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Showing posts with the label CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate change and corruption are inextricably linked.

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                 The ongoing flooding in parts of Balochistan and Sindh shows both our unwillingness to address climate change and our insistence on blaming it for our failure to plan, govern, and carry out our obligations. Priorities come first. A genuine and existential threat to humanity is climate change. The poorest communities in Pakistan, like all other nations on the earth, are most at risk of losing their lives, homes, and means of subsistence.   This brings me to my second argument. While there shouldn't be any denial of climate change, it is both impolite and untrue to use it as an excuse for government inefficiency on all fronts. There is no denying that Balochistan and Sindh continue to get much heavier rainfall than they did in the past. However, this does not serve as an excuse for illegal building, pervasive corruption, a lack of skilled personnel to handle emergencies, or reactive rather than proactive policymaking. Today's government action is much too fr

Floods are not natural; they are caused by humans

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            Even though we have a deep grasp of nature, we haven't been able to coexist with it. For no other reason than they have been attempting to capture it, and all such actions are likely to end in disaster. Just think about this. If an earthquake occurs in a mountainous area where no one lives and there is no infrastructure, or if floodwaters inundate a desert where no one lives, there won't be any damage. The majority of disaster specialists concur that a disaster occurs when a hazard collides with vulnerability. Therefore, one may claim that losses are not only the result of the rain. Vulnerabilities have been produced by bad governance or a lack of governance. The vulnerability of human settlements was only made apparent by the rain.   The PATTAN organization conducted a survey following the 1997 floods to learn about flood-related losses in Sargodha and Muzaffargarh. Surprisingly, there was a negative correlation between losses and flooding intensity. Losses wer