During COP27, the world observed and recognized that the 2022 climate-induced floods in Pakistan were unprecedented in nature, submerging one-third of the country. Global watchdogs have also revealed that Pakistan is one of the countries most affected by climate-related disasters. Academics argue that the loss of life, as well as the billions of dollars in economic damage, necessitates a more nuanced understanding of the nature of the crisis. Certainly, an assessment of the panoply of problems is needed to understand floods in 2022, but they cannot merely be confined to targeting any single policy step or the government's structure to deal with the problem alone as it is a nationwide failure. Therefore, it is important to address the root causes of Pakistan's lack of effective management of climate-induced floods, which raises the stakes for the need to refigure the nation's priorities and requires efforts at all levels.

COP27: Pakistan’s Battle for Climate Justice

There are two ways to view the crisis situation. The first way to look at the situation is through Pakistan’s international battle to receive funds as part of its climate justice narrative, in which Islamabad has been successful in presenting its case at COP27 in Egypt. Nevertheless, until the protocols and roadmap for the loss and damage fund are set at COP28 and Pakistan acts more proactively to propose projects that should be funded through the "loss and damage funds," there isn’t much to celebrate. This is because historically, Pakistan has been weak in presenting projects to global climate fund authorities.

A Reassessment of Internal Problems

The second way is to look inward and rethink on how to deal with the catastrophe. Islamabad’s governance structure, despite several policy-level and institutional developments since 2005, is not effective in dealing with climate-induced floods. Therefore, Pakistan’s policy pundits need to holistically reassess the root causes of the government’s failure to reduce the impact of climate change-induced floods in the future.

The case of the 2022 floods is different from the 2010 floods in Pakistan. The 2010 floods were riverine in nature, therefore the impact was mainly around the Indus River. According to climate change expert Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, the 2010 floods “were mostly predictable.” Hence, the 2010 floods were more or less a failure of governance because the government knew the exact location of the floods yet failed to properly utilise the newly founded institutional mechanisms of the The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). The case of the 2022 floods is different as the institutional structure was in place with legislative backing, despite having its own flaws. The problem in 2022 cannot be solved just through institutional improvement; rather, a comprehensive understanding of the crisis at the societal and state level is required. The NDMA estimates that the flood-related humanitarian disaster has affected over 33,000,000 people, with approximately 1,739 fatalities and over 8,00,000 homeless people. There has been widespread damage to essential infrastructure, homes, and animals. Two million homes and important infrastructure were destroyed, flooding entire villages and destroying livelihoods as a result of rain-triggered flooding, increased melting of glaciers, and subsequent landslides.

As the floodwaters recede, the problem has evolved into an extreme child survival catastrophe. Millions of children are more vulnerable to waterborne illnesses, drowning, and hunger. Children were found to be weak as they fought severe respiratory illnesses, diarrhea, dengue fever, malnutrition, typhoid, and excruciating skin problems.

The natural response of any government will be to compensate the people by providing financial and medical assistance, and then to enter the reconstruction phase. However, this is not a complete response unless the political elite is willing to focus its priorities on the social security of citizens. The nation needs to further realize the failure of the existing structure, which includes institutional deadlock, a lack of legislative backing between the institutions, duplication of responsibilities, a lack of intuitional coordination, and a lack of public consensus to support the government’s efforts against calamity.

A Rising Awareness and Changing Priorities

Pakistan, since its inception, has struggled to set its focus in a direction that could answer the quagmire of the underprivileged in Pakistan who are vulnerable to hazards. With this, the country observed political landsliding where no Prime minister has ever completed his five years in office. Such political realities gave space to the military’s role in Pakistan’s political scene. This was coupled with Pakistan running into an foreign aid based economy for the most part of its history. Such historical records set the country on a path where the country heavily invested in its defense, thereby circumventing several socio-economic needs. 

Hitherto, the role of the military in political meddling is a known fact. Even the recently retired Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa accepted that the military has played a role in Pakistan’s politics. The involvement of the military in politics of Pakistan leads to a scenario which Fukuyama terms as "political decay." Political decay is where one institution becomes so strong that it becomes difficult to bring reforms to it, and thus it tends to influence other institutions to receive more strength. Such a policy line is also based on the country’s hostility with India, its involvement in the US war in Afghanistan (twice), and self-aggrandisement of the military industrial complex, which has overall made the atmosphere inimical for the governance structure to remain focused on the needs of its people. Such realist theorization has turned the country into a security state and made it difficult to address concerns that matter to the people.

Now, based on such priorities coupled with the crippling economic situation, the last straw was the government’s infringement on its people’s right to express their opinion. People have two options for expressing their concerns about floods, aside from exercising their right to vote, which is problematic because either the same political parties will be in power in the end, or if Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is in power, it will also bring the same elite groups that were either part of the PPP, PML-N, or under the cabinets of military dictators. One is through the media, and the other is through political participation. Most of the people who are impacted by the floods are from the poor strata of society, thereby having limited access to media where they can voice their opinions. Even the news channels that cover the flood situation in different cities change their priorities because there are several other things they have to focus on as well, for instance, the rise in terrorist activities by TTP, PTI’s alliance system in Punjab, the change in military leadership, etc.

Now the only option left for people to voice their opinions is through participation in political activities to challenge the existing policies and raise indigenous voices. But even in this case, elitist interests have had a monopoly over political representation in Pakistan, which includes landlords in Punjab, Wadero in Sindh, khans in the NWFP, and Sardars in Balochistan. Such a stringent political scenario is coupled with a lack of education, which reduces the chances of indigenous voices being heard at the top. The only way left is through student unions, where intellectually conscious students from localities voice their opinions through different university platforms. However, because former PM Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's popularity was supported by student unions in the 1960s-70s, it was later banned by military dictator Zia ul Haq. When student unions are prohibited, the emerging intellectual at the grassroots level has no choice but to subdue. 

