There are indications that India will join the growing number of countries and international bodies that have responded to Pakistan’s appeal for help to deal with the ravages of the worst floods to hit the country in more than a decade. According to a report in this newspaper, discussions are underway at the highest levels on extending assistance to the beleaguered nation. In the past, too, the humanitarian impulse to reach out to a neighbour in crisis has moved Delhi and Islamabad to keep their geopolitical rivalry in abeyance. Pakistan provided assistance after the Gujarat earthquake of 2001. India did likewise when large swathes of Pakistan were flooded in 2010. The cooperation between the two countries during the Kashmir earthquake of 2005 even precipitated conversations about a collaborative disaster relief mechanism. Unfortunately, however, there has been little headway on that count, though the two countries did put down the cudgels again during the Kashmir floods of 2014.
Pakistan has experienced an unusually wet monsoon this year. The season began in June, a month earlier than usual, after a nearly two-month-long drought. In August, the country received more than three times the normal rainfall. Though scientists can’t yet affirm the extent to which the catastrophe has been aggravated because of climate change, there is near unanimity that the deluge bears the imprint of a global-warming-induced extreme weather event. Swollen rivers cause more havoc because drainage systems in cities have not received adequate attention from the country’s planners. In several parts of Pakistan, embankments that have not been repaired for years have been swept away.
The similarities between the calamity confronting Pakistan today and India’s recent experiences with weather vagaries are striking. This shouldn’t be surprising. The two countries have shared colonial legacies in urban planning and flood management. The same southwest monsoon that brings the bulk of India’s annual rainfall causes rain in Pakistan as well. The melting glaciers in the Himalayas do not respect borders. The ecological continuities in the Subcontinent make the case for regional cooperation on climate-related matters compelling. India and Pakistan do come together during negotiations at the UNFCCC fora — they are a part of an informal coalition that often asks for more financial action from developed countries to check climate change. But the outlook of South Asian governments towards forces of nature seems to be frozen in an era when the place of river and mountain systems in diplomacy is determined by economic and political considerations. The Subcontinent could learn from ASEAN’s initiative to draft a State of Climate Report on the eve of COP-26 last year — it outlines opportunities for cooperation and collaboration in the region for combating climate challenges. Data sharing mechanisms on river flows, flood alert systems, even a common renewable energy-dominated electricity grid, could substantially reduce the climate vulnerability of people in South Asia.
