LAHORE and the monsoons have a strange relationship. When the sweltering summer months approach, the anticipation of barsaat brings respite to the residents. However, the relief comes with its own set of challenges — pluvial/ urban flooding caused by an overwhelmed drainage system and the absence of natural areas for rainwater absorption. While the smoggy winter exposes how uninhabitable Lahore has become with its excessive vehicular traffic and lack of carbon sinks, the monsoon months highlight the flaws of its urban planning and development trajectory.

Despite record rainfall, human casualties, power outages, and the flooding of houses and hospitals, Lahore has seen little improvement in flood resilience and urban planning over the years. Instead, there is a concerning trend of diminishing green cover, reduced rainwater sponginess, and unplanned development, leading to rapid concretisation. Presently, Lahore is 60 per cent concretised, putting it in a precarious spot, with dangerously high temperatures and an anaemic drainage system.

Flooding induced by intense rains is attributed largely to ‘climate change’, a term we now comfortably use to externalise floods in our policy and governance circles. This approach is referred to as ‘climate reductionism’. Quite simply, we blame most of the flooding havoc on climate change and extrapolate our governance failures on this wider phenomenon that we cannot tame. By continuing this narrative, we absolve ourselves of full responsibility to address the underlying factors that intensify pluvial flooding.

The first step is to internalise urban flooding and avoid the climate reductionist narrative. This requires altering the quick-fix approach to managing floods in Lahore. The typical script starts with the Met office and the Provincial Disaster Management Authority announcing the threat of intense rains. Warning signals go out to critical departments/ teams tasked with declogging the drains. Some act promptly, others sluggishly. The rains wreak havoc, flooding low-lying concrete areas that have poor absorption capacity. Climate change is blamed for the unprecedented rains that our Wasa (Water and Sanitation Authority) warriors and Rescue 1122 rangers must fight well. This reactive approach is neither systematic nor mitigative.

Flooding and failed systems have submerged the city of gardens.

Internalising urban flooding primarily requires the government and planners to agree on how the city should proceed with development and expansion that is not ecologically damaging and does not reduce the natural drainage capacity. Sadly, once the ‘city of gardens’, Lahore is now the ‘city of concrete’ Presently, it stretches over 1,770 square kilometres, housing some 14 million people.

In the last two decades alone, the city has lost half of its urban green spaces due to expansion and the development of new housing schemes and infrastructure, without making any substantive effort towards increasing its abysmal 5pc green cover. This figure calls for a ‘greening emergency’ — green restorative efforts such as developing urban forests, incentivising green rooftops in concretised areas for rainwater absorption, creating rain gardens to recharge diminishing groundwater, and using permeable pavements. An all-hands-on-the-deck approach to make Lahore spongier is necessary.

Another step is to ensure that the municipal tasks of drainage system maintenance and carrying out improvements are performed throughout the year, and not only in high-alert periods. According to the Lahore Development Authority (LDA), the city’s increasing built-up area causes massive surface water run-off during a torrential downpour. This run-off picks up solid was­te pollution and deposits sedime­n­­ts into the main drains choking the already compromised system.

According to a senior Wasa official, most of the decline in drainage capacity is due to the public’s lack of awareness regarding solid waste management. Cleaning drives are costly, and Wasa is too underfunded to take on the task.

Recent discussions with LDA, Wasa officials, and senior DHA developers have revealed critical issues, including the lack of integrated development, shared understanding, and uniform regulations that have led to ecological problems such as reduction in urban forest cover, poor drainage management, and inefficient use of land and water resources.

To make Lahore sustainable, we must embrace integrated urban development where all developing entities including DHA (covering 10 to 12pc of the land) must agree on restoring the city’s ecological well-being. Let’s not pin our hopes on the Ravi Urban Development Authority to transform our city, nor be lured by the promised tax-free IT city that will somehow save it from ecological doom. Our problems are deeper and require a truly collaborative approach.

Sadaf Mahmood is a sustainability researcher. Sana Khosa is an assistant professor at Lums.

Published in Dawn, August 5th, 2024