Pakistan is the fifth country in the world in terms of population, with 216 million people, responsible for less than 1 percent of emissions that cause global warming, but it is one of the regions most exposed to extreme weather events increasing due to climate change.
Heavy rains and strong winds have killed at least 27 people, including eight children, in northwest Pakistan, officials said Sunday.
The storms hit four districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province late Saturday. Among the dead, according to the same source, were five brothers, whose ages ranged between two and 11 years.
“At least 12 people were buried alive after the roofs and walls of their homes collapsed,” disaster management authority spokesman Timur Ali Khan told AFP.
The spokesman added that more than 140 people were injured and more than 200 head of livestock died.
The authorities declared a state of emergency in the four regions.
Meanwhile, a cyclone is making its way across the Arabian Sea towards the coasts of Pakistan and India and is expected to make landfall at the end of the week.
Pakistani authorities said they would start evacuating between 8,000 and 9,000 families from along the coast in Sindh province, including in the huge port city of Karachi, with a population of about twenty million.
The Pakistani authorities decided to deploy the army as of Monday to provide assistance.
The disaster management agency said Sunday that the typhoon could bring strong winds, storm surge and floods to cities from Tuesday evening as it approaches the region.
It added that it “advises fishermen not to go out to sea until this ‘bad weather’ is over by June 17.”
In neighboring India, the Meteorological Department said on Sunday that the storm will likely cross the Saurashtra and Kuch regions of Gujarat state in the west of the country, coinciding with its passage on the neighboring Pakistani coasts on Thursday noon.
tornado
India’s Meteorological Department warned that the storm is likely to make landfall “as a very severe cyclone with winds of between 125 and 135 kilometers per hour and may reach speeds of 150 kilometers per hour.”
Scientists say climate change is making monsoons heavier and making predictions more difficult.
Last year, Pakistan witnessed unprecedented monsoon rains in the summer that flooded more than a third of the country with water, damaging two million homes and killing more than 1,700 people.
The devastating floods coupled with the global energy crisis have added pressure on the Pakistani economy, pushing the country into a very difficult financial situation.
This comes as the Pakistani economy suffers from a balance of payments crisis and is trying to service the massive external debt, after months of political chaos drove away any potential foreign investment.
Inflation rose, visibility decreased, and the country could no longer afford to pay for its imports, causing a sharp decline in industrial production.
Pakistan is the fifth country in the world in terms of population, with 216 million people, responsible for less than 1 percent of emissions that cause global warming, but it is one of the regions most exposed to extreme weather events increasing due to climate change.
It is one of the countries that supported, during the COP27 summit, the establishment of the “Loss and Damages” fund, which aims to support countries of the South in facing the consequences of climate warming.
