Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal’s declaration that the country would not seek aid for the flood damage it had faced, seemed a fine upstanding declaration of national sovereignty worthy of the most dyed-in-the-wool patriot. However, the reason he gave made it more the voice of bitter experience. He added that Pakistan would not seek aid after the poor response it had got to the 2022 floods, when the country had suffered $40 billion in losses, but had received only $600 million in aid. It might be recalled that there had been much fanfare after the 2022 floods, with countries apparently lining up to announce vast sums of money in aid, but disbursement was low. While $11 billion was pledged, only $600 million was released. Hardly had pledging countries executed the fancy footwork necessary for oiling out of their pledges, that they were confronted with the latest floods
It has become all the more necessary to compute how much exactly the floods cost Pakistan. Mr Iqbal made the no-aid declaration at a press conference launching a report entitled the ‘Preliminary Assessment of the Flood Damages in the Economy of Pakistan 2025’. That report puts the losses at Rs 822 billion, or about about $3 billion, with 1037 lives lost, merely 230,000 homes damaged and Rs 19 billion in agricultural losses. It was very extensive, and one of the worst floods in the country’s history, but it is still less than the losses suffered in 1992, when 1739 people were killed, and there were losses of about $40 billion. The problem for potential donors would be that Pakistan is not going away, and the floods are going to come every year. Climate change means that they will grow worse, and losses not going to grow in extent so much as in frequency.
There is a need for climate justice, because while Pakistan, and many other countries like it, suffer the consequences of climate change, they have not contributed to it. The benefits of pollution accrue to the developed world, while countries like Pakistan pay. Even more unfortunately, aid is given in the shape of loans, thus further burdening an already devastated country. It is perhaps a blessing in disguise that Pakistan has not gotten the aid pledged to it, It Developed countries are trying to use the climate change they caused to entrap the victims. Pakistan for one seems to have realized that it cannot burden itself further.
