There is no hiding from climate change, especially not in a country like Pakistan. This is not exactly news. The effects have been apparent to anyone with eyes to see. But the past couple of years have shown the extent of the devastation climate change has brought to this country.
Since 2022, the ravages of climate change have been swift and fast in Pakistan. Take the example of Sanghar.
In May 2022, reports began to emerge that the cotton crop in Sindh was wilting. In Sanghar, one of the largest cotton producing districts in Sindh with cotton grown on 300,000 acres of agricultural land, less than 200,000 acres were being used to cultivate cotton. And on the 200,000 acres that were being used to grow cotton, crop performance was abysmal.
Over the past 10 years, according to figures available with the Pakistan Cotton and Ginners Association, Pakistan’s cotton yields have fallen by 26% from 880 kg per hectare to 652 kg per hectare over the last decade. While the cotton crop in Sanghar suffered, other agricultural areas dependent on the down-river water from the Indus were affected as well. In Thatha, fishing villages were left without any source of livelihood as the nearly three kilometre stretch of river that crossed the region dried up completely and was replaced by huge deposits of sand. At the Kotri Barrage of the Indus in Sindh, water levels had fallen from 15,000 cusecs of water to barely over 2000 cusecs.
The numbers coming in from the Indus River that year were alarming. They revealed a major dip in the Indus of 10,000 cusecs (an outflow of 105,000 cusecs on May 19 and 95,000 on May 20) occurred at Tarbela dam, raising fears that the dam may have hit dead levels. Its inflows plunged to 77,900 cusecs from 98,000 cusecs within a week. All of this was in May, the beginning of the summer season when the river needs to be flowing to maintain the vast swathes of agricultural lands all along Punjab and Sindh. The economies of both provinces rely heavily on this river.
And then came the floods. [restrict level=1]
Early in August, Sindh and Balochistan received monsoon rains the likes of which they had never seen before. The two provinces saw the highest amount of water fall from the skies in living memory, recording 522 and 469 percent more than the average downpour. The abnormally high rainfall caused hill torrents in Balochistan, which are a distinct type of waterway in which water drains from the mountains and hits localities and infrastructure in its path at an enormous speed. More than 200 of these hill torrents came hurtling towards the South of Punjab and Sindh, causing mass devastation in their wake.
At the same time, another crisis was brewing up north. Rising temperatures had caused Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOF) in both the Karakoram and the Himalayas. This is when a glacial lake, a giant frozen glacier the size of a lake, bursts open and comes rushing down into the river. The water from these bursting glaciers very quickly swelled the Swat river and came rushing into the northern part of Punjab, enveloping the entire country in what we now remember as the catastrophic floods of 2022.
Suddenly, the shortage of water we saw back in May 2022 had been replaced by a massive flood. Within a couple of months, the little district of Sanghar had gone from having devastatingly little water to having far too much, with large portions of the district submerged in water five-feet deep. This is the state of the climate catastrophe we face. It is fast moving, devastating, and extremely volatile. And in the face of it, other problems seem miniscule. So how did we get here?
A two-pronged crisis
Pakistan’s situation with the climate crisis is complicated. For starters, this country is part of the Global South, and this region has historically taken the brunt for climate change despite not being the primary perpetrators behind this change.
Pakistan is ranked eighth among countries most vulnerable to climate crises despite contributing less than one percent to global carbon emissions, according to the Climate Change Risk Index. According to the Centre for Global Development, developed countries are responsible for 79% of historical carbon emissions. Yet studies have shown that residents in least developed countries have 10 times more chances of being affected by these climate disasters than those in wealthy countries. Further, critical views have it that it would take over 100 years for lower income countries to attain the resiliency of developed countries.
