Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province is reeling under the worst flooding in its history, with entire towns submerged and millions of residents forced to flee their homes.
Officials say unprecedented monsoon rains, intensified by global warming, have combined with cross-border flooding from India to create a humanitarian disaster of staggering proportions.
Maryam Aurangzeb, the senior minister of Punjab, announced on Sunday that more than two million people have been directly affected as water levels in the Sutlej, Chenab, and Ravi rivers have surged to record highs.
“This is the biggest flood in the history of Punjab,” she said, adding that the flooding has swept through low-lying villages and agricultural fields, destroying homes, crops, and livestock.
The flooding is being blamed on unusually heavy rainfall, triggered by climate change, and the deliberate release of water from overflowing Indian dams into Pakistani territory.
“The Foreign Ministry is collecting data regarding India’s deliberate release of water,” Aurangzeb said. India had earlier issued a warning about potential cross-border flooding, marking a rare diplomatic contact between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
Rescue efforts are underway, but the scale of the disaster has overwhelmed local authorities. Makeshift relief camps have been set up in schools, police stations, and other government facilities.
Rescue teams are using boats to pull stranded families from rooftops, but thousands remain marooned without food, clean water, or shelter.
The scenes across Punjab are harrowing: families wading through chest-deep water, children clinging to floating debris, and elderly villagers left behind in submerged homes.
Punjab, Pakistan’s agricultural heartland and home to more than 150 million people, is also the country’s primary wheat-growing region.
The devastation threatens to exacerbate food insecurity, reminiscent of the catastrophic 2022 floods that wiped out crops nationwide. Officials fear a repeat of that crisis, which pushed millions into poverty and left the country dependent on foreign aid.
Figures from Pakistan’s National Weather Centre indicate that Punjab received 26.5% more rainfall this monsoon season compared to the same period last year, making this year’s downpour one of the most destructive in decades.
Nationwide, since June 26, at least 849 people have lost their lives and over 1,100 have been injured in rain-related disasters, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.
With the monsoon season expected to last until the end of September, residents and aid workers fear that the worst is yet to come.
Despite the sheer scale of the crisis, victims complain of insufficient relief supplies and delayed international assistance, leaving countless families without food or medicine.
In many villages, locals are relying solely on community volunteers to survive, further underscoring the absence of a strong disaster response mechanism.
This disaster highlights Pakistan’s extreme vulnerability to climate change, with experts warning that rising global temperatures will only worsen the frequency and intensity of such catastrophes.
For now, millions of Pakistanis in Punjab are left to endure the floods virtually alone, with little hope of immediate reprieve.
A Global Call for Urgent Aid and Climate Action
The Punjab floods are not just a regional tragedy; they are a wake-up call to the entire world about the devastating consequences of climate inaction.
Pakistan contributes less than 1% to global carbon emissions, yet it bears a disproportionate burden of climate disasters.
The international community must act urgently, providing emergency funding, food supplies, clean water, medical aid, and long-term rehabilitation support for millions of displaced families.
Global climate justice demands that wealthier nations, responsible for the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions, step up with financial and technological assistance to help vulnerable countries like Pakistan adapt to increasingly destructive weather patterns.
This catastrophe is a stark reminder that climate change is not a distant threat—it is a present reality destroying lives right now.
Humanitarian organizations, governments, and world leaders must treat the Punjab floods as an emergency of global concern. Coordinated international relief efforts, climate resilience funding, and policies to curb emissions are urgently needed to prevent such disasters from becoming the norm.
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