According to the National Disaster
Management Authority (NDMA), the coming monsoon, starting from July, would
bring more rain than the country had experienced during the last two
consecutive catastrophic years, i.e. 2010 and 2011. It suggests that monsoon
2012 may trigger floods and affect some 29 million people across the country.
The NDMA also issued specific flood warning
to Sindh provincial authorities. The risk of floods would increase manifold,
especially due to the fact that despite spending Rs17 billion on the repair of
dykes and canal banks in Sindh after the floods of 2010 and 2011 the irrigation
infrastructure is still in bad shape. Moreover, many of the displaced persons
in Sindh are still shelter less or settled in flood prone riverine beds.
High intensity rains over a short period of
time would not only affect Sindh, but other parts of the country, including
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. There would be a greater risk of seasonal watercourses
getting flooded, threatening parts of Peshawar, Swat, Nowshera, and Mardan
districts. 
Delayed monsoon is not a good omen for the
agriculture sector of KP. It will have a negative effect on winter crops in
several parts of the province. Besides the above mentioned four districts, the
NDMA has identified Charsadda and Dera Ismail Khan as prone to natural calamity
in next monsoon.
After the tragic earthquake and devastating
floods of 2010, one was expecting that our institutions and authorities would
be prepared for any other uncertainty. However, the way Sindh suffered during
2011 monsoon reflects that we as a nation are determined not to learn any lesson
from our mistakes.
After 2010 floods, a team of Chinese
experts suggested that the narrow span of Khairpur-Larkana bridge was the main
cause in unduly holding water between Gudu and Sukkur barrage which inundated
half of Sindh and almost the entire rice growing area.
It is pity that despite the passage of two
years the authorities have failed to redesign and widen this bridge. No one is
able to answer where the excess water, which will again be trapped between Gudu
and Sukkur barrage this year, would be discharged.
Old natural drains are still non functional
and faulty outfall drain networks might again cause widespread damages after
the rains. Despite the promulgation of “Sindh Irrigation (Amendment) Act 2011”
to declare encroachments on waterways a crime, heavy encroachment on drains in
Sindh is yet another reason to get worried about the miseries of people who
would be trapped in water after the massive rains. On top of it, the politically
motivated decisions to save the lands of influential people by breaching the
dykes of river Indus at wrong places may create havoc.
It is predicted that if heavy rains struck,
Umerkot, Jhuddo, Naukot, Digri, Pangrio, Mirpurkhas and Sanghar would suffer a
great deal and Badin and catchement area of LBOD would be devastated.
As far as the KP is concerned, after the
2010 floods, a contingency plan was approved and it was recommended that the
Met Department should enhance capacity of weather forecasting station in
Peshawar, install radar system at Cherat in Nowshera district, improve all
observatories, establish flash flood forecasting centre for Kalpani in Mardan
district and other vulnerable areas and increase capacity of line departments.
Instead of installation of latest
forecasting system all future plans have been dumped in files. Due to
unavailability of latest forecasting system in the province the Peshawar centre
would depend on Lahore and Islamabad centres or some friendly countries for
obtaining weather data.
The situation in Punjab, especially in
Southern Punjab is not ideal either. Irrigation infrastructure is extremely
vulnerable, canals and barrages are silted reducing their maximum water
carrying capacity, and elites who pressurised the authorities to breach the
canal banks to save their lands are as powerful as they were in 2010.
Let us admit that natural calamities are
unavoidable. Rising temperature, seasonal extremes, global warming, and
abundance or scarcity of water is a global phenomenon and we are not an
exception to it. What matters the most is how we respond to different natural
phenomenon. In the absence of right set of policies and practices, the natural
calamities turn into human disasters and this is what we have been observing in
Pakistan.
Besides the above mentioned challenges, the
issues that still remain to be addressed is institutionalisation of disaster
preparedness. After the 18th Amendment, disaster preparedness is the
responsibility of provincial governments.
We have provincial disaster management
authorities which are inadequately equipped. We have NDMA which is not clear
about its mandate. We have Federal Flood Commission which is non functional. We
have provincial irrigation departments which are marred by corruption charges
and we don’t have local government institutions to facilitate the decision
making at grassroots level.
Disaster prevention includes plans ready
beforehand; bringing all the involved stakeholders on board; ensuring the
proper operation and maintenance of irrigation structures, creating but also
operating and maintaining organisations for disaster preparedness — all these
are facets of governance.
While government refers to planning and
decision-making by the state and its institutions, the notion of “governance”
takes a different look. How are decisions made within a certain society or
nation? Who is involved in these decision-making processes? And who has which
powers to decide; on which evidence is planning based and which planning are
taken as basis for decision-making.
We ought to remember that nature is not
against the people of Pakistan. We are facing the consequences of flawed
policies and weak actions and we would keep on getting hurt until at a societal
level we are mature enough to discuss the real reasons behind our state of
affairs openly and candidly.
The writer is executive director of
Sustainable Development Policy Institute. He is contactable at suleri@sdpi.org
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