.

“This was the most significant anomaly,” said Syed Muhammad Tayyab Shah, chief risk officer at the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

In Lahore, the capital of Punjab, the impact on richer and poorer communities has been stark. The Ravi River has flooded the gated community of Park View City, making navigation of its precious streets impossible. Residents of luxury homes were forced to evacuate.

Surveying the damage, two local men, Abdullah and his father Gulrez, were convinced that the water would soon be drained, thanks to the area’s real estate developer Aleem Khan, a federal minister.

“No problem, Aleem Khan will do it,” Gulraiz told the BBC.

But for residents of the Theme Park slum, the floods were overwhelming. One officer told the BBC that they kept having to rescue people who returned to their homes when the water level dropped, in a desperate attempt to save what they could. But then the water would rise, leaving them stranded.

We saw a man returning from home, with a puff pastry on his hip.

Some residents were moved to tents provided by the Pakistan Services Corporation. Sumera, who was sitting outside in the summer heat, was weeks away from giving birth. She was very thin.

“My doctor says I need two blood transfusions this week,” she said as she tried to hold her baby, Arsh.

Nearby, Ali Ahmed was balancing a kitten he had rescued from the floods on his shoulder. The boy was one of the few who had a mattress to sleep on.

By the end of the monsoon season, floods had displaced more than 2.7 million people in Punjab and damaged more than a million hectares of agricultural land, the United Nations said.

Further south in the Multan region, which is always hard hit by floods, the scale of the humanitarian crisis became clearer, as tents lined dirt roads and highways.

Access to healthcare was already a challenge in rural Pakistan, but once the floods hit, the challenge became unbearable for many of the women we met.

BBC Urdu correspondent Tarhub Asghar met their brother’s wives, both nine months pregnant. The doctor warned them that they were not drinking enough water. They held up a bottle to explain. The water was completely brown.

Some are trying different solutions.

Architect Yasmin Lari has designed what she calls “climate-resilient homes” in dozens of villages. In Puno, near Hyderabad, the women showed the BBC the huts they had built themselves, a large circular structure on wooden stilts. Dr. Larry calls it their training center and says families can move their belongings there and shelter.

But Dr. Larry believes that building an entire village on stilts is not possible and is very expensive. Instead, she says her designs ensure roofs don’t collapse, and that by using natural materials like bamboo and limestone, the villagers themselves can quickly rebuild the homes.

She says Pakistan has reached a point where “it’s no longer about saving buildings, it’s about saving lives.”

This is the reality for Pakistan. All the climate scientists and politicians the BBC spoke to warned of an increasingly worrying future.

“Every year the monsoon will become more aggressive,” said Syed Muhammad Tayeb Shah of the National Disaster Management Authority. “Every year there will be a new surprise for us.”

As the country faces the growing and changing challenges posed by climate change, in which the poor are often hardest hit, people are reluctant to return to their homes that are likely to be flooded next year: “I have nowhere else to go.”