Pakistan and boiling frogs.

Four years ago Al Gore released his documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ in which he shows the dire consequences that could result if the Arctic Ice melts – dramatic flooding of densely populated coastal areas around the world, and warned that climate change was causing more extreme weather patterns leading to more flooding, with droughts and hurricanes also becoming stronger. 

The rains that caused the flooding in Pakistan were extreme.  It is a country that is used to monsoons, but the rains this time were unrelenting and the dams and river walls meant to protect villages from the rivers may have been weakened by the traffic of illegal timber, while the river flow has been so badly diverted by agriculture that it was no longer able to take a flood flow safely out to sea.

The scale of the flooding in Pakistan dwarves whatever we have experienced locally by comparison.  54 entire villages have been swept away.  Over 2000 people have died and the United Nations estimates nearly 20 million people are injured or homeless as a result.

At one point one fifth of Pakistan was underwater due to the flooding.  If you do an online search for NZ and Pakistan flooding you should find a Stuff article with an image showing the scale of the area affected super-imposed over a map of NZ.  It is roughly the same length and width as our entire country. 

Are there lessons in the experience of Pakistan that we can learn from?  Certainly, one lesson is to ensure that we maintain the strength and integrity of our river-banks and prepare for flooding events to become more frequent.

When faced with international disasters people around the world usually respond with generosity and compassion.  Within 10 days of the earthquake in Haiti pledges totaling a billion dollars had been received (that’s a million millions.) Pakistan received pledges of only 150 million during more than a month of flooding.  The disaster has been dubbed ‘a slow tsunami’ and the grief, suffering and loss of life it has caused is greater than the Boxing Day Tsunami and the Haiti Earthquake combined.

So the second lesson is that we don’t respond so well to slow disasters.  James Kunstler has written a book called ‘The Long Emergency’ in which he compares our collective lack of response to climate change to boiling a frog.  If you put a frog in hot water it will leap out.  If you put a frog in cold water and slowly turn up the temperature it will sit there until it boils to death.

To donate to the Pakistan relief fund contact UNICEF or the Red Cross.  Another action you can take is to sign an online petition by AVAAZ asking foreign creditors to cancel the debt that Pakistan owes them.  The same plea was successful in reducing the debt of Haiti, so this has a real chance to help Pakistan rebuild.