But there are domestic problems as well. We have a very robust and extensive emissions issue. On top of this, Pakistan is a major polluter, particularly when it comes to plastic waste. Look at a recent documentary made by Allied Bank Limited (ABL). Most corporations love doing CSR projects and making feel-good content about how they are changing the world. That is sort of what ABL did, sending a team to clean up the basecamp of K2, the world’s second largest mountain located in Gilgit-Baltistan. K2 is one of the toughest treks in the world, and has an economy surrounding it that is supported by the international climbing community. What the bank did do differently, however, was send their own executives from all over the country on a cleanup mission of the mountain. These are professionals that usually spend the hours between nine to five toiling away in suits behind desks. The team of bankers that went to KP ended up clearing over 1200 kilograms of waste from the mountain.
It was a valiant and personal effort, but as a documentary about this expedition shows, most people were shocked by the level of filth that has overtaken these mountain regions. While the 1200 kilograms was an impressive haul, it was a big contribution to a much larger problem. Just last year, the Central Karrakoram Park Authorities collected over 30,000 kilograms of trash, and the pollution problem persists despite this. And as the documentary points out, all of this trash eventually goes through into the water systems of the country. That is why the Indus river is one of the most polluted rivers in the world and the Arabian Sea one of the most polluted seas in the world. All of these factors contribute to the rising temperatures in the country along with global emissions.
What we need to understand is that all of these factors are connected. We began with the example of Sanghar and its issues regarding first having too little then too much water. The problem is we often just focus on these small districts as singulare entities. But the problems Sanghar faces originate in the Himalayas, and actually stretch even further.
How it works
The devastation Pakistan has seen in the past couple of years needs to be put in perspective. The average annual temperatures in Pakistan have increased by 0.5 degrees celsius since the 1960s. This might seem like not all that much, but it has a huge impact on how our entire ecology and agriculture operates. And it is set to get worse. By 2050, projections are that temperatures will have risen by another 1.3 degrees to 1.5 degrees celsius, indicating that the changes we will see are much faster.
It is important to understand how changing temperatures, particularly in regions such as GB and our mountain ranges end up affecting the entire country, and really the entire region. Our story actually begins far beyond the borders of Pakistan.
About 50 million years ago, in the Mesozoic era, the shallow sandy Tethys Sea upfolded and formed the Great Himalayan Ranges because of the collision of the Indian plate and the Siberian plate. The Indus basin comprised lofty Himalayan mountains in the north and flat plains of Punjab and Sindh in the east and south. These mountains with immense snow cover gave birth to the Indus River and its tributaries.
The river originates from Lake Mansarovar in Tibet, China, which stretches over 3200 kilometres. It flows through the Hindukush, joined by tributaries from Gilgit, Swat and Kabul, before flowing into the Punjab near Kalabagh. This is where five different freshwater tributaries which give the Punjab its name — Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej — join the Indus before flowing together in a single mighty river all the way down Sindh and into the Arabian sea.
For centuries this has been the flow of the Indus. It has changed course, warped itself around cities, and spurned them when they have grown too large. It has, at the same time, been open to the manipulations of human civilization.
Since the middle of the 19th century, the construction of dams, barrages, and canals to divert the maximum river water for irrigation resulted in drying up the natural pathways of the rivers, except during monsoon season. “The aquifer in the irrigated areas became high and created problems of waterlogging and salinity, but due to extensive groundwater extraction, the water table near urban centres is lowered now. Water quality was degraded due to addition of fertilisers, pesticides, chemicals, municipal sewage, and industrial effluents,” says an article titled “Vulnerability of Environmental Resources in Indus Basin after the Development of Irrigation System,” published by the World Bank in 2019.
In the British era, the irrigation system was developed to increase crop production in order to develop the agriculture-based economy, which turned the basin into a densely populated area. Food demand and British economic interests in the agricultural products, specifically cotton, were a major driving force for the development of an extensive agriculture system in British India. By the development of irrigation systems and introduction of fertilisers and pesticides, agricultural production increased many folds. This extensive human intervention in the Indus basin resulted in the adverse effects on the ecosystem of the Indus plain from the Himalayas to the Indus delta.
