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My elders in Pakistan predicted calamity. Now it’s here

Millions of people were displaced by this year’s disastrous floods, which were primarily caused by record monsoon rains, made worse by global warming

On Aug. 24, I received a frantic call from my mother. She told me that Sabu Buriro, our village on the shore of Lake Hamal in northwest Sindh Province, was underwater after weeks of heavy rains. Just two months earlier, extreme heat had dried the lake. Now, after weeks of monsoon rains, the lake was so full that the dike protecting us from it was about to burst.

After 10 hours of travel from Karachi, where I am a student, I arrived in a village full of panic-stricken relatives and neighbours. A few army trucks came to evacuate some of the women and children while the rest of us did what we could to salvage our dried grains, our livestock and our homes. After the army trucks left, no more government help appeared. I called comrades from the city, who came with vans; for three frantic days we did what we could to help before the dike broke and floodwaters consumed the village.

My immediate family is among the millions of Pakistanis displaced by this year’s disastrous floods, which were primarily caused by record monsoon rains, made worse by global warming. But the magnitude of this disaster was made larger by Pakistan’s exploitation of nature in the name of “progress”. My country needs to abandon its excessively industrial approach to water infrastructure, lest our ecological and economic situation becomes even more tenuous.

Sabu Buriro is in the northwest of Sindh Province, but the situation is even worse in the province’s south, in the Indus delta, which is at a dramatic rate. This is the result of two factors, both caused by humans. First, global warming has caused the seas to rise. Second, Pakistan’s obsession with building has slowed the flow of fresh water, all but stopping the mighty Indus in its tracks.

Pakistan’s dam-building frenzy dates back to the 1960s and has carried on apace, serving the energy needs of the upriver Punjab Province and disregarding the lives of us downriver, in Sindh. The dams have radically increased our vulnerability to climate change, both because of the way they have caused the Indus River delta to recede and because of the way they can overflow when the monsoon is heavy, worsening floods.

The altered river has caused the land to dry and made it too salty to farm in places. When this happens, rural people flock to cities. Because there is little housing for them there (and often, they are treated with contempt), they end up in spots no one else wants. Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, one of Pakistan’s foremost climate experts, recently explained what those who are displaced face. “In their own areas, they at least have social capital,” he said, “in new areas they become marginalised. There is no security net in terms of money and backup”.

I have watched as similar conditions have challenged Sabu Buriro. In past years, our arable land has become less productive, as drainage systems have poisoned our soil with effluent from upstream. My family’s cattle herd, like almost everyone’s in the village, has also shrunk dramatically over the course of my lifetime. This is directly because of climate change: our drying land cannot sustain as many animals as it used to.

It has been devastating, in these past weeks, to grapple with the displacement of my own family and that of my neighbours from the floods. Many now live in tents or in the open along roads. Some, like my mother and siblings, are squatting with family members in the nearest city, Qambar, where conditions are cramped and unsanitary. When will they be able to return to Sabu Buriro — and when they get back, what will they find?

As a result of the flood, 90 per cent of Sindh’s crops were ruined. My brother is a farmer, and he tells me that there is no chance the waters will recede in time to plant this year’s wheat crop, which must happen in October. My family and others in the village have lost cattle to the water-borne illnesses that are ripping through our herds. Cattle are our most important source of nutrition. They are our bank accounts, too: essential to sell or give away if there is a wedding or a health emergency, or to sacrifice in annual Eid rituals.

We experienced similar conditions in 2010, when serious flooding overwhelmed my country. Since then, the elders in my community have been warning that the next one would be even more severe, and that we would be less resilient in withstanding it. They watched how feudal elites and bad government planning interfered with the natural courses of our waterways. They predicted the calamity. It came.

Young people, too, have noticed the changes in our environment. To escape poverty, farming or education used to be what they strove for; now many young people want a ticket to one of the Gulf states to work as menial labourers for the remittances on which we increasingly depend. They are all so busy just doing the work needed to survive. Some who remain have begun to demand that officials listen to age-old wisdom about our waterways and stop their dam-building frenzy, but they cannot do it alone.

We Pakistanis cannot let our own government off the hook: we have to mobilise more effectively against new dam-building, and for policies that build our resilience to climate change and support its victims. But the world, too, needs to respond.

When global leaders gather in Egypt in November for the United Nations international climate conference, our lands will still be underwater. Pakistani officials will draw attention to the humanitarian catastrophe, and remind the world that we are one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change — even though we are responsible for a minuscule fraction of carbon emissions. There will surely be increasing talk about humanitarian assistance in response to this crisis, but what the people of Pakistan really need are reparations for the exploitation that caused it in the first place. That is something that can only come from wealthier countries.

When I left Sabu Buriro, I had to leave my library behind, packed in boxes, at the mercy of the flood. One of the books left there is David Owen’s 'Where the Water Goes: Life and Death along the Colorado River'. This book showed me that all of us, from the Colorado to the Indus, struggle with the same forces. My homeland is connected to yours, wherever you are reading these words.

I hope that I will be able to return to mine soon, and that the waters have not washed my library away. Given that there is little for the rats to eat, I fear they will work through what’s left of it if I cannot get there first.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.