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While Naseer Memon, heading the NGO Strengthening Participatory Organisation, finds it difficult to establish a connection between such lone events to climate change. He said these events provide a reality check on the ability of urban areas to cope with flooding from intense downpours. “Improper land use, poor urban infrastructure and haphazard settlement are visible reasons that converted a weather event into a disaster,” he said.
Comparing the destruction and loss of life caused in cities of Punjab near the Chenab river to Islamabad, he said the federal capital also received heavy showers but no casualties were reported. The cities badly affected included Lahore , Gujranwala and Sialkot.
“It indicates the difference of infrastructure and compliance with regulations,” said Memon, author of a book called Malevolent Floods of Pakistan. He added that the populated settlements in flood plains have brought miseries to communities.
Endorsing Memon, Rasul said, “We have newer settlements mushrooming everywhere but nothing is regulated and developers are not bound by building regulations. Many of the new housing development schemes have no sewage system and if they do have it, it has smaller drainage pipes which do not have the capacity to carry out storm water.”
“If you look at our policies, including the climate policy, you will find much wisdom there, but then it remains confined to those sheaves of paper,” Rasul said, terming Pakistan “the best policy maker but the worst implementer”.
Urban planner, Farhan Anwar, author of Urban Resilience and Climate Change, a recent publication, described the “lack of research-based adaptation measures” as one of the reasons for the devastation being witnessed currently.
He said there was no “mapping of hazard zone that can locate the exposed people and assets in the projected flood zone so that a vulnerability profile can be developed there and efforts made to reduce their vulnerabilities and increase resilience.”
In addition, he said, no financial flood insurance mechanisms existed. “Often, such a calamity does not only damage their dwellings but also their means of earning and sustenance” compounding their problems, pointed out Anwar. He added that the government should initiate a flood insurance scheme based on the probability of the flooding event.
And while short term emergency response and shelter facilities get provided in the case of a disaster, he said there was a lack of an integrated evacuation and disaster risk management plan with provisions for relevant actions embedded in the appropriate legislative and institutional frameworks.
Anwar pointed to an urgent need to “determine the potential frequency and magnitude of possible urban flooding scenarios”.
He recommended a need for “establishment of flood plains” where the communities and assets and their vulnerability factors can be combined to produce an “index” of flood vulnerability. “This can then be plotted using census data to map vulnerability.”
In addition, said Anwar, the drainage network needs to be assessed in detail for its capacity to cater to extreme flooding scenarios. “Response measures such as provision of better housing options, training in first aid and basic rescue drills, relocation, knowledge and access to clearly disseminated evacuation plans etc. need to be put in place. Increase in green and open spaces in strategically located parts of the city can also act as a defence as such spaces act as infiltration basins,” he said.
This article originally appeared on Thethirdpole.net and has been reproduced with permission.