Between 1872 and 1929, the British rulers built weirs across all the eastern tributaries of the Indus to divert the river water into canals. Weirs were also constructed on the Kabul and Swat rivers and on three sites on the Indus itself and its inundation channels. Most of the upper Indus plain, thus, received perennial water and the desert was brought under the plough. Because the irrigation system was such a huge success, areas that were formerly rain-fed now became dependent on river-water.
After partition, and the Indus River Treaty of 1961, Indus River System (IRS) was developed into a complex network of canals, and 74% of its water was utilised for irrigation. Since 1947, the Indus irrigation network has been continuously extended, and cropland area has increased from 8.5 to 18.2 MH in Pakistan and 2.02 to 8.5 MH in India, according to the earlier mentioned report.
It has never remained a single entity. Like all great rivers, it has shifted course and brought both destruction and life with it. The river has been unpredictable in its moods, but the one thing it has always been has been reliable in is the amount of water it has been providing. A large reason for that reliability has been that, according to a book titled “Irrigation” edited by Sandra Ricart, Antonio Rico, and Jorge Olcina, the Indus gets “more than 50% water from the glaciers followed by well-defined monsoon system in the upper catchment during monsoon season.”
The climate crisis
This was a very brief history of what has happened to the Indus since the middle of the 19th century. The point is not to say that the Indus was destroyed by the Indus Irrigation System or that it was a mistake. On the contrary, the irrigation system and the changes the Indus has undergone is testament to its adaptability. The number of dams and barrages built on the Indus have generally been identified as a major reason for the end of communities in the deltaic region dependent on the Indus. One example is Keti Bunder, which lies to the east of Karachi. This was once a bustling port and trading centre with a population of 40,000, but is today a ghost town with most of its population moving to more economically viable areas. Shah Bunder tells a similar story, as do several other port towns which once dotted the coast.
However, the Indus has never been a monolith. It has never remained a single entity. Like all great rivers, it has shifted course and brought both destruction and life with it. The river has been unpredictable in its moods, but the one thing it has always been has been reliable in is the amount of water it has been providing. According to a book titled “Irrigation” edited by Sandra Ricart, Antonio Rico, and Jorge Olcina, the Indus gets “more than 50pc water from the glaciers followed by a well-defined monsoon system in the upper catchment during monsoon season.” This explains why it is reliable.
While it has faced both natural and human changes, the Indus has thrived off the basis of these glaciers. With climate change knocking on the door, that too might be a thing of the past. It is an issue facing many of the rivers that are fed from the Tibetan plateau. Mountains are the water towers of the world, especially in the case of Asia, whose rivers are all fed from the Tibetan plateau and adjacent mountain ranges. More than 1.4 billion people depend on water from the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers which are fed by these water towers. Upstream snow and ice reserves of these basins, important in sustaining seasonal water availability, are likely to be affected substantially by climate change, but to what extent is yet unclear.
What is clear is that the early effects are already visible. In an article published in the journal for Global and Planetary Change, a report on the state of the Tibetan Plateau published a few years ago reads that the region has faced “evident climate changes, which have changed atmospheric and hydrological cycles and thus reshaped the local environment.” The report claims that “the Tibetan Plateau (TP) exerts strong thermal forcing on the atmosphere over the Asian monsoon region and supplies water resources to adjacent river basins, and the effect of climate change on this region will have an impact on the Plateau energy and water cycle.”
Where this leaves us
As a country, we have been given a poor lot in life on the climate front. The actions of others have resulted in serious consequences for us. It is unfair, but it must be fought. If we are not quick in acting and preparing for the future, the harrowing sights we are seeing right now will become commonplace in the years to come. People will continue to lose lives and homes. Climate refugees and internally displaced climate refugees will live unbearable lives. The economic depredation will continue, which will once again hit the people. It is already too late to avoid this. Climate change is here, and it will stay. The best we can do is prepare to our best abilities, and keep fighting for climate justice. [/restrict]
