How Canada Should Respond to Pakistan’s Flood Disaster

After weeks of downpours, Pakistan’s dreadful monsoon floods have reached the level of mega-catastrophe. At a recent press conference, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif catalogued a litany of disaster:

“We are dealing with a situation I have not seen in my life,” Sharif said. “More than one million houses are damaged or destroyed. Seventy-two districts of Pakistan are in calamity and all four corners of Pakistan are underwater and more than 3,500 kilometres of roads have been washed away.”

The UN has called for $160 million in emergency aid; Sharif estimates the damage so far at about US$10 billion. Harjit Sajjan, Canada’s minister of international development, has chipped in $5 million as “initial funding.” Much more will likely follow.

But we should offer more than cash and relief supplies. We need to send something like Vancouver’s Canada Task Force 1 — but expanded to study the causes of the floods, not just to mitigate their effects.

The scale of the floods is hard to imagine, and the consequences will resonate for years. Out of a total population of over 240 million, 33 million — one in seven Pakistanis — have so far been directly affected.

Pakistan’s biggest investment house, Arif Habib Ltd., published a “Floods 2022” report late in August on the impact of the floods so far. In addition to over 1,000 dead, Arif Habib estimates US$3 billion losses in the housing sector, and almost $2 billion in agriculture with the loss of at least 80,000 square kilometres of farmland. This means a probable 10 per cent loss of sugar cane production, 7 per cent of cotton and 30 per cent of the rice crop.

Serious health consequences

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization warns of serious health consequences from waterborne and vector-borne diseases like leptospirosis, cholera, dengue fever and malaria.

“Nearly 900 health facilities across the country have been damaged,” WHO estimates, “of which 180 are completely damaged. Millions have been left without access to health care and medical treatment.” Before the floods, Pakistan was contending with 4,500 measles cases and 15 polio cases, not to mention hundreds of daily cases of COVID-19.

A recent article in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn argues that recurrent flood disasters reflect ill-advised development, like deforestation, as well as neglect of infrastructure and lack of disaster preparation.

Clearly, Pakistan is facing multiple disasters: population displacement, housing and transportation losses, food insecurity, disease outbreaks and economic setbacks. The government correctly notes that recurrent floods are due to climate change, to which Pakistan contributes only about 0.5 per cent of global CO2 emissions. By comparison, Canada (with a sixth of the population) contributes 1.9 per cent.

Some Pakistani politicians are calling for high-emission nations to pay for the climate damage they’ve inflicted on nations like Pakistan. Good luck with that. Canada and other high emitters will provide a fraction of the funds needed, if anything.

Another kind of support

But we might offer Pakistan another kind of support. In addition to humanitarian donations, we could pay Pakistan a tuition fee of, say, a billion dollars. That would allow hundreds of Canadians to “intern” with the Pakistani flood response: engineers, civil servants, educators, health-care workers, scientists, economists and agricultural experts. Key, of course, would be making sure their presence in Pakistan truly made things better amidst the emergency rather than siphoning attention from the nation’s own experts and frontline workers.

If done right, our people would offer useful expertise and boots on the ground. In the process, they would learn by going face-to-face with an ongoing catastrophe — one that we ourselves are likely to experience before long. They would report back to federal and provincial governments with detailed information on what Pakistan has been doing right and wrong. More importantly, they would tell us what we’re doing right and wrong in our own disaster planning and response.

Canada’s preparations for COVID-19 were an embarrassment, and our response has only helped prolong the pandemic. Another wave is likely to rise as kids go back to school. Similarly, B.C.’s preparations last year for the heat dome and the November floods left much to be desired.

But a cadre of returned “disaster interns” could give Parliament and the provincial legislatures very up-to-date advice on what they need for genuine preparation. They could also provide good arguments that however much such preparation costs, prevention or mitigation is always cheaper than a fumbling response to yet another “unprecedented” climate disaster.

In fact, such a cadre could be a Canadian contribution to global preparedness — skilled individuals who could be moved into a new disaster zone within hours, ready to rescue victims and help authorities prevent the next disaster. With a “Heavy National Search and Rescue” task force, we could provide real help to nations that need it. And Canada will surely be among those nations.