How climate change is worsening Pakistan’s deadly floods

Rescuers and relatives searched for the body of one-year-old Zara in knee-deep water. She was swept away by a flash flood; The bodies of her parents and three siblings had already been found several days earlier.

“We suddenly saw a lot of water. I went up to the roof and called for them to join me,” said Arshad, Zara's grandfather, showing the BBC the dirt road where they were taken from him in the northern Punjab village of Sambrial in August.

His family tried to join him, but it was too late. A powerful current washed away all six.

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

This year it began at the end of June, and over three months the floods claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people. At least 6.9 million people have been affected, according to the UN humanitarian agency (OCHA).

The South Asian country is grappling with the devastating effects of climate change despite accounting for just 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

To witness its effects, the BBC traveled for three months from the mountains of the north to the plains of the south. Climate change has had different impacts in each province.

However, there was one common element. The poorest people suffer the most.

We met people who had lost their homes, livelihoods and loved ones – and they were resigned to having to do it all again during the next rainy season.

Monsoon floods began in the north, and global warming appeared in its most familiar form in Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan.

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

The result can be catastrophic: meltwater turns into glacial lakes that can suddenly burst. Thousands of villages are under threat.

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

These “glacial lake outbursts” are difficult to warn against. The area is remote, mobile communications are poor. Pakistan and the World Bank are trying to improve the early warning system, which is often broken due to the mountainous terrain.

Community is a powerful asset. When shepherd Wasit Khan woke up to rushing water trailing pieces of ice and debris, he ran to an area with a better signal. He began to warn as many villagers as possible.

“I told everyone to leave their things, get out of the house, take their wives, children and elderly people and leave,” he told BBC Urdu correspondent Muhammad Zubair.

Thanks to him, dozens of people were saved.

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

In Gadun, the BBC found hundreds of villagers digging piles of stones with their bare hands.

A local official said the downpour caused flash flooding early this morning. It occurs when a sudden updraft of moist air results in heavy and localized heavy rain. The current washed away several houses and caused a landslide.

Men from neighboring villages rushed to help, and this was invaluable, but not enough. Excavators desperately needed by villagers were stuck on flooded roads, some of which were blocked by massive rocks.

“Nothing will happen until the cars arrive,” one man told the BBC.

Then suddenly there was silence all around. Dozens of men stood motionless in one corner. The bodies of two children, soaked in dark mud, were pulled out from under the rubble and carried away.

Similar scenes played out across the province, with rescue workers delayed by uprooted trees and destruction of key infrastructure. A helicopter carrying humanitarian aid crashed in bad weather, killing the entire crew on board.

Millions of people have settled in villages and towns around rivers and streams in areas prone to flooding. Pakistan's River Protection Act, which prohibits construction within 200 feet (61 m) of a river or its tributaries, was intended to address this problem. But for many, moving elsewhere is simply too expensive.

Illegal construction aggravates the situation.

Climate scientist Fahad Saeed blames local corruption and says officials are not enforcing the law. He spoke to the BBC in Islamabad, next to an unfinished four-storey concrete building the size of a car park – and right next to a creek that he saw overflow this summer, killing a child.

“Just a few kilometers from parliament and things like this are still happening in Pakistan,” he says, clearly disappointed. “It's because of poor governance that the government's role is to be a watchdog.”

Former climate minister Senator Sherri Rehman, who chairs the Pakistan Senate climate committee, calls it a “bribe” or simply “looking the other way” when building permits are granted in sensitive areas.

By late August, further south in Punjab province, floods had inundated 4,500 villages, overwhelming Pakistan's breadbasket in a country that cannot always afford to import enough food.

For the first time, three rivers – Sutlej, Ravi and Chenab – flooded simultaneously, leading to the largest rescue operation in decades.

“This was the most important anomaly,” said Syed Muhammad Tayyab Shah, director of risk at the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

In Punjab's capital Lahore, the impact on richer and poorer communities has been dramatic. The gated community of Park View City was flooded by the Ravi River, making it impossible to navigate the valuable streets. Residents of luxury buildings were forced to evacuate.

Surveying the damage, two local residents, Abdullah and his father Gulraiz, were convinced that the water would soon be drained thanks to the area's developer, Aleem Khan, a federal minister.

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

But for residents of the poorer area of ​​the Theme Park, the flooding was devastating. One officer told the BBC they were constantly having to rescue people who were swimming back to their homes as water levels dropped, desperate to salvage what they could. But then the water rose, leaving them stranded.

We saw one man returning from home with an inflatable donut on his hip.

Some residents were shifted to tents provided by the Alhidmat Pakistan Foundation. Sitting outside in the summer heat, Sumera 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 Ahmad balanced a small kitten he had saved from a flood 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 one million hectares of farmland, according to the UN.

Further south, in the Multan region, always hard hit by floods, the scale of the humanitarian crisis became even clearer: dirt roads and highways were lined with tents.

Access to health care was already a problem in rural Pakistan, but after the floods the problem became unbearable for many of the women we met.

BBC Urdu's Tarhub Asghar met two daughters-in-law, both of whom were nine months pregnant. The doctor warned them that they were not drinking enough water. They raised the 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 Pono, near Hyderabad, the women showed the BBC huts they had built themselves – a large round building on wooden stilts. Dr. Lary calls it his training center and says families can move their belongings there and take shelter.

But Dr Lari argues that building an entire village on stilts would be unfeasible and too expensive. Instead, she says her designs ensure that roofs don't collapse, and that by using natural materials such as bamboo and lime concrete, the houses can be quickly rebuilt by the villagers themselves.

Pakistan has reached a point where “it's not about saving buildings, it's about saving lives,” she says.

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

“The monsoon will become more and more aggressive every year,” said Syed Muhammad Tayyab Shah of NDMA. “Every year we have a new surprise.”

As the country faces growing and ever-changing challenges brought on by climate change, which often hits the poorest the hardest, people returning to homes likely to flood next year are holding back one thing: “I have nowhere else to go.”