Zimbabwe News Update
bbc
6 min read
Rescuers and relatives searched knee-deep in water for the body of one-year-old Zara. She’d been swept away by flash floods; the bodies of her parents and three siblings had already been found days earlier.”We suddenly saw a lot of water. I climbed up to the roof and urged them to join me,” Arshad, Zara’s grandfather, said, showing the BBC the dirt road where they were taken from him in the village of Sambrial in northern Punjab in August.His family tried to join him, but too late. The powerful current washed away all six of them.Every year, monsoon season brings deadly floods in Pakistan.This year it began in late June, and within three months, floods had killed more than 1,000 people.
At least 6.9 million were affected, according to the United Nations agency for humanitarian affairs, OCHA.The South Asian nation is struggling with the devastating consequences of climate change, despite emitting just 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.To witness its effects, the BBC travelled from the mountains of the north to the plains of the south for three months. In every province, climate change was having a different impact.There was one element in common, though. The poorest suffer most.We met people who’d lost their homes, livelihoods and loved ones – and they were resigned to going through it all again in the next monsoon.
Monsoon floods started in the north, with global warming playing out in its most familiar form in Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan.Amid the high peaks of the Himalayas, Karakoram and Hindu Kush, there are more than 7,000 glaciers. But due to rising temperatures, they are melting.The result can be catastrophic: meltwater turns into glacial lakes which can suddenly burst. Thousands of villages are at risk.This summer hundreds of homes were destroyed and roads damaged by landslides and flash floods.These “glacial lake outbursts” are hard to warn against. The area is remote and mobile service poor. Pakistan and the World Bank are trying to improve an early warning system, which often doesn’t work because of the mountainous terrain.Community is a powerful asset.
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