Prioritising flood relief efforts

During a special meeting over the weekend, the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet greenlit a key grant to be used in rescue and relief efforts in flood-hit areas. The move arrives on the heels of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s priority visits to areas of the country that were ravaged by flash floods, and complete with the destruction of property, livelihoods and precious lives.

A substantial death toll by Pakistan’s standards makes the ECC move critical to prepare for the future. Compensation and timely transfer of funds in surveyed localities strengthens the case to clear critical backlog for those in-need, because a heightened sense of climatic shifts can render future risks pronounced. It is for these reasons that the rapid facilitation of adversely affected areas allows a contingency model to be put on display for future years. After all, the ECC move manifests itself in the form of a bloc provision to the National Disaster Management Fund (NDMF), which in some ways is facilitated by an independent Relief Fund at the prime ministerial level.

One can be forgiven for assuming that these strategies constitute a recipe for damage control or fire-fighting. Contesting that view is the fact that Pakistan needs to operate within its own financial constraints, which means outreach towards philanthropists – and grant issuance by the Ministry – are both realistic pathways for flood relief assistance. Second, the first step to dealing with severe climatic shifts and heavy rainfall triggers is to acknowledge the threat is a credible one. To that extent, the consensus driving Islamabad’s efforts to prioritize flood relief assistance and urgent rebuilding is one that is firm on facts, and can gain traction among present and future administrations as the need arises.

Regional trendlines make that point even clearer. “The past month was the wettest in three decades, with 133% more rain than the average for the past 30 years,” said the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) in a report published by Reuters. “Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, received 305% more rain than the annual average.”

The reported damage to over 46,000 houses underlines the limited reaction time for governments, while making it evident that the scale and magnitude of present and future flooding will vary – sometimes by drastic margins.

For these reasons, it is imperative for Pakistan to foster a culture of disaster-relevant research to study the perils of flash floods in other countries within the same yearly period. Understand that countries beyond South Asia identify and deal with different geographical realities, share distinct development experiences, and vary in terms of their government-industrial linkages on mobilizing funds. But insights and lessons that are derived on best practices can inform government initiative on future relief effort adjustments, given that a commonality in many cases is the difficulty faced by countries to get disaster management support down to the localities in quick time.

Pakistan’s status as a nation increasingly vulnerable to climatic shifts has been no secret. The challenge of unexpected and heavy rainfall is as much a reality as is the risk of water scarcity in the country, even by comparative standards of resource access in the region.

That calls for a technical dimension in ongoing relief preparation efforts as well as to aid future pre-emption. Think of it this way: Pakistan can move a step further in the region by upscaling its capabilities to monitor water levels and flow conditions within the Indus River System. Smart technology on climate detection, risk patterns and contingency are already in the works, with some of their positive applications on climate control evident.

These areas of application include Pakistan’s headway on emissions control as well as on setting up of parameters and timelines for preventive action on heat and green action. Pakistan’s own case for mobilizing climate finance for vulnerable countries was evident at the 13th Petersberg Climate Dialogue, where the costs of inaction were seen as big on exacerbated inequality. All this is to say that better technical expertise that is suited to flood relief assistance can open the doors to negotiate those risks within Pakistan’s own borders. They serve as building blocks to align water monitoring standards with international benchmarks, allowing the country’s disaster management authorities to get a pulse of potential flood risks in high exposure areas prior to an all-out climatic offensive.

Such meaningful pursuits, when tailored to the application of water flow measurements and future flood relief preparation, can prove extremely helpful in limiting the scale of potential damage and destruction that the nation or select provinces may endure in trying times. There is no evidence to suggest that the root causes resulting in the loss of around 550 lives won’t re-emerge to the peril of environmental stability, either in Pakistan or elsewhere.

What should matter is the realisation that at least a robust monitoring system, active in the country, spares it future costs and hurdles when managing relief assistance. The less administrative, monitoring and financial pressure that is felt on the centre, the better positioned Pakistan can find itself when looking to “provide for extensive relief and rehabilitation of flood victims.”

The writer is a foreign affairs commentator and recipient of the Fulbright Award