So, for the youth who see their hometowns being submerged when they try to voice their opinions, there is no such platform—there may be a few cases where this is not the case, but on a broader scale, Pakistan's political landscape is narrow for the interests of the elite groups. To this end, Immanuel Kant, who proposed renegotiation of the social contract, argues that each member of a state is equal, so he should have access to equality of opportunity. Every office or rank in the political structure must be open to all. If the institutions in Pakistan, either private or public, claim that no one has the right to openly voice their political opinion in any university or college, this is violating article 17 that call for the right to have political associations in Pakistan. Freedom is universal, and the state has to grant this to everyone; therefore, if the constitutional right of a citizen is violated by the state, it needs to be refigured. If the voice is not allowed, then surely the solution to flooding, which is to have a mix of both top-down approach and bottom-up approach, can remain confined only to theory and have no application in practice.

Pakistanis and Self-regulating Behavior

People, on the other hand, need to change their attitude toward climate change-induced floods. People need to move beyond certain belief systems. This has been an integral issue faced during the 2022 floods when the government was unable to influence citizens to leave their homes in case of any disaster, and this is important for their protection. But since inception, the people of Pakistan, belonging to different ethnic groups, have had their own allegiances to their land. This is why a popular mantra is observed in Pakistan, which is "Meri Zameen Meri Ma," which means "My land is my mother." This factor is also recognized by the government.  As per the NDMA’s report, the same concerns were raised when they wanted people to transfer to safe spots amid floods in 2022, but the people showed reluctance to comply with the government’s guidelines.

Similarly, the River Protection Law categorically says that people are not allowed to build infrastructure within the 200-meter radius of rivers, yet there have been cases where an illegally constructed hotel destroyed in the 2010 floods was rebuilt at the same spot and destroyed again. Furthermore, this has been highlighted by the NDMA in their report this year on encroachment in river plains, blocked nullahs because of illegal construction, etc. were the concerns raised by provincial disaster management authorities. Therefore, people need to show compliance with state’s laws. Nevertheless, the people are not only to blame, because if the people are illegally encroaching on flood lands, then why is the government still providing them with electricity, gas and water? By this, the government is institutionalizing this vulnerability. This is indeed a weak form of governance.

Consequently, this highlights the dire state of affairs in the country. The way forward is that people should not build homes in the same area where their homes were previously destroyed by floods. The government should provide alternatives as well. Take the example of Canada, where they told the flood-affected people that the government would help rebuild their homes only if they promised not to build in the same vulnerable area. This step must be followed in Pakistan as well.

Dynamic Pressures

The dynamic pressures are because of the effects of root causes. Lack of coordination at the local level is an integral issue that needs to be addressed. For instance, the Kaghan Development Authority (KDA) assistant director of planning, Asad Shehzad, when asked about the illegal restriction around the Kunhar River, said that they are only a building control authority. However, it is the duty of the assistant commissioner to oversee any issue that requires enforcement of the River Protection Act. With this, he has claimed that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa irrigation department is responsible if such disasters occur. So for KDA’s planning division, they will be waiting for the Assistant Commission and the KP Irrigation Department to make a strategy to implement the River Protection Act, and only then will they enforce its implementation.

Another critical issue that the legislation must address forcefully is the duplication of activities. There is a comprehensive list of response agencies in the event of a disaster, including Civil Defense, Fire Fighting, the Army, Police Emergency, Pakistan Red Crescent Society (PRCS), and others. However, the current disaster management law fails to provide real links for a coordinated response approach.

A Way Forward

Decentralization of administrative power to local governments for information sharing, monitoring of relief efforts, and rehabilitation to improve community resilience to unanticipated catastrophes has not yet been publicly decided. Decentralization provides more opportunities for locally elected bodies to use their power to support indigenous flood management solutions that bridge the gap between the bottom-up and top-down approaches. Additionally, links between NDMA and F/G/S/PDMAs are quite shaky, and NDMA and District Disaster Management Authorities (DDMAs) lack a distinct coordination mechanism. Since the establishment of the National Disaster Risk Management Fund (NDRMF), Pakistan has experienced severe flood damage so the idea of capacity building is not new in Pakistan. The federal and provincial governments have both launched a number of projects in the last few years to increase the institutional and technical capability of their respective institutions. Building community resilience against unanticipated calamities is a collective effort by many diverse stakeholders, including community organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), for-profit businesses, philanthropists, and governmental organizations.

Overall, the flooding of 2022 has further exposed underlying institutional and systemic problems, including poor urban design and water resource management, a lack of maintenance processes, complex governance, structural imbalances, and a limited capacity for catastrophe risk mitigation. It has highlighted the need to regulate and keep a strong check on its laws, and there is a need to revise the penalties that are either too harsh or nonexistent. But this again required proper scrutiny of current legislation and checks on institutions, as well as the formulation of an integrated and coherent package for the future but it is for the policymakers to think about how all these steps can be turned into action if the country is scrambling for political and economic stability.

Conclusion

The extent of the flooding is unprecedented, despite the fact that other factors other than climate change are the fundamental causes of the disaster's impacts. After the floods of 2010, which impacted 20 million people, Pakistan made investments in disaster risk reduction. With the help of the National Disaster Management Plan and the National Flood Protection Plan IV, the nation had made significant progress toward developing its long-term policies. However, problems persisted, including a lack of funding and operationalization for the plans as well as a limited ability for absorption to integrate risk assessments into infrastructure investments and land use planning. The institutions and procedures of Pakistan, however, were not equipped to deal with the scale of the tragedy brought on by climate change.