“We estimate that as many as 9 million people – others – could be pushed into poverty as a result of flooding,” said Knut Ostby. UNDP Resident Representative in Pakistan.
Climate risks have no borders
Mr Ostby warned that while flooding in Pakistan was “unprecedented”, it could happen to other countries affected by climate change.
He explained that crops had been lost from the previous harvest and because of the missed planting. He continued: “Agricultural prices – food prices – are rising and could double the number of people into food insecurity, increasing that number from 7 to 14.6 million.
8 million still homeless
Recalling those concerns, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Khalil Hashmi, said that around 8 million of the 33 million people affected by the emergency remained “urgently displaced”. because flood water has not receded in some areas.
Among the most pressing needs today, Ambassador Hashmi lists housing, agriculture and livelihoods. “That’s the immediate side of it and that’s the human side of it,” he insisted, ahead of Monday’s Pakistan summit in the Swiss city, where Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres expected to attend.
Specifically, the purpose of the conference was to bring together public and private sector leaders and create financial and international support for communities affected by last year’s devastating floods in Pakistan, while restoring and rebuilding damaged infrastructure in a climate-adaptive manner.
a call for unity
About $16 billion is needed to help recover and rebuild the country in the long run. Syed Haider Shah, head of the United Nations department at Pakistan’s foreign ministry, said via Zoom from Islamabad: “This is not just a year-long project. “The needs have been categorized into four strategic recovery goals: and they address Government capacity building, inclusive reconstruction, gender and livelihood issues.”
More than 1,700 people have died in the monsoon flood disaster, UNDP’s Ostby said, adding that at least two million homes have been destroyed and damaged, along with “13,000 kilometers of roads and back roads.” up, 3,000 km of railway tracks or more, 439 bridges, 4.4 million acres of farmland”.
More than a million cattle were also lost, the UNDP official explained, before adding that due to standing water still in some areas, “many people are unable to return to their regular livelihoods” and therefore still have to dependent on humanitarian assistance”.
