Pakistan

So...these floods...

Sounds like they are much more severe than what was happening in parts of India a month or so ago? But both off the back of 50 or near-50C heat

I think this is the most unfathomable thing to happen in my lifetime. I understand it but I can’t wrap my head around it. Hard to not be alarmist. The world’s glaciers are simply melting. https://t.co/18kfUHYjKX

— Human Resources at Paulo Freire Charter School (@postcyborg) September 2, 2022

It's getting worse.

Rising floodwaters might soon cause Pakistan's largest freshwater lake to burst its banks.

If it does, hundreds of thousands more would be affected on top of the already 33 million people impacted by climate change-induced floods. pic.twitter.com/WdQdDA7xQf

— DW News (@dwnews) September 7, 2022

"According to preliminary estimates, 65 percent of Pakistan’s main food crops—including 70 percent of its rice—have been swept away during the floods, and 3 million livestock have died...45 percent of agricultural land is now destroyed."https://t.co/RCOTDMU5E7

— Hamna Tariq (@hamnatariq97) September 9, 2022

I guess I was naive, I assumed when the climate crisis arrived it wouldn't simply be ignored.

Well it is simply being treated as a natural disaster where the first reaction would be to aid people.

More widely, it isn't the way it works. You might see the absence of certain goods now and then, or prices going up further. But connecting to events happening hundreds of miles away to then enforce protest and action is another order of things.

Obvs there is a strong "brown ppl don't matter" narrative in MSM, but, still, I don't doubt this would be getting more coverage were it not for Russia invading Ukraine, the energy crisis and the death of QEII.

Most of the world gets very, very little coverage.

This catastrophe is much greater in scope than, say, the Ethiopian famine Buerk reported on in 1984 which led Geldof & Ure to do Liive Aid, yet the famine got more coverage. Some of this may be coz 24 hour news was not yet a concept, on UK TV at least, but was there also just less going on both internationally/domestically. I don't know, the Miners' Strikd was happening. What else?

Well Band Aid, then Live Aid I guess. See also USA for Africa, &c.

Yeah I'm not arguing we normally do a good job at covering disasters in "developing" countries, but this seems worse than usual. I also thought of the Ethiopian famine.

It's a very different time. The Ethiopian famine is alluded to but the solutions need to be very different.

https://gal-dem.com/pakistan-floods-mutual-aid-organisers/

The consequences of all this water also include malaria, dengue, cholera and other diseases, and reduced access for the little medical assistance there is to reach stranded populations.

Yup indeed, mentioned here

Sri Lanka - Pakistan - Bangladesh
Chartbook #153 surveys the polycrisis in South Asia. How finance, energy, geopolitics and climate shocks intersect. https://t.co/n1qg82ZzRD pic.twitter.com/SOPLeWXYKW

— Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) September 22, 2022

Pakistan—notorious for its 23 IMF bailouts, for being a nuclear-armed state with active terrorist groups, for suffering climate catastrophe of biblical proportions—is being screwed by its domestic elites.

Our latest @polycrisis newsletter is daaark.https://t.co/2wz48agCbq

— Albert Pinto (@70sBachchan) February 24, 2023

written before Khan just got arrested and bundled into the back of a van by cops wearing riot gear, politics is fairly fucking crazy in Pakistan.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-67281691

"In the last two months around 200,000 Afghan nationals have already left Pakistan ahead of the 1 November deadline, according to the Pakistan government. The recent daily returnee figures are three times higher than normal, says the Taliban refugee ministry spokesman Abdul Mutaleb Haqqani."

Pakistan is planning to forcibly deport 1.7 million Afghan refugees. This is a direct violation of the basic right to asylum and a death sentence to the many Afghans who would be targeted by the Taliban. Pakistan must change course. https://t.co/fX9kcyN9fg

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) November 2, 2023

Terrible